Friday afternoon in the van
It is Friday. The timesheet is due. The engineer sits in the van trying to remember what time they got to Monday's second job, how long Wednesday's callback took, and whether Thursday's travel counts. They write down numbers that look about right. So does everyone else.
In the office, someone collects the sheets, chases the missing ones, types them into payroll and tries to match hours to jobs. The totals rarely line up with the jobs that were booked. Nobody knows which jobs actually made money.
Why timesheets are filled in from memory
The timesheet is a separate task from the work. Nothing about doing the job records the time, so it has to be reconstructed later. And later, for a busy engineer, means the end of the week.
Clocking apps have been tried, but a separate app just for time is another thing to remember. If it does not know about jobs, it only records the start and end of the day, which is no help for job costing.
The fix is to make the time fall out of the work itself, so there is nothing to remember.
There is often a trust issue in the background as well. Staff worry that time tracking means being watched, and managers worry that hours are padded. A system that records job events staff already report, and lets them review and correct their own week, tends to sit better with both sides than a stopwatch app does.
What guesswork timesheets cost
| Issue | What it affects |
|---|---|
| Hours rounded or guessed | Payroll accuracy and overtime disputes |
| Time not linked to jobs | No idea which jobs or customers are profitable |
| Late or missing timesheets | Office time chasing, payroll delays |
| Travel unrecorded | Hidden cost, and pay questions for staff |
| Time-and-materials billing | Undercharging when hours are forgotten |
For businesses that bill by the hour, the undercharging is direct. Every forgotten half hour on site is work done and not billed.
How we capture time properly
- Job status taps. In the engineer's job app, starting travel, arriving on site and finishing a job are single taps that engineers do anyway to update the office. Each one timestamps the job.
- Optional location check. If you want it, arrival and departure can be suggested from the phone's location near the site, which the engineer confirms. We agree with you, and with staff, exactly what is recorded and when.
- Automatic timesheet. The week's timesheet builds itself from these events, split into on-site, travel and breaks, with each block linked to a job.
- Review and submit. On Friday the engineer checks the draft, corrects anything that looks wrong with a reason, and submits. No blank form, no guessing.
- Approval. A manager sees submitted timesheets with anything unusual highlighted, like very long days or missing finish times, and approves them.
- Payroll and costing. Approved hours go to your payroll system or accounting package, such as Xero, Sage or BrightPay, and the job-level time goes to job costing and invoicing.
Location data needs care. We record it only during working time and only for the purposes agreed, and we recommend being open with staff about it from the start.
What Friday looks like afterwards
The engineer opens a timesheet that is already filled in, checks it, and submits. The office gets complete, job-linked hours without chasing anyone. Payroll runs from approved data.
Managers can finally see how long each type of job really takes, which helps with quoting and scheduling, and time-and-materials jobs are billed for the hours actually worked.
Pay queries become easier to settle too. When an engineer asks why their overtime looks short, there is a record of each job's start and finish that they themselves checked and submitted, rather than two people's memories of a week that ended a fortnight ago.
Is this how your timesheets work?
- Field staff complete timesheets at the end of the week
- Hours are rounded or reconstructed from memory
- Time is not linked to individual jobs
- The office chases missing timesheets every week
- You are unsure which jobs or customers are profitable
- Travel time is not properly recorded