Timesheet chasing
Hardly anyone is hired to chase timesheets, yet somebody spends the last days of every month doing it, because invoices and payroll wait on the hours. This role does the reminding, queries entries that cannot be billed as written and reports whose timesheet is still missing. Your managers approve the time, and nobody walks the floor for the last timesheet.
The role in brief
Finds each missing or late timesheet, reminds its owner, queries entries that break your rules and reports what is still missing before the cut-off.
The timesheet system or portal your people or temps submit hours in, and your team chat or mailbox.
The practice manager, finance manager or payroll lead. Repeat late submitters, hours that look wrong and anything that affects someone's pay go to them.
Timesheets in by the cut-off, days to a complete set, and entries sent back for correction.
Who ends up chasing the hours
It falls to a practice manager, a studio manager or whoever raises the invoices. At the end of the week or the month they look through the time system for gaps, send the same message round again, then walk the floor. In a recruitment agency a payroll administrator does it every week against a fixed cut-off, chasing the temps, and the consultants for their clients' approvals.
Invoices that wait on one person
Time-charged work cannot be invoiced until the hours are in, and a fixed fee cannot be checked against the time it has used. One missing timesheet on a job holds its invoice back, so the month's billing goes out in pieces and the cash follows late.
Hours written from memory
A timesheet filled in three weeks late is a guess. Hours drift to the wrong job or the wrong stage, short tasks are never recorded, and the report that tells a director whether a job made money is built on figures nobody would defend.
A payroll cut-off that does not move
Anyone paid weekly from a timesheet needs it in and approved before payroll runs, and an agency supplying temps has the sharpest case: in Great Britain the Conduct Regulations do not let it withhold a temp's pay because the client has not signed, though it may check by other means that the hours were worked.
How a period's timesheets get closed
Your people record their own hours and a manager approves them; the agent never writes or changes an entry. It reminds, checks and reports, to the cut-off dates and rules you set at the start.
Cut-off dates
Holds the calendar you set, with the day each period closes and the day the invoice run or payroll starts. Notes who is on leave and should not be chased.
Nothing.
Reminders
Looks in the time system for missing or part-filled timesheets and reminds each person in Teams or by email, at the intervals you choose, until theirs is in.
Chasing a client's manager for an approval, unless you have approved the wording. Any phone call.
Checks
Reads what was submitted against your rules, such as hours on a closed job, a missing stage code or a day over your limit. Sends each query to its owner.
Every correction. The agent never enters or changes hours; the person who did the work does.
Hand-over
Tells the approving manager the set is complete, and gives finance or payroll a list of what is still missing, who owns it and how long it has been outstanding.
Approval of the hours, and every decision about pay or about billing without a timesheet.
Timesheets in by the cut-off
The share of timesheets submitted by the cut-off you set, counted each period from the time system. Reviewed with you each month.
Days to a complete set
Counted from the day the period closes to the day the last timesheet for that period is submitted.
Entries sent back for correction
How many submitted entries broke one of your rules and were returned to their owner, shown by rule and by team.
Architects
Hours booked to each project and RIBA stage in CMap or Rapport3, complete before the practice manager raises the stage invoices.
Marketing, creative and digital agencies
Time logged against each client's retainer, for example in Harvest, complete before the monthly client reports and invoices are prepared.
Recruitment
Temps' weekly timesheets, and the client approvals behind them, chased before the payroll cut-off. How unapproved hours are verified stays with payroll.
Questions owners ask
Our time system already sends reminders. What does this add?
A built-in reminder goes to everyone and stops there. This role skips people on leave, keeps asking only those whose timesheet is missing, checks what was submitted against your rules, and tells whoever runs the invoices or payroll exactly what is outstanding and who owns it.
Will it fill in a timesheet for someone who forgets?
No. A timesheet is a record of what a person did, so that person enters it. The agent reminds, queries and reports. It never writes or changes an entry, and it never approves one. Approval stays with the manager you name.
Can it chase our clients to approve temps' timesheets?
By email, in wording you have approved. A phone call stays with your team. If an approval has not arrived before payroll, a person decides how the hours are verified.
How will our staff take being chased by an AI?
Every reminder says it comes from an AI assistant and is as short as the one your manager sends now. It stops once the timesheet is in. Someone who is behind for a good reason is passed to their manager, who decides what to say.