How to Have a Timesheet for Free

Timesheet is NOT Easy

If you have reached this article, you must already be aware that timesheets are not easy to handle, particularly when it comes to determining staff payment based on them. Ensuring accurate payment requires including a wealth of information in the timesheet, such as job type, job duration, employee name, award details, income type, break hours, entitlements, geographical locations, and more. A comprehensive timesheet can contain a significant amount of information, making it a complex task to manage.

Since you are reading this article, it's clear that you understand the challenges associated with handling timesheets. Now, let's explore the available options to help you address these difficulties. Here are four methods you can consider:

1. Timesheet Apps

2. Excel or Shared Spreadsheet such as Google Sheets

3. Time recording machine (time puncher with key or fingerprint, etc.)

4. Timesheet on Online Database

Consider the specific needs and constraints of your organization when choosing a method. Each option has its own advantages and considerations, so weigh them carefully to find the best fit for your requirements.

Timesheet Apps

There are so many different types available our there and they come full of features such as mobile App, Geo-fencing with GPS tracking, integration with your accounting software etc. Check here to see the list of Apps integrate with Xero - there are more than 50 of them! Each accounting software has some Apps which can integrate. You can find the ones most suitable for your industry as well as accounting system, and it will be relatively easy to set up too.

The problem with these apps is that they are usually expensive, especially if you have many staff members working short shifts. For instance, if you have 15 employees working a few hours a week instead of 2 employees working full time, the cost can become significant since most timesheet apps charge per staff member. Additionally, I want to caution you about the fancy features like break hours tracking and GPS tracking, as they can have their drawbacks. In my experience, GPS can be unreliable and may prevent people from properly signing in. Moreover, employees may forget to press a button at the end of their lunch break, leading to numerous calls to adjust timesheet hours.

Excel and Google Sheet

If you are working closely with your staff (thus not requiring verification of their whereabouts during their claimed work hours), using spreadsheets can still be an acceptable choice.

Everyone is familiar with how to use them, and they are free to use. However, it's important to note that spreadsheets may not be the optimal choice due to certain features that can affect the accuracy of the timesheet.

One of the challenges of handling timesheets is the variability in formats. For instance, the time 9:30 PM can be expressed in different ways, such as 21:30, 9:30 PM, or 9.5. Similarly, the duration of time can be represented in various formats, such as 7.5, 7 hours 30 minutes, or 7:30. The problem with using this method is that Excel and Google Sheets can sometimes alter the format without notifying users, making it difficult to receive all timesheets in a consistent format. Ultimately, this can impact the accuracy of payment calculations.

Time Recording Machine

Similar to the good-old time-punching machine, this method can be a suitable choice if your staff physically come to your premises to work. It accurately records time and can potentially integrate with your accounting system. However, the main drawback is the initial cost of purchasing the machine. Additionally, this method is not applicable if your workers are not present at your premises, making it less optimal, especially now when many of us are working from home or shared offices.

Online Database

Before writing this, I would like to mention that I am not affiliated with any of the products that I am mentioning on this page. This article is written by MK Books based on our experience using these products and we are not paid to advertise any of them.

Although this may not be applicable to certain industries and businesses, our best choice for handling timesheet is an online database such as Airtable. I am explaining here why and how to set it up.

Easy to use
No change of format without notice
Handling time difference accurately (this is handy when Australia is divided into different time zones)
There is a mobile app (people can use this on their mobile phone for an easy sign in/out)
Free to use indefinitely (there are some limitations, so that you need to know what the limitations are before using it)
Automations and formulas can be used to ease your job
Reliable company with solid support system

These are the reasons why we think that the Airtable is the best choice. We have been using it for our selves for years and we are still in love with it. Please let me explain what kind of things you can do with their Free account.

What is Free?

Airtable comes with a Workspace where you can place unlimited number of Bases with your free account. The base is something like a database in which you can place some tables. Each table looks like a spreadsheet but can be viewed in several formats such as table format, calendar format, form view etc. Each view can then be published for sharing - so that unlimited number of people can access it. Base and Base can also be connected with 'Syncing'. Here is the example of limitations that we have with their free acccount:

Each base can have up to 1200 records (combining all records on all tables)
Each workspace can have up to 5 users (4 other than yourself can use it for free)
Each base can have only 1 extension
Each base can have only 1 automation
Calendar view can have only 1 date (so that you cannot show events extending to multiple days/weeks on the calendar)
Up to only 1 table can be synced to other bases and you need to manually sync it.

In other words, you can have unlimited number of bases, users and workspaces with the free account which ultimately means that you can have unlimited number of records stored - do you get what I mean? For example, do you think you have to give up using Airtable because you have more than 4 staff working for you? No, that's not the case because you can have an unlimited number of Workspaces. Divide your staff into categories such as 'Production' and 'Customer Care' and create one workspace for each category. Then, all your staff can access it. Likewise, create many bases and connect them with syncing if you want to use multiple extensions. You can do this because there is no limitation with the number of bases that you can have in one workspace.

Create an Employee Table

Create a timesheet base which contains an employee table. The table should contain all the employee's information which is required to be on their timesheet. The identifier of an employee such as ID or name is required. Eail address may be required too if you are sending them an email for missing timesheet as an example. However, you want to keep this table nice and small, because most of the employee's info should be centrally stored in your accounting system. It's better to reduce the tables that you need to update.

Tip! You can make your employee to fill in this table by creating a Form view. When the form view is created, you can share it to get a published URL. You can provide the URL to your new employee. Your employee can then fill in the form and you receive the data in your table.

2. Create a Timesheet Table

You need to create a Timesheet table which is linked to the Employee table. This will make it possible to use all the data in the employee's table to look up data in Employee's table easily. For example, employee's email address is added automatically when their name is selected from a list. You then need to place the below fields in the timesheet table at minimum:

Check In
Check Out
Last Modified By (Auto filled field)
Employee (Linked to your Employee table)
Current Time (Formula field with Now())
Status

You may place many other fields such as Comments and Auto ID fields to ease your process.

3. Create a Form View

The timesheet can be filled in many different ways, but I just believe that this is the most fancy/efficient way.

Firstly, create a Form view ONLY with the Employee field. You then need to share this view, to get the published URL. This form becomes a Check in Form for all of your staff. The URL can be given to your staff and they can save it on their preferred device such as their mobile.

All they need to do is to open this form and press 'Add'. They then need to select their own name and press 'Submit'.

This will create a record in your Timesheet table. Automation is set to update the 'Start Time' field by using the date and time in 'Current Time' field. Therefore, the Start Time field is filled in automatically when the record is added. Your staff cannot lie about exactly what time they checked in.

4. Create a Interface for Checking Out

Checkout is slightly a difficult concept because your staff need to modify the existing records. You may want to keep their timesheet personal, so that they should not really be logged into Airtable to view all the data in the base. To tackle this, you need to create an Interface named with the employee's identification.

On the Interface, add a filter, so that the employee can see ONLY the record which belong to the person. Then, you need to 'Share' the interface. Provide the shared URL for the interface to your staff and tell them to bookmark it on their browser. Thanks to Airtable, non-account holders can have access to and edit the data freely in this way.

When your staff finish their day at work, they need to open the interface, change the status to 'I am Done' and that is all. Interface data could be filtered so that only the data with no End Time can be shown. Otherwise, they can search through their historical timesheet record and find the one for today and then modify. 'End Time' field is the 'Last Modified Time' field triggered by the 'Status' change.

It may be a good idea to add a comment field here, so that the staff can add comments freely. They can say things like 'I forgot to Sign out yesterday and the actual time completed my work was 18:30'.

Now, do you remember that you placed a 'Last Modified By'? Check if the Last Modified By and Employee field match. This is to check if someone is doing 'Can you sign in for me?' just in case. If there is a dispute, you can check through revision history which is kept for up to 14 days for the free account.

When you verified and cleaned the data, you can export the data in a format you like and it's ready to be added to the accounting system for the payroll.

If you want to create the same timesheet template across multiple workspaces, you can easily duplicate the existing template and move the duplicated version to the new workspace. By setting up a sync with the Employee table, you can have a single Employee table synced to multiple workspaces. In each workspace, you can configure an automation to send email reminders to employees when a certain number of records have not been acquired by a specific date. In addition to that, you have the option to utilize a page designer extension to generate pay slips.

Did you like it??? Please contact us if you require a help in setting this up for your organization. We are more than happy to help you.

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