Two Records, Two Questions

An attendance record answers ‘was this person at work today, and from when to when?’ It is one line per employee per day: in time, out time, shift assigned, and a status such as present, half-day, leave, weekly off or absent. It exists because wages are paid for days and hours of presence, and because the Factories Act, state Shops and Establishments Acts and the Labour Codes require employers to keep it.

A timesheet answers ‘what were those hours spent on?’ It is one line per employee per task, project, client or site per day: 4 hours on the Client A audit, 3 hours on internal training, 2 hours travelling. It exists because someone other than the employer is paying for the hours, or because management wants to know where effort goes. Nothing in Indian labour law requires a timesheet; contracts and clients do.

The confusion arises because both contain hours. But an 8-hour attendance day is a fact about presence; a timesheet that says 4 + 3 + 2 hours is a claim about allocation, entered by the employee and approved by a manager. The timesheet glossary entry gives the short definition; the rest of this article is about how the two interact.

• Attendance: one row per employee per day, records presence and in/out times
• Timesheet: one row per employee per task or client per day, records allocation of hours
• Attendance is a statutory record; timesheets are a contractual or management record
• Attendance is captured by a device or app; timesheets are self-reported and approved

What a Timesheet Means in Payroll

In a monthly-salaried company, payroll is driven by attendance: payable days = calendar days minus LOP, with overtime hours added from the attendance record. The timesheet does not change the salary; it changes where the salary cost is booked. Finance uses approved timesheets to allocate each employee's cost across clients or projects, so that project profitability and client invoices are correct.

In hourly, daily-wage and contract settings the timesheet can become the payroll input itself. A staffing agency that supplies 40 workers to a warehouse pays each worker for hours approved by the client supervisor on a timesheet, and bills the client the same hours at a higher rate. Here the timesheet is both the wage sheet and the invoice basis, and the attendance record (GPS punch at the warehouse geofence) is the evidence that the hours claimed were physically possible.

Either way, payroll should never read a timesheet that has not been checked against attendance. Payroll teams that convert timesheets directly into pay discover the mismatch only when a client disputes the invoice or an employee disputes the deduction. The step-by-step method is in how to convert timesheets into payroll.

• Monthly salaried: attendance sets pay, timesheet allocates cost
• Hourly and contract: approved timesheet hours often set pay directly
• Agencies bill clients from the same approved hours at a marked-up rate
• Always reconcile timesheet hours to attendance before payroll reads them

Who Needs Which: Factories, Services Firms, Agencies

A factory or hospital with fixed shifts needs attendance and very rarely a timesheet. Everyone on the morning shift is paid for the morning shift; the cost goes to one cost centre. Overtime, night allowance and LOP all come from attendance compared against the roster. Adding a timesheet here creates work without information.

IT services, consulting, accounting and design firms need both. Attendance proves presence for leave, LOP and compliance; the timesheet allocates the day across billable and non-billable work. A consultant with 22 attended days but only 120 billable hours is a utilisation problem visible only when both records exist side by side.

Security agencies, facility-management contractors, housekeeping companies and manpower suppliers are the clearest case for both, because the client pays for man-hours at a post or site. The attendance record is the guard's GPS and selfie punch at the site geofence; the timesheet is the site-wise man-hour statement that goes with the invoice, listing guard, post, shift, hours and rate. How that statement is built and defended is covered in how security agencies bill clients for guard man-hours.

• Fixed-shift factories and hospitals: attendance only
• Services and consulting: attendance plus project timesheets for utilisation
• Security, FM, housekeeping, staffing: attendance plus site-wise man-hour timesheets for billing
• Principal employers may also demand the contractor's attendance record for their own compliance

Sample Timesheet Columns and the Approval Flow

A usable timesheet has more columns than most Excel versions, because each column answers a later question. At minimum: date, employee code and name, client or project code, site or task, start time, end time, break minutes, net hours, hour type (regular, overtime, night, holiday), billable flag, employee remark, approver, approval date and status. Weekly totals per employee and per client sit at the foot. A ready layout is available as the monthly timesheet template in Excel.

The approval flow is what turns a claim into a record. The employee submits by a fixed cut-off, typically Monday 10:00 for the previous week or the 2nd of the month for the previous month. The line manager (or, for agency staff, the client's site in-charge) approves, rejects with a reason, or edits with a logged change. Rejected entries return to the employee; approved entries lock. Payroll and billing read only locked entries.

Lateness is the killer. A timesheet approved on the 12th cannot feed payroll due on the 7th, so late sheets either delay everyone's salary or get paid on unapproved figures. Set the cut-off in the policy, send reminders two days before, and let the manager see a list of missing sheets rather than hunting for them. Where the team uses an app for attendance, prefill the timesheet day with attended hours so the employee only allocates, rather than re-entering times.

• Columns: date, employee, client/project, site/task, start, end, break, net hours, hour type, billable, remark, approver, status
• Fixed weekly or monthly submission cut-off written into policy
• Approve, reject with reason, or edit with a logged change; approved entries lock
• Prefill from attendance so employees allocate rather than retype

Reconciliation Rules That Keep Both Records Honest

Reconciliation is a fixed set of checks run before payroll and before invoicing. Rule 1: timesheet hours for a day cannot exceed attendance hours for that day plus an agreed tolerance (say 30 minutes for travel between sites). Rule 2: no timesheet hours on a day the attendance record shows leave, weekly off or absent, unless the entry is flagged as holiday work and approved at a higher level. Rule 3: overtime on the timesheet must match overtime derived from attendance, because overtime pay at twice the ordinary rate and overtime billing both hinge on it.

Rule 4: total timesheet hours for the month should not be materially below attended hours either; a large shortfall means unallocated time that is being absorbed as overhead, which matters for utilisation and client pricing. Rule 5: every edit to an approved timesheet or attendance record after lock must carry an approver, a reason and a timestamp. Run these five checks as a report, not as a manual scan, and fix the source (wrong geofence, missing shift, wrong client code) rather than the symptom.

Use the timesheet calculator to total weekly and monthly hours with breaks while doing the check, and the working hours calculator for in/out to net hours. In a combined system such as Attend Mitra, the attendance side (GPS, face, kiosk, biometric) and site-wise man-hour exports come from the same record, so the first three rules are enforced at source and the export to billing or an external timesheet tool already matches what was attended.

• Timesheet hours per day ≤ attendance hours plus tolerance
• No hours on leave, weekly-off or absent days without escalated approval
• Overtime must agree between the two records
• Large unallocated time is a utilisation and pricing signal
• Post-lock edits need approver, reason and timestamp

Indian Context: Man-Hour Billing, Statutory Records and Data Retention

Client man-hour billing is the norm in security, facility management, housekeeping and IT staffing in India, and the client's finance team will audit the timesheet against the attendance evidence before releasing payment. Agencies that can show a GPS-and-selfie punch at the site geofence for every billed hour settle invoices faster than agencies that send a signed paper sheet. Build the billing statement from the attendance record, not the other way round.

For statutory purposes, the attendance record is the muster roll and the register of working hours, and it is what an inspector under the Factories Act, a state Shops and Establishments Act or the OSH Code will ask for. A timesheet does not substitute for it. Contract-labour situations add a layer: the principal employer remains liable for wages, PF and ESI if the contractor defaults, so principal employers increasingly ask contractors for the attendance record rather than only the invoice timesheet.

Both records contain personal data, and timesheets often contain client names and project details that are commercially sensitive. Set a retention period (payroll and wage records are commonly kept for several years to meet labour and tax requirements; check the statute applicable to you), restrict who can see client-level allocations, and log every access to locked records. If you are still deciding how to capture attendance in the first place, the comparison in employee time tracking methods compared will help you pick the method that feeds both records cleanly.

• Build billing statements from attendance evidence, not from a separately typed sheet
• Attendance, not the timesheet, is the statutory record for inspection
• Principal employers should obtain the contractor's attendance record
• Retain both records per applicable law and restrict client-level visibility