Documents · Glossary

What is a timesheet, and who approves it?

A timesheet is the record of hours a person actually worked in a pay period, usually broken down by day and often by job or client, and submitted for a manager to approve before it is paid or invoiced. It records what happened, unlike a roster, which sets out what was planned.

The timesheet is the document that turns work into money, which is why it attracts more argument per page than almost anything else in a business. Most of that argument comes from unclear rules rather than from dishonesty.

Nuwan Madhusanka · Co-founder

6 min read · Published 12 September 2026

Timesheet, time log and roster
	Timesheet	Time log	Roster
Records	Hours worked in a pay period	Time spent on tasks as it happens	Shifts planned ahead
Written	At the end of the day or week	Continuously	Before the period starts
Approved	By a manager, before payment	Usually not	By whoever publishes it
Used for	Pay, invoicing, cost allocation	Estimating and billing detail	Coverage and availability
Kept as a record	Yes, part of employee records	Often only as long as it is useful	Yes, where rosters are regulated

What has to be captured, and at what grain

The minimum is the date, the start and finish times, the unpaid breaks and the total. That grain matters because a total alone cannot be checked against penalty rates, overtime thresholds or minimum engagement periods, all of which depend on when the hours fell rather than how many there were. Where work is billed to clients or charged to projects, a second dimension is added and each block of time carries a code. The temptation is to keep subdividing until the timesheet captures six minute increments across nine codes, at which point people fill it in from memory on Friday and the precision is imaginary. Pick the coarsest grain that answers the questions the business actually asks, and resist adding a code for something that will be reported on once.

Approval is a control, not a formality

The manager approving a timesheet is attesting that the hours were worked and that the allocation is right. That is a real responsibility, and it falls apart in two familiar ways. Approval by default, where anything not rejected within a few days is treated as approved, removes the control entirely for the weeks it matters. And approval by somebody with no visibility, such as a central administrator approving timesheets for site crews they never see, produces a signature with no knowledge behind it. Approval should sit with whoever actually knows, even when that makes the workflow less tidy, and disputed entries should be resolved before the pay run rather than adjusted afterwards.

Where timesheets and the record keeping rules meet

For employees, hours worked form part of the records an employer has to keep, along with rates, overtime and any agreement varying hours, and those records have to be kept for seven years in a legible and unaltered form. A timesheet is often the primary source for that record, which is why a system that lets an approver quietly edit a submitted timesheet is a problem: the edit is exactly the alteration the rules are concerned with. Keep the submitted version and the approved version, and record who changed what. It costs nothing while everything is fine and it is the whole case when something is questioned.

The recurring failures

Four are almost universal. Timesheets filled in weekly from memory, which systematically overstates long tasks and forgets short ones. Rounding rules that are applied in only one direction. Breaks that are recorded as taken because the template defaults to it, which is a serious problem where a break entitlement is being tested. And a separate spreadsheet kept by a team lead because the official system is too slow, which means the real record and the official one diverge. That last one is usually a sign the tool is wrong rather than the people, and it is worth fixing at the tool rather than by policy reminders.

Building a timesheet as a document

A timesheet is a one page tabular document, so the layout is mostly one wide table with a signature area beneath. Tables are one of the forty five component types, and a weekly sheet with seven rows and six columns prints cleanly, whereas a fortnightly one usually needs two tables rather than one. Documents contain no input fields, so a printed timesheet is written as content with blank cells, and a digital one is generated per period. One signature block party is one signer, so an employee and manager sign off needs two parties with a signing order. No cover is added, since covers are never used under three pages.

Getting people to fill them in on time

Compliance with a timesheet process is mostly a design problem. Submission rates rise when the form is short, when it can be completed on a phone at the end of a shift rather than on a desktop at the end of a week, and when the person filling it in can see why it matters to them. They fall when the codes change every quarter, when the list of projects runs to forty entries with no search, and when nobody notices a missing submission until payroll chases it. Two cheap fixes go a long way. Prefill the routine parts, such as the standard shift pattern, so the person is correcting rather than composing. And make the reminder come from the approving manager rather than from a system address, since a message from a person gets answered and a message from a mailbox does not.

Questions people ask

Do salaried staff need timesheets?

Often yes, for different reasons. Even where pay does not vary with hours, an employer covered by an award may need to show that annualised salary arrangements meet the award, and professional services businesses need the allocation for billing and costing. The design should reflect the purpose, since a timesheet kept for cost allocation does not need minute level start and finish times.

Can a timesheet be approved after the pay run?

It can, but it usually means the adjustment goes into the next period, which confuses year to date figures and annoys employees. A better pattern is a submission cutoff a day or two before the run, with a documented path for late entries. What should not happen is paying an estimate and reconciling later as a matter of routine.

What about time recorded by a clock in system?

Automatic capture removes recall error, which is a real gain, but it records presence rather than work and it needs rules for breaks, travel and shift start rounding. Where biometric data is involved there are privacy obligations to consider, including what is collected, why, and whether an alternative is offered to somebody who objects.

Who owns the timesheet if a contractor submits one?

A contractor's timesheet supports their invoice rather than a payroll record, and the contract should say what evidence of hours is required and by when. Mixing contractor timesheets into an employee payroll workflow tends to blur the distinction between the two relationships, which is worth avoiding for reasons beyond the paperwork.

How long should timesheets be kept?

For employees, treat them as part of the seven year employee record. For client billing, keep them at least as long as the contract's audit or dispute window, which can be longer. Storage is cheap compared with the cost of being unable to substantiate an invoice that is queried eighteen months later.

Should a timesheet show leave?

Showing leave and public holidays on the timesheet helps, because a week with a missing day otherwise looks like an error. Mark them as leave types rather than as worked hours so the totals stay meaningful, and keep the authoritative leave balance in the system that manages it rather than trying to run two records of the same thing.

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Sources

Written and checked by the OneCraft team. Last checked 12 September 2026.