What the hours are for
Payroll, billing, grant claims, capitalisation. Four destinations, four standards, one approval.
Payroll: the Destination That Cannot Wait
What payroll needs from a timesheet, what it does not need, and the elements that become legal obligations rather than preferences.
Billing a Client From Recorded Time
The engagement terms set a standard the recording process usually does not know about. Where the two disagree, the firm absorbs the difference.
Claiming Staff Time From a Funder
The highest standard applied to any timesheet and the one most organisations discover at audit. What funders test and what fails.
Hours on the Balance Sheet
Development time capitalised, and relief claimed on qualifying work, both rest on a split between two kinds of hour that nobody records at the time.
Pricing Next Year From Last Year's Hours
Historical time is the best estimating data most organisations have and it is biased in known directions. Correcting for the bias is the whole skill.
Hours as Evidence of Compliance
Rest breaks, maximum hours, night work and shift spacing are tested against records. A system designed for cost allocation usually cannot answer.
Capacity and the Appearance of Slack
Resourcing decisions made from recorded hours are made from a number that understates in exactly the situations where the decision matters most.
The Uses to Refuse
Requests for timesheet data that the data cannot support. Refusing them protects the figures everywhere else, and refusing early is far easier.