Dashpivot article – how to do timesheet hours
How to do Timesheet Hours
What are the Key Details and Basics in a Timesheet?
A timesheet is an essential document and tool that is used to track and manage the working hours of employees, progress of contractors, and the entire project progress. It’s important to know the key details and basics in a time sheet.
By understanding these components, organisations are able to develop a proper structure of their timesheets, can streamline their time management process by maybe utilising digital tools, and ensure compliance with labour regulations.
If you are looking to understand different timesheet formats, you can go deeper on daily and weekly timesheet formats here.
Timesheet Basics and How to do Timesheet Hours
Timesheet hours refer to the time spent by an employee in their working period or in activities related to their job. Tracking the hours is essential in ensuring accurate payroll processing and billing.
Accurately recording the hours ensures accurate payroll and compensation, fair resource allocation, and compliance with the labour laws. Since it’s directly related to payroll, it maintains the trust within the workplace.
Having a proper structure for the timesheet hours is beneficial for both the organisation and employees.
Converting the Timesheet Hours Into Decimal Format
Oftentimes, it’s necessary to convert the time into decimal hours when calculating the timesheet hours. The decimal format makes it a lot easier to conduct mathematical operations in payroll, billing, and reporting because it doesn’t separate the hours and minutes.
To convert the time into decimal hours, for example, the employee has worked for a total of 8 hours and 45 minutes, simply:
(1) Divide the total minutes by 60 to convert it into hours. (e.g., 45 minutes: 45/60 = 0.75; meaning 0.75 hours)
(2) Add that result into the hours. (e.g., 8 hours and 45 minutes: 8 + 0.75 = 8.75; meaning 8.75 hours)
The decimal format standardises the reporting. This reduces errors in conversion, and misinterpretations in calculating the compensation. It’s easy to create the documents in spreadsheets and other data analysis tools as well with unified formatting.
Tracking Multiple Tasks or Projects
In order to track multiple tasks or projects, traditionally, organisations manually log hours based on memory or notes. But it might be better to use digital tools like Dashpivot to record the timesheet hours and have the software automatically calculate the total working hours of employees, equipment, and contractors.
To make it easier to track, organisations can implement work blocks to tasks or projects. That makes it easier and cleaner to log the work in your timesheet. The logs or tables can be separated into categories, or if there is only one log then there should be a column for the description of tasks, project name, or if they’re billable or non-billable.
The best practice is to use digital tools to reduce manual data entry and calculation.
Dashpivot is the ideal took to use to track multiple tasks and projects by designing a Timesheet document that caters different categories. Organisations can add default tables for different categories, and users can simply add entries. There’s an option for a ‘time field’ and you can set the start and end time cells into time fields. Dashpivot has a feature that allows formulas with similar syntax to Excel. Using this feature, users can automate the timesheet hours calculation and the total hours worked for employees, equipment, and contractors. Dashpivot promotes consistency across the entries, makes it easier to confirm accuracy before submitting, reduces errors and manual calculations.
How to do Timesheet Hours? Step by Step Guide
Timesheet Hours Entry (Start Time, End Time, Breaks, Overtime, Leave)
Begin by recording the start time, the employee began working, and end time, the end of their shift. It’s also important to take note of the breaks or any unpaid pauses, which will be subtracted on the total hours worked. Necessary for calculations, the time should be converted into decimal hours. If there’s overtime hours, it’s important to include that too, since organisations have varying calculations for overtime compensation. At the end of the log sheet, the hours worked for each day should be totalled for total regular hours worked, and total overtime hours worked. And lastly, a column to total the total regular hours pay, and the total overtime hours pay. If the employee is on leave (vacation, holiday, or sick days), it should also be indicated.
Example 1:
If it’s timesheet for an individual worker to input, that means they will be using a timesheet on all workdays (e.g., Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, etc.). This type of timesheet is used for specific projects, like Worker A working in Project A, and then a separate timesheet for Worker A working in Project B, etc. For a single user, the Timesheet form would likely look like this:
Employee information:
Date Range:
| Workday | Start Time | Task Details | End Time | Break Hours | Overtime Hours | Total Hours Worked | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monday | (formula field) | ||||||
| Tuesday | (formula field) | ||||||
| Wednesday | (formula field) | ||||||
| Thursday | (formula field) | ||||||
| Friday | (formula field) | ||||||
| TOTAL | (formula field) |
| Total Hours Worked | Total Regular Hours Pay | Total Overtime Hours Worked | Total Overtime Hours Pay | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| (formula field) | (formula field) | (formula field) | (formula field) | |
| (formula field) | (formula field) | (formula field) | (formula field) |
Signature Field:
With Dashpivot, you can set the cell ‘Total Hours Worked’ as a formula field that automates the calculation Total Hours Worked = End Time - Start Time - Break Hours. Similarly with the ‘Total Overtime Hours Worked’ to add all overtime hours worked.
Example 2:
If it’s a timesheet for an individual worker to input that includes all the projects this worker is working on, for example Worker A working in Project A and B in a week, then this type of timesheet will be used. This may be a lot easier to use than having separate documents for Project and Project B. For a single user in multiple projects, the Timesheet form would likely look like this (given that the worker works on a project by day, and not multiple ones in a day):
Employee information:
Date Range:
| Workday | Project | Start Time | Task Details | End Time | Break Hours | Overtime Hours | Total Hours Worked | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monday | (formula field) | |||||||
| Tuesday | (formula field) | |||||||
| Wednesday | (formula field) | |||||||
| Thursday | (formula field) | |||||||
| Friday | (formula field) |
| Project | Total Hours Worked | Total Regular Hours Pay | Total Overtime Hours Worked | Total Overtime Hours Pay | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | (formula field) | (formula field) | (formula field) | (formula field) | |
| B | (formula field) | (formula field) | (formula field) | (formula field) |
Signature Field:
Take note that the second table totals the hours worked in Project A and Project B. It’s important to have a table that separates the totals for this kind of timesheet. With Dashpivot, users can set the total cells as ‘formula fields' to automate calculation, such that if table one column two has ‘Project A’ or ‘Project B’, then add total hours worked under the specific cell.
You can use a proper electronic and free timesheet template here.
All in all, timesheet hours entry in complex working hours and shifts can be managed and organised properly by using a digital tool like Dashpivot. A timesheet’s structure can be varying depending on the needs of the employee, workers, team, and organisation. It will look differently when the timesheet is for teams working on one project, teams working on multiple projects, or a timesheet that includes the equipment usage and contracter’s work entries. Digital tools like Dashpivot can overall make data entry of timesheets simple and convenient.
Dashpivot can be used to record and automate calculations of timesheet hours. Organisations can also customise their tables in Dashpivot according to their preferences and create standardised forms to make it easier for data entry. There are date fields, time fields, and formula fields relevant in streamlining the entire timesheet process. They can create documents for daily timesheets, individual employee timesheets, team timesheets, and many more types of timesheets. Timesheets may look differently based on the site needs, for as long as they serve the purpose of making it easier for payroll management, employee fairness and compensation, and compliance with the labour regulations. With Dashpivot’s versatility, timesheet management and payroll processing are made simple, easy, and convenient.
How Not to do Timesheet Hours
Creating and filling out timesheets can sometimes lead to a few errors and inconsistencies, which ultimately impact the accuracy and compromise the payroll workflow. The errors listed below are the common oversights in creating and filling out the timesheets, and doing timesheet hours.
No Standardised Timesheet Form
Having no standardised timesheets form or document as basis causes inaccurate time entries. Workers will forget to log the start and end times, possibly just estimating the hours worked and not the actual entries. There could also be missing entries, they could skip the dates and forget to log the break times. Additionally, without a standardised form and structure, there could be overlapping entries resulting to repeating hours and conflict wiith payroll.
No Standardised Practices
Some workers, without a standardised practice across the team and projects, may use incorrect entries for projects, not accounting the breaks, not having a supervisor verifying the contents, and ignoring compliance rules.
How to do Timesheet Hours in a Streamlined Way?
Dashpivot is an information management system and tool that can be used as a dedicated timesheet software and app that gets all information into one database and makes communication between team members easy. Workers on site can simply and conveniently use their mobile phones and tablets to input the necessary datails in the timesheets, and employees in office can access those files, review, and verify the contents.
You can even work offline, and data will be synced once internet is available. Managers and supervisors can also retrieve files by simply searching in the database, and whenever necessary, they can export documents from the database for compliance and audit reports. Data entry for your Timesheet documents is also made convenient with automatic features, automation, and formulas for calculations. There are date, time and formula fields, drop downs, lists, and other features to be placed in your Timesheet forms. Dashpivot is the flexible tool that can help you create timesheets that caters to different needs, uses, and roles.
Calculating for the time differences and hours totals in Dashpivot is automated, meaning no need to convert them into decical format, and the user will just simple use a formula field and input the appropriate formulas to perform calculations. You and your time can add tables to add timesheet tables, cross-reference tables for the formulas, add photos and videos if necessary under notes, add drop down fields instead of typing repetitive selections, connect lists for employees, equipment or items, and many more.
With a standardised timesheet you can customise in Dashpivot, you and your team can address the common errors and issues when creating and filling out timesheet hours. You’ll have accurate entries, and workers won’t forget to log their hours since they can just simply use their mobile phones or tablets on site. To avoid missing entries, you can use the feature ‘required fields’. There won’t be overlapping content with a formal and clean timesheet structure. Furthermore, Dashpivot allows managers and supervisors to easily implement standardised practices across teams and projects.
It’s essential for both employees and managers to priorise proper timesheet practices and use digital tools like Dashpivot to streamline the entire timesheet process. Make your payroll management system, timesheet process, resource allocation, and compliance workflow simple and easy with Dashpivot.
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