Timesheets Overview

Modified on Tue, 27 Aug at 12:01 PM

Capturing timesheets accurately and in a timely manner is fundamental to tracking labour progress and costs on projects correctly. WorkGuru manages timesheets through its projects, where you can track the actual time vs forecast time progress on both individual tasks and the overall project. 


A key concept that must be understood is that there is a fundamental difference between payroll timesheets and project timesheets, with WorkGuru being the latter. Payroll timesheets capture the overall duration that a staff member works so they can be remunerated correctly. Project timesheets capture the individual time taken on individual project tasks. This means for one payroll timesheet, they may be multiple project timesheets for the same period. To capture project timesheets you can't just start a timesheet when staff arrive at work and finish it when they leave, we need to tell WorkGuru what where the individual tasks worked on within that work day. Project timesheets by their nature are much more complex to capture than payroll timesheets.


The cost attributed to the project from timesheets is dependent on the individual rate of which user submitted it. This provides interesting reporting on the labour forecast vs actual if the staff allocation is different than planned. For example, experienced staff's hourly rates are more expensive but usually can do tasks quicker, so if senior staff are completing tasks planned to be allocated to staff on a lower rate, the time difference may not cause a blow-out in profitability.


WorkGuru provides two methods of timesheet entry: Daily and Weekly. The two methods suits specific timesheet capture workflows better and are not able to be used concurrently:

  • Daily - Daily timesheets capture actual start and finish times for a timesheet. For example: 08:00 to 17:00 (8am to 5pm). This allows you to either directly enter exact times or use a timer, such as the kiosk, to easily capture the accurate duration between multiple project tasks completed during the day.
  • Weekly - Weekly timesheets capture the total duration of a timesheet. This is a simpler way of capturing time on projects and suit workflows where staff are working on the same project tasks over a week. It is an accuracy vs convenience trade-off. Much faster to enter time, but losing the detail of the start/finish times. Due to this, timers such as the kiosk, are not available for this timesheet method.

Once the timesheet method that best suits your workflow is selected, WorkGuru provides a large number of options to allow your staff to enter timesheets as accurately and quickly as possible. The best option to use is dependent on how staff interact with WorkGuru, via a web browser or externally via the Kiosk or Mobile applications. Ideally, by using the Kiosk, you can submit timesheets to a project in real time.


Daily method timesheet entry options:

  • Website
    • User dashboard
    • WorkGuru web timer
    • Project dashboard page
    • Project details page
  • Kiosk
  • iOS mobile application
  • Android mobile application

Weekly method timesheet entry options:

  • User dashboard

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