Recording Time Spent on a Project or Job

Capturing the time worked on a project or job can capture essential data for billing and payroll systems. This data is also valuable when analysing processes to identify where efficiencies can be made.

In concept recording the time worked against a job is very simple, you just need to identify the job or project and record the hours worked (and when the work was done).

For an individual, it really does not need to be more complex than that. You know when you are going to invoice work, so know when you need to have totaled the relevant hours. Add in a second person and the process immediately becomes more complex. The other person needs to and you need to check that they have submitted their hours before you can issue an invoice. Involving additional people creates the need for additional processes to manage time collection.

To be able to co-ordinate between a number of people a common understanding must be achieved. In the case of time recording this common understanding will be achieved by defining when billing / payment periods are, what information is required, who checks for errors, how time is captured etc.

For timesheets completed buy a worker, a manager or supervisor will manually (or with some level of automation) scrutinise the submission and approve it for further processing. They may also reject it, returning it to the employee to amend.

Timesheets which are submitted by supervisors or managers on behalf of staff can be reviewed by a manager or administrator. Again, the timesheet may be sent back for corrections.

When using a T&A system employees will record the hours, they work by recording clock events. These events are captured using dedicated hardware terminals or using virtual terminals on computers or mobile devices. This means that workers may interact with the terminal multiple times during the day to mark the start and end of a particular piece of work.

Timesheets are submitted on an electronic form the worker completes. Workers can complete the form as they go or may choose to complete the form only at the end of the period.

Is it only Time that Matters?

To correctly charge a client it may be necessary to know both the amount of time a piece of work has taken and any other costs. Other costs could include raw materials, travel expenses or third-party contractor costs. In most ways the recording of expenses and times have identical considerations.

Whilst time recording strictly speaking only relates to worked hours it is important to not treat it as an isolated activity. Most of the components which are required to record hours worked are also required elsewhere. For example, the definition of a project can also be used to collect the time worked on a project as well as the expenses incurred by the project. Time taken on jobs can be used to establish likely lead times for components. Issues with work items can be tracked back to the relevant team members to allow training to be targeted and so on.

To record time requires many components which are shared by other processes within an organisation. Considering how these concepts can be shared to create joined up system can create efficiency and allow for data analytics.

Defining a Project or Job

This can be very simple for a small one-off piece of work or quite complex where a project with multiple phases and teams are involved.

The direction of the accounting required is a relevant factor, if the time is being recorded only to internal cost centres, then there is no purpose in explicitly recording this, it can be derived through a person’s assignment to a cost centre instead (through a job record or team membership for example).

For external billing there must be some way of linking the time recorded to the customer. This can be by using some reference (so the person completing a timesheet does not need to know who the customer is) or be an explicit element within the timesheet.

A project or job may be divided into a series of steps / sub projects and those steps may be further subdivided. Within a project for an external client high level steps may well relate to phased payments defined by a contract. It is important to consider that there may be a direct relationship between the subdivisions of projects and accounting periods. These impacts cut off times for the submission of times and may mean that a late submission cannot be charged.

When defining a project and its steps it is important to record the time periods which will apply. With sub projects and subsequent divisions similar time periods should be assigned. In part this will help define the flow of the project from completion to end through ordered phases such as planning, design and implementation. It will also help communicate the order of work and deadlines. Hiding phases of a project where they are not relevant to a worker can also be beneficial as a technique to reduce data entry errors on timesheets.

For an internal job which is a repeated process or task time recording can relate more to monitoring efficiency than specific cost assignment. For these purposes the definition of the job and how many steps it might be broken down into will depend on the level of granularity that is of interest. It may be that there is an interest in how long the assembly of parts is taken and how to improve this; once this is understood there is no subsequent purpose in its continual monitoring. In this way different areas of interest within a job may be assigned greater importance at different times, to identify and remedy inefficiencies.

In both project and job time management there will likely be a need to digest these into smaller sub divisions for monitoring. These subdivisions are likely to have a time scope which is applicable to them. Different subdivisions may only be relevant to certain workers. The purpose of monitoring the subdivisions may be driven by external factors such as client contracts. The cost which is ultimately monitored may be passed on to an external client or may be used internally to enhance efficiency or working practices. To feed into an accounting system each sub division may have an associated accounting code.

Accounting Periods

There most familiar accounting period is a financial year. If it were human nature to keep things simple, all other accounting periods used in an organisation will be derived from this. In reality the UK runs the tax year between April and March (with the personal tax year running to different dates); a business can define its own accounting year; a global business may use the fiscal year (1st October to 30th September) and so on. Wages are usually paid monthly or (multiples of) weekly; except even here there can be some complexity where overtime payments are offset.

When collecting work time, it is important to understand how an organisation will (and could) make use of this data.

If time is collected to calculate wages, then the times must be collected before the wages can be paid. If pay periods are calendar months and timesheets are weekly then dates will not match up. This means that payroll processing cannot run rhythmically to the month end, it must accommodate the fluctuations in where in the week the end of the month falls.

If time is collected to bill customers, then billing cycles must be considered. Monthly timesheets and weekly billing cycles could introduce a noticeable delay in invoicing clients for work that has been completed. In a similar way invoices can not be raised on completion of a project if the worked time won’t be known for another month.

Practical limitations also need to be considered. An employee completing a weekly timesheet will only be able to submit it after the week has been completed. If they submit the timesheet and there is a mistake in it which needs correcting, or they go on holiday or sick leave, then there may be a significant delay in receiving times.

Billing and wage cycles must be accounted for with a time recording system. The submission of a timesheet will lag the period it corresponds to, an error will delay it further and an absence may mean it is never submitted. An upfront and clear policy on how these issues is resolved is a key component of any time recording system. A simple approach is to define a cut off date for a period; after which any submissions will be processed in the next period. For wages some care should be taken with any absolute approach to guard against paying a worker nothing on the basis of a technicality on the submission of a timesheet.

What to Capture

The minimum information required will vary depending on the purpose of the time monitoring. At least the number of hours worked and the date worked should be captured (assuming a worker works on one project a day).

More completely the date, the worker, the number of hours and the project (and sub project) should be captured. A worker may need to make multiple submissions per date if they have worked across multiple projects or jobs.

Workers are normally entitled to take breaks during the day. The time these takes will be paid or unpaid. It is important to consider how this time will be handled. Asking a worker to enter their regular breaks every day represents a tedious and repetitive task but there may be good reason for doing this (to monitor compliance with health and safety policies for example). This problem is common to both timesheet forms and T&A systems although the latter will be able to automatically insert the entries or highlight none compliance.

As not all the time in a day may be paid hours it can be useful for an electronic form to automatically calculate the difference between two clock times. The worker needs then only note the start and end of their working time with the form calculating the difference. This can also be unhelpful in some circumstances, for example where the information is used to bill clients and time us charge in units of whole or half days. This can be accounted for by allowing the worker to enter the data using these units; or a system can round the number entered up or down for the purposes of billing. In this case the data can be used both the pay the worker and generate billing information.

Capturing time worked will also identify where staff work over or under their contractual hours. In turn different rates of pay or charges may be applicable. An electronic timesheet may be able to calculate the difference automatically. Alternatively, the time sheet may allow time to be recorded against a particular category of overtime, in a billing system a similar approach might be taken to capture the varying rates which may be applied in different circumstances, such as waiting time.

More Information

If you would like to know more about how the People Inc. system can help record the time spent on projects or jobs, please contact us on 01908 265111, or click the button below to request a call-back.

Discover more about these topics

• Time & Attendance
• Timesheets
• Overtime
• Pay Category
• Analysis
• Employee Self Service

Related Features

There are a number of features included with the People Inc. system that are designed to manage time reporting and attendance. Some examples are provided below:

Staff Timesheets

Collect and process weekly or monthly employee timesheets using the People Inc. system..

Departmental Timesheets

Allow managers to collect and report the working hours of the staff they manage.

Variable Hours

Managing staff who work variable hours, including those on zero-hours contracts.

External Resources

The following links provide additional information about resource planning and employee attendance. The links are to pages on websites over which we have no control. This information is provided for reference only.

• Working Hours (www.acas.org.uk) - External Link.

• Time & Attendance (www.wikipedia.org) - External Link.