A timesheet is just a timesheet, isn’t it?

Back from vacation and time to pick up on those weekly blogs again!   I thought I would start with a topic near and dear to everyone’s heart – timesheets!   

The concept of timesheets is a pretty straight forward one – record time worked while you are paid to be on the job.  Everyone has suggestions, opinions, and ideas on how best to capture time worked.  What I find amazing is the variety of approaches in this seemingly straightforward process.  What do I mean?  Let’s look at some questions you may have to consider when implementing a timesheet system:

a)      How you do record time off within your company?  Is it broken down into buckets of allowances? What kind of categories do you have?

b)      How do you record non-client work?  What is non-client work?

c)       Do you need to submit a ‘full week’ timesheet?  How is overtime handled? Company Holidays?

d)      Do you record start and end time of your work day?  Any break requirements?

…and that’s just the tip of the question list iceberg.  Invoicing, contract management, and project management requirements may drive even more questions and configuration needs.   See how quickly a timesheet can get complicated?

There are quite a few discussion items within the topic of Timesheets so I’m going to blog a ‘series’ on this topic.  Today is the kickoff topic of what to consider in determining your timesheet policy and requirements. 

First, what is your objective from timesheets?  Primarily it is to capture time worked on client projects.   But that’s not all.   It also serves Human Resource tracking needs and perhaps Accounts Payable tracking needs.    HR most likely needs to track Paid Time Off (personal holiday or vacation) in both earnings and usage by employee.  Accounts Payable may need to leverage subcontractor or part-time employee timesheets to handle vendor payments based on hours worked.  Consider other departments outside of Professional Services when gathering timesheet requirements.

Second, who must enter timesheets?  An obvious answer is ‘Employees, of course!’  Absolutely true, but at what level?  I find that many Managers simply do not expect to enter timesheets since they are not doing direct client billable work.  This goes back to the first point, what is the objective of the timesheet?   If HR is using timesheets for vacation balances, then perhaps Managers should be entering timesheets.  What about subcontractors?  If they are paid hourly, then it makes sense but if they are fixed fee, will they record hours accurately?   Consider the reason why timesheets are required to identify the audience.

Third, what level of detail is required to capture time?  A primary focus will be on client billing requirements.  Perhaps task level or project level information is required for display in invoices or detailed status to the client.  Here is where the list of requirements may grow quite long such as having notes required per time entry, identifying time down to the 10 minute entry, and so forth.  There is a natural conflict of how best to capture data while ensuring timesheet entry is not a tremendous effort or ordeal on the user.  

Fourth, does a salary employee need to account for a full work week?  A full work week usually means 40 hours in the US, 37.5 hours in the UK, and other variable hours per week in other countries.  Do all of these hours need to be accounted for when a person is receiving an annual salary and not paid hourly?  Most companies want to see how everyone is spending their time so a full week timesheet is generally a requirement.  To streamline administration, however, is this really necessary? 

Fifth, how often do you need to enter time?  Well, this may be dictated by policy (DCAA as an example) or this may be dictated once again by client billing.  Generally weekly or monthly timesheets are acceptable with an expectation of either daily or weekly data entry, respectively.   And the frequency of time entry may also drive the frequency of reviewer/approver processes.  Overall, a work effort to be considered and not taken lightly as data accuracy must be balanced with overall administration overhead.

With these five questions, you’ll be on your way to capturing your full requirements list.  There are a lot more questions to come and details to consider; think of this as level 1 – getting started.   And we haven’t even talked technology yet…..I’m just saying!