“No one likes to fill out time sheets,” said Curt Finch, CEO of time management software firm, Journyx and author of the book All Your Money Won't Another Minute Buy: Valuing Time as a Business Resource. “But they are extremely valuable in helping you understand the cost of doing business on a per project or per customer basis, and fixing projects that are broken.”

So, what’s the problem? Roy Rodgers a field programmable gate array engineer for The Dini Group echoes the problems voiced by many: “Even though there are eight hours in the day, we may have only actually spent six hours on the project, but we have to account for eight hours on the time sheet.”

Then there is a constant stream of phone calls, emails, visits from bosses or coworkers which are part of the daily routine and which diminish the accuracy of reporting.

Getting Employees On Board

“IT shops and R&D settings are where there is the most value for time data, but also where people feel the least need to be compliant,” said Finch. “The viewpoint is, ‘Because it is not instantly turned into a bill for a customer and not for my payroll, who cares’.”

Objections fall into four main categories. First, there is the matter of status. Time sheets are associated with blue collar or hourly employees. Salaried staff feels that having to fill out a time sheet―and having someone else track how they spend their hours―is both invasive and insulting. “Usually the objections come down to a psychology of status or a perception of status,” Walter Ross, CEO of Legiant, a time and attendance software firm.

Next, some worry that they might find out that they are not being as productive as they thought they were. Even worse, they worry that managers will look at the time sheets and come to the same conclusion.

A third issue is that time is a bad metric for effort or productivity. This may be true on an individual basis, and some agile development methodologies discourage it, but for a project or an organization, tracking time spent is a way to see if its production and financial goals are being met.

Finally, there is the issue of time itself: busy professionals don't want to spend their time filling out a time sheet. In fact, the ones who are most eager to turn them in are likely to be the least productive.

“The slackers who goof around all day are good at getting their time sheets in on time,” said Finch. “The guys who are excited about their jobs don't fill out the time sheets, they are too busy saving the world.”

It is possible, however, to get even the most recalcitrant to fill out their time sheets. It requires a mix of communication, processes and tools. “The most common problem is that management just tells people they have to track time, but not why,” said Finch. “The way to get compliance is to tell people why you are doing it and how it will make the company more successful.”

That communication needs to be repeated on a continuing basis, and there need to be rewards for compliance and penalties for non-compliance or the time keeping will go slack or drop out. Managers also need to learn how to utilize the data. This doesn't mean hovering over employees to make sure they don't spend an extra two minutes in the break room, but tracking the progress of the projects under their purview and taking steps when needed to get them back on the rails.

Identifying Broken Projects

To effectively use time sheets, an organization must first identify how they will be used and design or purchase a system that will meet those needs. The traditional reason, of course, is to track hours for payroll as well as compliance with labor regulations. This is more appropriate for blue collar and lower-level white collar employees, rather than skilled project management staff who are salaried and frequently put in more than a 9-to-5 schedule. Nevertheless, it can also be important to track hours worked in order to comply with state and federal labor regulations.

“Just because someone works in an IT capacity doesn't mean they are an exempt employee,” said Ross. “The IRS has a 23 point checklist you have to go through to determine if someone is exempt, and states like California have even more stringent regulations.” An exempt employee is basically someone on salary who does not receive overtime pay for hours worked over 40.

Then there is the need to track time for billing. This includes billing outside customers where work is done on an hourly contract or internal accounting where IT costs are allocated to business units. (Also applicable for attorneys, engineers, advertising agencies and others providing professional services.)

“If you are billing your clients on a time and materials basis, you have to have documentation that you put the time in,” said Rex Fowler, CEO of Fowler Software Design. “There is no way around it.”

Finch said that the real value, however, comes when an organization uses time sheets to track the time spent on projects so they improve success rates. “If you have 100 engineers in a room working on different projects, and figure out what you are spending on a per project basis, it will alert you that some projects are broken,” he said. “You will find you are spending way more time than anyone realizes on those projects.”

By studying the experiences of its customer base of thousands of companies, for instance, Journyx found that, on average, 12% of projects are broken. Of those broken projects, 55% can be fixed by adding resources, swapping out personnel or even canceling it. This equals a savings of six people's time out of a staff of 100.

“You have six people wasting their time and their lives on something that is not going to be successful,” said Finch. “Measuring project cost and fixing things when they are broken is extremely valuable.”

Using timekeeping internally also helps his company in the bidding process. “We look at our whole portfolio of projects and determine how close we are to our estimates,” said Ross. “This helps our sales organization and our professional services organization work together so we can make an accurate bid on a new contract.”

A company can also improve the tools that it uses. “Technology has to make an unpleasant task as painless as possible,” Finch said.

One way to do this is to reduce the amount of data presented to a person on a screen. If the company has 1000 projects ongoing, but the person is only working on 10, just have the screen present him with his or her projects. Web GUIs, iPhone applications or voice entry interfaces make it easier for mobile or home workers to log the data. Automated reminders can boost compliance rates. Time tracking software can also connect into code management or bug tracking systems, and suggest entries to the employee.

“Those entries, however, need to be under the control of the individual to edit and submit, not automatically tracking people's time and submitting it to their managers,” said Finch. “It is far better if you can put them in the position where they are editing rather than creating a time sheet. Who can remember what they did last Tuesday?”

The approaches used will vary depending on the needs of the company or the individuals within it. Fowler Software built its own time-tracking software so it can bill its clients, but the programmers have different options how they enter the data. Some of the techs spend the whole day servicing a single client, often at the client's site, so it is just a matter of turning in a time sheet showing when he arrived and left. Another programmer who services half a dozen clients from his home office keeps a GUI open on his desktop. This makes it easy when he receives a phone call from one client while he is in the middle of working on a project for another.

“He has it honed down to just a couple button clicks on his screen,” said Fowler.

For managers, the software should automatically aggregate the individual time sheet data rather than having to manually enter data from a bunch of Excel spreadsheets. It should also link in with the project management software the company is using.

These steps will make it easier to get employees to track their time so the company can raise it's project success rate, but managers will still need to stay on top of employees to ensure the data is reported and is accurate.

“You have to use the carrot and the stick, not just one,” Finch said. “Bribe them and blackmail them.”