A timesheet is not a time clock
- The time clock says when each person worked: clock-in, clock-out and breaks.
- The timesheet says what they worked on: so many hours on this project, so many for that customer.
A company can have perfect attendance records and still not know what a project cost.
An example
A project was sold at 120 hours. Halfway through, it has 95 hours logged and half the work done. If hours come in at month end, you find out with 190 hours spent. If they are logged daily, you see it in week two, when you can still talk about scope with the customer.
What makes it reliable
- Time is logged against the specific job, not a general “projects” bucket.
- It is done the same day, from wherever the work happens.
- It also counts the non-billable hours: meetings, travel and rework.
The usual mistake
Filling it in from memory on Friday or at month end. Hours get rounded, the small stuff disappears and the project looks more profitable than it is. The profitability that comes out of that is an estimate, not a fact.