Common Timesheet Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
Published: 05/08/2024
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Today’s article will raise your awareness about the timesheet mistakes you might be making. Despite being common, they are very harmful. Especially because they jeopardise the accuracy of your reports.
Timesheets are simple. The employee logs their time, the employer calculates what they are owed for their time. Or what they need to bill the client for the employee’s time. Simple, right? Unfortunately, only in theory. When it comes to practice, many nuances arise from both filling up and processing the timesheets. Even something as simple as ensuring they are submitted on time can become a massive roadblock. Let alone more complicated matters such as differentiating rates, expenses incurred and many more.
What we are trying to say is that 1001 things can go wrong when dealing with timesheets. In today’s article, we will be reviewing some of the most common timesheet mistakes, how they affect your business and how to prevent them from happening. But before that, let’s add some clarity on why it matters.
There are multiple aspects that make timesheet accuracy important. First of all, it’s the basis of billing your clients and compensating your workers correctly. Secondly, it’s an indicator of your team’s general performance, where the gaps may be and where you excel. Finally, it’s a tool that allows you to better your project management moving forward.
In other words, whether your time tracking efforts bring you success or not heavily relies on timesheet accuracy. Alternatively, inaccurate timesheets will cause heaps of issues. And those can get very costly.
Our last statement demands some elaboration. In fact, it is so important that we dedicate an entire section to discussing the impact some of the common timesheet mistakes might have on your business. From affecting your financial standing to landing you into hot waters legally, these threats should not be underestimated.
The biggest and the most serious effect of errors is that they bring along inaccurate data. With everything being a numbers game, the metrics you collect are key in decision-making. So, if they are inaccurate, the actions you take using them as a foundation aren’t likely to be the most effective either. In the best scenario, nothing will change. In the worst, you will be losing not just opportunities but the money and the resources. It isn’t easy to pinpoint where exactly things went wrong either. Most of the time data inaccuracies happen due to simple human errors such as typos. And, very often, by the time the mistake has been spotted, it dates very far back, making everything that came after wrong.
Data inaccuracies affect not just decision-making but also a plethora of operations both within and outside the business. For example, when speaking of timesheets specifically, it can affect the pay of your employees or what you charge your clients. There is no win here. If you make a mistake in your favour, you will be shorting the other party. If you make a mistake in their favour, you will be losing money. Either way, when the time to correct the error comes, you will be needing to bring that up with them. Financial issues are usually particularly sensitive and will undoubtedly paint you in a bad light. This leads us to our next section.
While it’s human to make mistakes, there are instances when a single error can ruin the whole relationship. In business, it is usually related to either money, safety or legal compliance. In terms of timesheets, the key threat stems from potential billing errors. Once it occurs, the other party will take a very long time to begin trusting you again, meaning they will be burdening themselves with double-checking and possibly questioning your future communications.
Naturally, this will be frustrating for everyone involved. And there is a chance that despite this being an odd one-off, the trust will never be restored. Even if you’ve had years of flawless business interactions, a single error can put all that into question of validity, breeding further mistrust and dissatisfaction with one another. And just like that, a single mistyped digit can ruin long-term partnerships or drive away the most loyal employees. While this does not mean they doubt your professionalism on a personal level, they are now alarmed this may happen again. Can you truly afford it? If not, prevention is your best bet.
We don’t mean to be fearmongering, and thus we came prepared with some actionable solutions. While there is little to do post-fact than to track back and correct the mistakes, there are ways of preventing them from happening in the first place.
There is no better prevention of human error than to take the human out of the process. Digitising your time tracking efforts and opting for digital timesheets is your best solution to avoiding mistakes. For example, digital timesheets will handle billing calculations for you, even with differentiating rates in place. This means you won’t be at the risk of getting things mixed up, leading to an error. Not to mention, the operation will take mere minutes as opposed to you spending hours trying to work it out manually.
There are plenty of automation options when it comes to digitising your approach to timesheets. Different solutions will offer different options, however. Some we have in store for Timesheet Portal users include automated reminders to submit/approve timesheets, reporting, data transfer to integrated solutions and many more. Ultimately, digital timesheets don’t just mean a change of format. It stands for accessibility when filling them up and simplicity when processing them. In other words - everyone wins.
Let’s step away from the tools you utilise and focus on the people you work with instead. While we wholeheartedly agree and strongly recommend digitising time tracking to avoid common timesheet mistakes, innovation is scary to many people. Your team might not be eager to swap your previous practice to the new one. If that’s the case, even with the new measures in place, they won’t be utilising the new tools correctly. And that will leave you with more incorrect data.
To get your team on the same page as you, you need to include them in the decision-making process. Namely, be transparent on why the current approach isn’t the best and how it affects their day-to-day responsibilities. Communicating the flaws of the status quo and its influence on them as workers, as opposed to the overall business, will truly highlight the benefits of the change. As loyal as your team may be to the organisation, ultimately everyone cares what good will something bring to them individually.
It’s very rare for things to work out perfectly on the first try. Even if you can honestly say you’ve done everything to your best effort and things still went wrong - don’t be disheartened. This may not be as bad as you think.
While this whole article is dedicated to avoiding mistakes, it’s also important to acknowledge they happen regardless. And as long as you can learn from them, they bring inconvenience but are not inheritedly negative. Understanding where the process went wrong is the first step towards fixing it. So, instead of beating yourself down when things don’t go as intended, take a deep dive into why they didn’t.
If you’re only taking your first steps towards digitising the time tracking process, it’s perfectly normal you won’t get everything right from the get-go. You will learn as you go, through trial-and-error, optimisation and further observation. Alternatively, you can speak to your software provider to see if they can aid you in setup and team training. At Timesheet Portal, we pay extra attention to implementation. Understanding our client’s unique needs, we set the platform up in a way that serves to aid their goals. We also make sure they know how to navigate the tool moving forward, without needing our help.
Although simple in theory, time tracking is easy to get wrong. Timesheet mistakes are very common, from simple typos to miscalculations when it comes to differentiating rates. The impact of those errors is huge too. They provide you with inaccurate data, which in turn leads to mistakes in decision-making. Additionally, it can bring on mistakes in client billing and employee compensation. Since financial matters are particularly sensitive, this could deal unrepairable damage to your relationships with the other party.
The best solution to these issues is prevention. And there is no better prevention of human error than minimising human involvement. Namely, replacing repetitive and methodical processes such as timesheet calculations with digitised solutions, automating them. Before that, however, you need to have your team on the same page to ensure the new tools are used properly. However, even if you take all the right steps, mistakes will still happen. Don’t be dismayed. Use them as an opportunity to better your approach even further.
Tired of making common timesheet mistakes? Let’s fix your process.