What is a LEM? The Complete Guide for Oil & Gas and Construction Companies

A ticket comes back rejected. The client says the rates don’t match the work order. Your billing coordinator is on the phone, the invoice is three weeks old, and the field supervisor who filled out the original document is already on a different site. You’re not getting paid this week.

If that situation sounds familiar, you’re dealing with something that affects almost every contractor running time-and-materials work in oil and gas and construction.

This guide covers exactly what a LEM is, what goes on one, why they get rejected, and what companies that have solved this problem are doing differently.

What Does LEM Stand For?

LEM stands for Labour, Equipment, and Material. In some companies and regions you’ll also see it written as “Labour and Equipment Manifest,” but the core meaning is the same. It’s the document that captures what was done on a job site: who worked, what equipment ran, and what materials were used.

Think of a LEM as the evidence file for an invoice. Without it, you can’t bill. With a bad one, you’ll wish you hadn’t tried.

What Is a LEM and Why Does It Exist?

A LEM is the primary field document used to support billing in oil & gas and construction. It records the details of work performed on a given day or job, and it forms the basis of the invoice submitted to the client.

The reason it exists is simple: clients won’t pay for work they can’t verify. A LEM gives them the line-by-line breakdown they need to approve charges. For contractors, it’s the paper trail that protects revenue. For clients, it’s the record that confirms what they agreed to pay for.

When a LEM is filled out correctly and approved on time, billing is fast and disputes are rare. When it’s not, everything slows down.

What Goes on a LEM?

A complete LEM has three sections: Labour, Equipment, and Material. Each one captures specific information. Missing fields in any section are the fastest route to a rejected ticket.

Labour

The labour section documents everyone who worked on the job and what they did. A properly completed labour section includes:

• Worker names (or employee IDs, depending on client requirements)
• Job title or classification (operator, labourer, supervisor, etc.)
• Hours worked, broken down by regular time, overtime, and double time where applicable
• Bill rates for each classification
• Start and end times, including any standby or call-out time

Some clients, particularly large operators like Suncor or CNRL, have their own formats for this section. If your crew is working on a major operator’s site, confirm what they require before the job starts.

Equipment

The equipment section covers every piece of machinery, vehicle, or tool that was on-site and billable. It should include:

• Equipment type and description (e.g., excavator, vacuum truck, light plant)
• Equipment ID or unit number
• Hours of operation, including standby hours if applicable
• Whether the equipment is owned or rented
• Bill rates for each piece of equipment
• Operator name if billable separately from the labour section

Standby time is one of the most commonly missed line items in equipment sections. If a piece of equipment is on-site but waiting, and the client agreed to pay standby rates, it needs to be on the LEM.

Material

The material section tracks everything consumed or used on the job that gets billed back to the client. This includes:

• Material description and specifications
• Quantities used
• Unit of measure (litres, metres, tonnes, etc.)
• Unit cost
• Whether the material is a passthrough cost or marked up

Not all materials are billed back to the client. Some are covered by the contractor’s scope. Make sure your field crews know the difference before they start listing items.

Is a LEM the Same as a Field Ticket?

This question comes up a lot. The short answer: they’re often used interchangeably, but they don’t always mean the same thing.

In oil and gas, particularly in western Canada, “LEM” is the more common term for a document that captures labour, equipment, and materials on a time-and-materials job. “Field ticket” is the broader term used across industries for any document that records work done in the field.

In construction, you’re more likely to hear “daily log,” “field ticket,” or “T&M ticket.” The underlying purpose is the same: document the work so you can bill for it.

The practical distinction matters most when you’re working across industries or with clients who use different terminology. When in doubt, ask your client what they call it and what format they want it in. Using the wrong template, even with the right information, is enough to delay an approval.

Why Do LEMs Get Rejected? (And How to Prevent It)

This is the section that saves money. LEM rejections delay invoices, damage client relationships, and in some cases result in revenue that never gets collected because no one follows up properly.

The good news: Based on analysis of field work approvals processed through Aimsio’s platform, the most common rejection causes are preventable. Here’s what they are and how to stop them.

Missing or mismatched signatures. A LEM without the field supervisor’s signature, the client rep’s signature, or both is incomplete. Most clients won’t approve an unsigned ticket regardless of how accurate the data is. Picture a client rep who walked the site with your crew, saw the work done, and left without signing because it slipped. Three weeks later, getting that signature back is a phone call that may or may not happen. The fix is to make on-site sign-off a hard stop before anyone leaves the job.

Rates that don’t match the contract. If your bill rate for a journeyman operator is $95/hour and the LEM says $110, the client will reject it. This is one of the leading causes of billing disputes, and it almost always happens because a field crew member entered a rate from memory instead of pulling it from the agreed price book. Building rate lookups into the LEM process, rather than relying on people to remember them, is the structural fix.

Wrong or missing dates. A LEM submitted on Tuesday for work done Friday, entered with Wednesday’s date, creates a documentation problem that’s hard to resolve weeks later. It sounds like a basic error, and it is. But it happens constantly on paper-based operations. Date errors trigger requests for clarification that add days to the approval cycle every time.

Line items outside the approved scope. If a client’s work order didn’t include a specific equipment type and it shows up on the LEM, they’ll push back. Field crews sometimes add items without realizing the scope doesn’t cover them. Reviewing scope before submitting, not after rejection, is the habit worth building.

Missing PO or cost code references. Most large operators require a Purchase Order number and project cost codes on every LEM. Without them, the ticket gets kicked back. This is a process gap, not a people gap. If PO numbers aren’t captured at job setup, crews can’t include what they don’t have.

Illegible handwriting. This doesn’t apply to digital LEMs, but it’s still responsible for a share of rejections on paper-based operations. If the billing coordinator can’t read it, neither can the client.

How Do You Get a LEM Approved Faster?

The approval process is where billing cycle time gets won or lost. A LEM that’s complete, accurate, and in the client’s hands the same day work is done can be approved within 24 hours. A LEM that goes through three rounds of corrections and emails can take three weeks.

A few things that consistently shorten the cycle:

Fill it out the same day. Work captured at the end of a shift is more accurate than work reconstructed two days later. Rates, hours, and quantities are fresh. The field supervisor is still available to answer questions.

Get on-site sign-off before anyone leaves. Client representative signatures obtained on-site are infinitely easier to get than chasing someone down remotely after the fact.

Submit digitally. A digital LEM that goes directly to the client’s approval queue removes every manual step between completion and review. There’s no email chain, no PDF attachment that goes to the wrong person, and no week-long wait for someone to log into a portal they forgot the password to.

Know your client’s format. Major operators often have specific LEM templates or fields they require. Using their format from the start means fewer clarification requests. This is especially true for larger clients with formal procurement processes.

Paper LEMs vs. Digital LEMs: What’s the Practical Difference?

Most companies that still use paper LEMs aren’t doing it because they prefer paper. They’re doing it because switching feels complicated and the current process technically works. That’s a reasonable position, right up until it stops being true.

Paper works fine until something goes wrong. A lost ticket, a disputed rate, a missing signature from a client rep who is no longer reachable. Digital LEMs don’t fix bad process, but they remove a lot of the ways a good process fails.

How Does Aimsio Handle LEMs?

Aimsio is a field operations and billing platform built specifically for industrial and commercial companies in North America, including oil & gas operators, energy contractors, construction firms, and other heavy industrial service providers. It processes LEMs, field tickets, and timesheets in real time and converts them directly into invoices.

In practice, here’s what that looks like. Field crews fill out LEMs on the Aimsio mobile app, including when there’s no cell service. Bill rates pull automatically from the price book, so no one is entering numbers from memory. Signatures are captured digitally on-site. Once submitted, LEMs route to the appropriate approver with no manual forwarding.

When an LEM is approved, it converts to an invoice in one step. There’s no data re-entry, no reconciliation against a separate system, and no week-long lag between the field and finance. Preferred Energy Services, an oil and gas contractor, used this workflow to reduce billing disputes and improve cash flow predictability in environments where connectivity is inconsistent and ticket volume is high.

Aimsio has processed more than 6.5 million field tickets and supported over $11 billion in invoices. On the Aimsio platform, 91% of tickets are approved on first submission. That number is the direct result of eliminating the manual steps where errors enter.

If Your LEM Process Is Slowing Down Your Cash Flow, Here’s What to Do About It

Rejected tickets, delayed invoices, and billing disputes are symptoms. The underlying issue is usually a LEM process that was built for a lower volume of work than you’re running now. If your billing cycle is measured in weeks instead of days, and your office team spends meaningful time chasing signatures and correcting rate errors, the problem isn’t the people. It’s the process.

Aimsio’s digital LEM and Client Portal tools are built for exactly this situation: field teams who work in remote locations, clients who need a clean audit trail, and billing coordinators who should be closing invoices instead of reconciling paperwork.

See how Preferred Energy Services improved LEM approvals and cut billing lag in remote oilfield environments, then talk to someone on the Aimsio team about what that looks like for your operation.

See the Preferred Energy Case Study →