For more details about the benefits of enterprise timesheet management as a part of Project Workforce Management, see Rise of the Project Workforce.
Enterprise timesheet management is the centralization and streamlining of all time data processing for an entire organization. It covers both project and non-project work, and paid and unpaid leave. Despite the many benefits of enterprise timesheet management—including reduction of compliance costs and administrative overhead, improved project visibility, and accelerated billing—automation of the timesheet management cycle must be approached carefully to ensure widespread adoption across the organization.
Enterprise timesheet management addresses the requirements of labor law compliance, managing leave time accrual, scheduling shift work, tracking project time as well as non-project time, streamlining billing, and providing analytics. Through the use of differentiated time, also known as activity-based costing, time is recorded down to the task level, which provides the detail necessary to meet these requirements.
The main benefits of treating time and attendance as an integral part of Project Workforce Management are to provide a single system to track employee availability, skills, work time, pay, project and non-project work, leave, expenses, billing, and other related processes; it also centralizes reporting and and analysis across all work groups. Other measurable benefits include reduced payroll processing time, reduced misappropriation, detection of absenteeism and erroneous entries, and reduced timesheet review time. For project-based organizations, enterprise time management has the added benefits associated with project planning and project status reporting.
Managing time data is generally described by a cycle that describes how time is tracked, reported, approved, and processed:
- Employees, consultants, and field workers enter time into the system.
- The timesheet is sent to the appropriate person(s) for review.
- Once approved, the timesheet is forwarded to payroll/accounting for processing.
- Any billable work is reported to the billing manager for invoicing.
- Project plans and schedules are updated to reflect the actual work done; project managers can measure earned value and actual project performance.
- Detailed or summary cost is sent to accounting for financial reporting.
Only through an integrated, enterprise-wide system—integrated with workforce planning, project planning, payroll, billing, accounting, and CRM—is the entire enterprise timesheet management cycle possible. Furthermore, a configurable enterprise-wide system is necessary to accommodate the various timesheet approval processes and workflows required in today’s workforce. These workflows may be simple or complex, and may include multiple review cycles, line-item approvals, and leave requests.
