What Is a Timesheet? A Guide for Leaders and Managers

What is a timesheet?

A timesheet is a document where work hours are recorded, along with other important related data. They take the form of information tables, which is where a part of the name comes from. Timesheets can also be in digital or paper form, though online timesheets are more common because of the convenience they offer.

Contents of a timesheet

Besides just total hours worked, timesheets contain lots of other information related to your staff’s workflows. These data points include:

• Employee details, like name and position
• Project and task information
• Overtime hours
• Breaks taken
• Hourly rates
• Any necessary approval info

Are timesheets required by law?

If you pay your team a fixed salary, you likely won’t need to deal with timesheets. But, if you pay your staff on an hourly basis, then you need to comply with timekeeping laws. For example, the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) has a set of recordkeeping requirements that you’ll need to follow if you’re based in the US. For accurate information on what timekeeping requirements apply to your business, consult with a local labor lawyer.

The Purpose of Timesheets

Let’s now explore how timesheets can help you with various aspects of your business. These include:

• Payroll
• Project management
• Client billing

Payroll management

Managing payroll accurately is vital if you pay your staff on an hourly basis. Doing this without timesheets is very difficult. This way you won’t have records of how much your employees worked at any given point in time. Ensuring your time data, and thus payroll calculations, are accurate can have several benefits. We’ll explore these more in-depth when we cover what a timesheet app is a bit later in this guide.

Project management

Timesheets can come in handy when managing projects in your business. Through them, you can get a detailed overview of how much time and money your organization spends on each of your projects. This will help you ensure that the right projects are prioritized. Besides this, timesheets will help you detect an unbalanced workload distribution across your team. This is the first step in fighting against work overload in your business, the downsides of which are plentiful and obvious.

Billing clients

If your team works on projects for specific clients, then timesheets are essentially non-negotiable for your firm. You’ll often need them for not only billing upon the delivery of a project but also as proof of work in the middle of one. Timesheets will help you foster a sense of trust with your clients, making them an invaluable investment.

Different Types of Timesheets

Let’s now shift our focus to a different aspect of our topic: what are the types of timesheets?

Manual vs automatic time sheets

The two main types of timesheets are manual and automatic. These are pretty self-explanatory: your staff fill out manual timesheets themselves, while automated ones are done with software. Automated timesheets are typically generated by time-tracking apps like WebWork. If you use WebWork’s Desktop Time Tracker, you’ll get info on what apps and websites your staff spent their time on. This will allow you to verify the accuracy of your timesheets to bill clients and pay employees correctly.

Timesheet timeframes

Besides being manual and automated, timesheets can also differ by their timeframes. The most common one is the weekly timesheet. As the name suggests, this covers a week of a given employee’s work hours. However, you can also use bi-weekly or monthly timesheets depending on how frequently you pay your team.

What is timesheet management software?

Timesheet management software is an app that lets you manage all of your team’s tracked time data in one place. High-quality time trackers let you do this in different ways. For example, you can view your team’s tracked time data in timesheet, timeline, and report forms in WebWork.

Why You Need Timesheet Software in Your Business

Having explored what a timesheet app is, let’s now take a look at what advantages a high-quality one can offer you. The most prominent ones include:

• Saving money
• Reducing susceptibility to time theft
• Quicker completion of timesheets

Saving money with accurate data

Inaccurate timesheets can be costly. This can happen not only because of overpaying your team but also because of fines. Depending on your local regulations, you could save a measurable amount in the long run by investing in a high-quality time tracker.

Reducing susceptibility to time theft

Closely related to our last point, another way timesheet apps will help you save money is through the concept of time theft. Specifically, they’ll reduce your company’s susceptibility to the practice. If you’re not aware, time theft is exactly what it sounds like: employees logging and getting paid for time they didn’t work. In most cases, automatic time tracking can completely eliminate the possibility of this happening.

Speeding up timesheet completion

Another benefit of automatic time tracking is that your timesheets will be completed much quicker. You won’t have to wait for your team to fill them out at the end of each pay period. This can allow you to complete your payroll work sooner, as well as get client payments quicker.

What to Look for in a Timesheet App

Before closing off this guide, let’s explore what you should look for in a timesheet app for your team. A couple of key features you should consider include:

• Timesheet approvals
• Automatic time tracking

Saving money with accurate data

While automatic timesheets are much more accurate, they can still be affected by human errors, especially if staff add time manually. Because of this, manually approving timesheets can still be useful if you strive for a high level of accuracy. As an example of a time tracker with timesheet approvals, let’s take WebWork. The app’s Timesheet Approvals feature lets you not just approve or reject timesheets, but also set permissions for who can do so in your workspace. This way, the entirety of your management team can approve or reject time data, speeding up your workflows.

Automatic time tracking

As already mentioned, automatic time tracking is an important feature to look for if you want accurate timesheets. In WebWork, Automatic Time Tracking is set up by default with the Desktop Time Tracker’s “Autorun” option.