What Are Timesheets?

At their most basic, timesheets are pieces of paper (or forms/templates) your employees use to track when they work. The simplest timesheets record the date and the time employees started and ended their workdays. This type of timesheet is most common in retail and foodservice where employees work a single shift and position, and tracking the time spent on specific tasks isn’t important.

More complex timesheets record the actual activities on which employees spent their time during the workday. This is especially useful for businesses that take on numerous clients and projects throughout the year. These businesses need to know how much time their employees are spending on marketing, creation, distribution, customer service, and a whole host of other tasks.

Why Use Timesheets?

• Achieve Accurate Payroll: Calculate accurate payroll by adding up the hours worked in a week and multiplying it by the employee’s pay rate.
• Analyze Qualifications: Monitor how well your employees are working and determine if a specific employee might qualify for a new project, role, or job.
• Highlight Expertise: Reveal if an employee is developing an area of expertise that may be beneficial for future projects.
• Submit Client Invoices: Accurately report hours worked to the clients who use your services.
• Identify Training Needs: Discover when an employee needs additional training for a certain task.
• Manage Workloads: Distribute the workload more equitably to increase productivity by understanding where your employees spend the most effort.
• Measure Efficiency: Uncover activities within your workflow that are less efficient and modify and improve your processes.
• Build a Historical Database: Create a reference for future projects by putting concrete numbers to common tasks.
• Improve Estimates: Give more accurate estimates to your clients about time, costs, and resources based on past timesheets.
• Enhance Agility: Properly tracking time helps you become more agile and adapt to problems along the way.

How Do You Use Timesheets?

For Straight Shift Work

Timesheets for straight shift work are similar to punch cards in that they record employees’ names, the date, and the start and end time they worked. At the end of the pay period, total the hours worked, verify that those numbers are correct, and use that information to calculate payroll.

For Project Tracking

Your employees record their names and the date, the project on which they are working, and the task within that project. Finally, they record the start and stop time for each task. Use the timesheets to calculate payroll and gain insight into your employees’ productivity, efficiency, and engagement.

How to Manage Employee Timesheets

1) Explain Why Timesheets are Important

Explain to your team how you use their numbers not only to calculate their paycheck but also to refine and improve the way your business operates.

2) Set Rules and Regulations

Set clear rules so that employees know exactly how to handle their timesheets from start to finish.

3) Teach Your Team

Take time to teach your team how to work through the process, and review it once or twice a year to ensure everyone is on the same page.

4) Categorize Time

Implement a system of categories or tags for employees to label each block of time they work. Examples include billable hours, non-billable hours, regular hourly rate, and different jobs.

5) Use Timesheet Automation

Modern time tracking apps help simplify the process with timesheet automation.

6) Send Timesheet Reminders

Send out reminders a few days before the due date to ensure timesheets are submitted on time.

7) Approve the Timesheets

Have someone approve the timesheets before they are processed to prevent mistakes from getting out of control.

The Best Alternative to Paper Timesheets

The best alternative to paper or punch-card timesheets is a cloud-based app like Sling. The Sling software suite brings together three essential toolsets: scheduling, time tracking, and labor cost reporting and control.

With Sling, you can create employees’ work schedules in minutes, easily sync timesheets with payroll, schedule, manage time off, keep track of availability, and organize shift-trade requests. For more free resources to help you manage your business better, organize and schedule your team, and track and calculate labor costs, visit Sling.