Reading the numbers · 2.1
What a time record can support
What a time record can support. What decides it, what it costs, and what usually goes wrong. For a practical comparison point, see Monitask's accountant time tracking software.
Decide what it has to support before deciding what to collectThe order that matters
A time record is not a general-purpose truth. It is evidence for specific claims, and each claim needs different properties from the record.
Organisations collect first and discover afterwards that the record cannot answer the question they actually had, usually because it lacks attribution, contemporaneity or a trail of corrections. A useful outside reference is Google Workspace.
What each claim requires
| The claim | What the record must have |
|---|---|
| This invoice is correct | Attribution to client and task, a description, and entries the person made themselves |
| This payroll run is correct | Contemporaneous entry, identification of the person, visible corrections |
| This proportion was capitalised | Categories agreed with finance in advance, applied consistently |
| This client is unprofitable | Complete attribution, including everybody who touched the work |
| We need another person | A trend over months, not a busy fortnight |
| We complied | Records that cannot be altered silently, retained for the required period |
The last row is the one systems fail. A record an administrator can change without a trace supports nothing that anybody might later dispute.
Contemporaneity is the property nobody buys for
Auditors, clients and courts all treat a record made at the time differently from one assembled later. It is also the property most easily lost, because a system that permits bulk entry for last month permits exactly that.
Which is an argument for making same-day entry easy rather than for prohibiting late entry. Prohibition produces blank weeks; ease produces records that are contemporaneous because that was the convenient route.
Corrections are evidence, not embarrassment
A record showing that somebody corrected an entry, when, and what it was before, is stronger than one that has never been touched. It demonstrates that people read their own records.
Systems that overwrite silently look tidier and are worth less. This matters most at exactly the moment the record is challenged, which is the moment it was collected for.
Everyone sees their own entries and their own corrections.
Corrections are recorded with who made them and when, including corrections made by an administrator.
Granularity
More detail is not more useful. It is more expensive at every entry, and beyond a point it degrades accuracy because people estimate rather than record.
Collect at the level the finest claim needs and no finer. If the finest claim is an invoice line, collect to the invoice line. Nobody has ever needed a six-minute breakdown for a monthly capacity decision.
What to do with this
Write down the claims your record must support, in one list, before configuring anything. Then check each against the middle column of the table above.
Most organisations find one claim they cannot currently support and one they are collecting for and never make.
Immutability, and what it actually means
Not that nothing can change. That nothing changes without a trace. An entry corrected three times with all three visible is stronger evidence than one that has never moved, because the history demonstrates the record is maintained.
Ask any supplier whether an administrator can alter an entry and whether the alteration is logged. It is one sentence and it decides whether the record is worth anything in a dispute.
Retention against the claim
Each claim has a period over which the record must survive: a payroll audit reaches back years, an invoice dispute months, a capacity decision weeks.
Set retention against the longest of those rather than against storage cost, and delete after it, because a record kept beyond its purpose is an obligation rather than an asset.
The claim nobody writes down
That somebody worked a full week. It is the claim employees most often need to make, it is supported by exactly the same record, and it is almost never listed among the purposes when a system is introduced.
Listing it changes how the whole thing is received.
Descriptions on entries
Required for billing and a cost everywhere else. Where a client will read the line, the description is part of the invoice and deserves the seconds. Where nobody will, it is a field people fill with a word to get past it.
Require it on billable entries and nowhere else. The improvement in what gets written is immediate.
Who the record belongs to
A question worth settling explicitly. The organisation holds it and it is also personal data about the person who made it, with whatever rights that carries where they are.
Systems that treat it as purely the employer's asset generate the awkward conversation later, and the entry on time records as personal data covers what that involves.
Where to start
Write the list of claims. It takes twenty minutes with the people who consume the output, and everything else in this part depends on having it.
The claim that changes how people feel about the system
Telling a team, at the start, that one of the purposes is to evidence that their week was full does more for adoption than any feature. It is true, it is a use the record genuinely supports, and it is almost never mentioned because it does not sound like a management benefit.
A short checklist
Before configuring: the claims written down. During: entry cheap enough to be contemporaneous. Afterwards: corrections visible, retention set against the longest claim, and somebody who can explain the whole arrangement without reading a document.
Also in reading the numbers
Why timesheets are left blank
A timesheet asks somebody to reconstruct a fragmented day hours later. The reconstruction is a guess and everybody knows it.
Choosing the categories
The list somebody picks in week one governs everything the record can later answer.
Reminders, nudges and escalation
Reminders, nudges and escalation. What decides it, what it costs, and what usually goes wrong.
What a manager should do with it
What a manager should do with it. What decides it, what it costs, and what usually goes wrong.