Dashpivot article – why is it important to complete timesheets correctly
Why is it important to complete timesheets correctly?
Completing timesheets correctly may seem like a routine task, but its importance is often underestimated.
The accurate recording of hours worked, tasks completed, and projects tackled has a cascading effect on multiple aspects of a business or organisation.
When considering why is it important to complete timesheets correctly, it's helpful to dive down into the different aspects of the business where it can have an effect.
Financial Accuracy
The finance team has an extremely vested interest as to why it is important to complete timesheets correctly.
- Correct Compensation: For hourly employees, timesheet accuracy directly affects their paycheck. A mistake can result in underpayment or overpayment, both of which can lead to disputes and dissatisfaction.
- Billing Clients: For businesses that bill clients based on hours worked, accurate timesheets are essential to ensure clients are charged correctly. Inaccurate billing can damage trust and lead to conflicts.
- Budgeting and Forecasting: Timesheet data feeds into financial forecasting. Inaccurate timesheets can lead businesses to make misguided financial decisions.
Compliance and Legal Obligations
Another aspect to why is it important to complete timesheets correctly is from a legal perspective to ensure you're meeting your compliance and legal requirements for your team and project.
- Labor Laws: Many jurisdictions have strict labor laws that dictate working hours, overtime, and breaks. Inaccurate timesheets can lead to non-compliance, resulting in penalties, legal disputes, and damaged reputations.
- Contractual Obligations: In projects with specific contractual agreements about work hours, failing to adhere to these agreements due to incorrect timesheet data can lead to breaches of contract.
Productivity and Efficiency
- Resource Allocation: Accurate timesheets provide insights into how long tasks take, allowing managers to allocate resources more efficiently.
- Identifying Bottlenecks: By analyzing accurate timesheet data, managers can identify areas where projects or tasks are taking longer than anticipated, signaling potential inefficiencies.
- Performance Reviews: Timesheets can play a role in employee evaluations. If they're inaccurate, it can lead to misguided assessments and feedback.
Trust and Transparency
- Building Trust with Clients: When clients are billed accurately for hours worked, it fosters trust. Conversely, discrepancies can erode client confidence.
- Employee Trust: Employees trust their employers to compensate them correctly. Regular mistakes in paychecks due to inaccurate timesheets can undermine this trust.
Project Management and Planning
- Project Timeline Adherence: For project managers, timesheet data can provide insights into whether projects are on track or if there are delays.
- Future Project Estimates: Historical timesheet data, when accurate, can help project managers make better estimates for future projects in terms of time and resources.
Reducing Administrative Burdens
- Streamlining Payroll: Accurate timesheets simplify the payroll process. Continual corrections due to errors lead to inefficiencies and increased administrative work.
- Avoiding Disputes: Whether it's disputes with clients over billing or with employees over pay, inaccuracies in timesheets can lead to time-consuming and costly conflicts.
See an example of a well-documented timesheet below that should avoid any issues or complications through lack of timesheet information.
Complete timesheets correctly with this free digital timesheet template
Use a digital timesheet to keep your timesheets accurate and complete
Ensure you and/or your team are completing timesheets correctly by using this digital daily construction timesheet template to make sure all of the information you need is captured.
The digital timesheet comes pre-built with fields to capture start times, end times, hours worked per day, total hours worked for the week, hourly rate, signatures and more.
Customise it to your needs and requirements with the drag and drop form builder to add any fields or sections you want.
Mark different fields as required fields to make sure that the timesheet can't be submitted without the required information.
Automatically calculate daily and weekly hours from the start and end times using formulas, and even account for break times if any were taken.
Create digital processes around timesheet capturing and signoff
A timesheets app can help to build digital workflows to request, record and get signoff approval for your timesheets.
Share your digital timesheet with your team so they can access it on their mobile or tablet so they're able to complete it on site as soon as they've finished work, so they can easily reconcile the start and end times.
If extra documentation is needed, you can attach photos and PDF attachments to the timesheet.
Workflows create different stages for timesheets, so when a timesheet is ready for an approval signature an automated notification is sent to an approval manager that a timesheet is submitted and needs their review.
Integrate your timesheets with Xero using the Xero timesheet integration so you never miss a timesheet.
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