Glossary
Timesheet
Also known as: Time log, effort sheet
A timesheet is a record of how an employee's working time was distributed across tasks, projects, or clients over a period. It underpins billing, payroll, and productivity analysis in services businesses. Timesheets can be filled manually or generated from tracked work sessions.
The classic weekly timesheet asks people to recall and enter their hours after the fact. This is quick to set up but notoriously inaccurate, because memory fades, entries get rounded, and the numbers are often reverse-engineered to fit expectations rather than reflect reality.
A more reliable approach derives the timesheet from actual work sessions captured as they happen and tagged to a project. The employee then reviews and confirms rather than reconstructing from scratch, which improves both accuracy and speed of submission.
Whatever the method, a timesheet only has value if it is approved. Manager sign-off turns raw self-reported time into an authoritative record that can support a client invoice or a payroll calculation, and it creates an audit trail for any later dispute.
Outside India
In several jurisdictions the evidential burden sits with the employer, which is what makes the timesheet worth taking seriously. French law expects the employer to produce hours records in a dispute; the CJEU's Deutsche Bank ruling requires EU employers to run an objective, reliable and accessible system for measuring daily working time; the FLSA makes accurate records the employer's obligation, and a missing record is generally read in the employee's favour. A timesheet reconstructed at month end is a weak answer to any of those.
Compliance by jurisdiction →How Workclave handles this
Workclave assembles timesheets from approved, project-linked sessions, so employees confirm real time instead of reconstructing it. The approved timesheet feeds directly into billing and payroll inputs with a full audit trail. project time tracking with approvals.
Related terms
Billable hours are the units of work time that can be charged to a client under a contract or engagement. They exclude internal activities like admin, training, or bench time that the client does not pay for. For services firms, billable hours are the direct link between effort and revenue.
Read definition →Utilisation rate is the percentage of an employee's available working time that is spent on billable client work. It is a core efficiency and profitability metric for IT services firms and agencies. A higher utilisation generally means more of your paid capacity is generating revenue.
Read definition →A manager approval workflow is the defined path by which attendance, leave, or time entries are reviewed and approved by the right manager before they become official. It turns self-reported data into an authoritative record. Approvals create accountability and an audit trail for payroll and billing.
Read definition →Session-based tracking records attendance as discrete work sessions, each with a start, an end, and a project, rather than a single daily clock-in and clock-out. A day can contain several sessions across different projects, breaks, or locations. This produces a far richer and more accurate picture of how time was actually spent.
Read definition →