Timesheets record, track, and accurately report on the time that employees spend on jobs and projects in addition to non-chargeable and downtime activities.  The benefits include:

• More accurate customer invoicing using actual employee billable hours
• Billing cycles may reduce
• Provides up to date information for Payroll
• Helps increase profitability and assists with more accurate quoting/estimates 
• Better understanding of your current and future utilization and productivity by comparing planned versus actual.
• Enables the ability to compare Payroll hours paid to hours recovered in Jobs and Assemblies.

Ideally a Timesheet system should:

• Be easy to learn and use
• Record and track multiple variables such as employee, job number, project or site reference, task, date and so on
• Be saved and stored on a central database for up-to-date information sharing
• Provide various methods of data capture including:
  • Manual paperwork (traditional, easy to use and reliable)
  • Barcode scanning devices
  • Touch screens for the factory floor
  • In-house batch data entry
  • Import from external media eg PDA and PDT devices
  • Web and Phone enabled for data entry onsite or on the road

Ostendo allows you to capture timesheets using a range of different methods and devices including:

• Key hours directly to jobs using hours or start/stop times
• Record hours in the Custom Data Entry screen by keyboard, touch screen or scanner
• Import from external sources, such as Spreadsheets, Email attachments, etc
• Web enabled timesheet data entry
• iPhone/iPad or similar device data entry (using scripts)
• Tablets and PDT Devices (using scripts)

Once the data is recorded in Ostendo you can:

• Automatically update Job and Projects with billable and non-billable times
• Accumulate Employee productive and non-productive times and export to a Payroll system
• Report on Timesheets using analysis reports, alerts, dashboards, and export to PDF, Spreadsheet, XML, etc
• Allow management to inquire on labour productivity securely via the internet.

Please also read Productivity Tip 18 – Labour Cost Recovery
http://www.ostendo.info/support/tips/tip18.php