Friday afternoon, the office manager's reminder email
Every Friday the office manager sends a reminder: timesheets please. On Monday a third of the office has not done them. By Wednesday some are filled in, mostly as 'project X, 7.5 hours' for each day, because nobody can remember that Tuesday was split between a planning meeting, two hours of redlines on another job and an hour answering a contractor's query.
The data that comes out is not much use. Directors cannot see real time per stage, fees cannot be checked, and next year's fee proposals are guesses.
Why architects do not fill them in
It is not laziness. Design work is fragmented. A day is split across several projects, and reconstructing it at the end of the week is genuinely hard. The timesheet tool often asks for codes that mean little to the person filling it in. And they never see what the data is used for, so it feels like pure admin.
- Filled in from memory, days or a week later.
- Too many codes, stages and activity types to pick from.
- No link to what the person actually did, such as meetings or files worked on.
- Staff never see the output.
- Reminders are generic and easy to ignore.
What bad timesheets cost the practice
Without reliable time data, fee tracking by stage does not work, hourly work is under-billed, and fee proposals cannot learn from past projects. Office managers spend hours chasing. Directors make resourcing decisions without knowing where time goes.
Timesheets that fill themselves in, mostly
- The timesheet is pre-filled each day from signals the practice already has: calendar meetings tagged with a project, the project folders or model files a person worked in, and emails sent about a project.
- Each architect sees a suggested day, such as a meeting on one project and time on another's files, and confirms, adjusts or adds to it in a few taps.
- Only the codes that matter are shown: the projects the person is assigned to and their current stages, with activity types kept to a short list.
- A gentle prompt at the end of each day asks for confirmation while memory is fresh, instead of one reminder on Friday.
- Confirmed time flows to your practice management system, Xero or wherever your time data lives.
- Each person can see a simple view of their own week and how their projects are tracking against fee, so the data is useful to them too.
- The office manager sees who is behind, without sending group emails.
Suggestions come from signals, not surveillance. We agree with you what is used, staff are told, and the architect always decides what goes on their timesheet.
The office manager's role changes too. Instead of chasing everyone on a Friday, they see a short list of people with unconfirmed days and can have a quiet word where needed. Directors get time data they can actually use for fee tracking and future proposals, because it was recorded on the day, split across the projects the person really worked on.
What changes in the data
| Aspect | End-of-week from memory | Daily, pre-filled |
|---|---|---|
| When filled in | Days later | Same day |
| Split across projects | Rounded to one job | Reflects meetings and files |
| Stage accuracy | Guessed | Current stages offered |
| Chasing | Group emails | Personal prompts, manager view |
| Value to the architect | None | Own week and project fee view |
Do Fridays look like this in your office?
- Someone chases timesheets every week.
- Timesheets show one project per day when the reality was several.
- Staff do not know why the data matters.
- Fee tracking and fee proposals use time data nobody trusts.