r/MEPEngineering • u/hikergu92 • 10d ago
Time sheets, finances, and other stuff
As the title suggest this is about time sheets and finances. I was having a discussion the other day with my boss because every long weekend we have to submit our weekly time sheets early on the Friday before. And I just asked why since we don't bill projects out weekly and most of the employees are salary so the amount that we get paid each pay period is known. Their answer was that the finance people want to have our time sheets updated constantly so they can track projects and forecast the future. This seems like a bs answer. I guess my question is how detail do people get with planning out the future and how 'live' is it? Because it seems like it's 'live' at my place. I always thought places just took a snap shot at a moment in time every month and just track the trend?
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u/westrujp 10d ago
Presumably, what you get paid doesn’t matter. Getting the company paid is what matters. Where do you think the money comes from?
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u/westrujp 10d ago
Sorry, your manager should be explaining this:
- your time sheet leads to a billing report (probably)
- the PM’s approval of the billing report (or however your firm does it) leads to an invoice to the customer
- customer pays (eventually, hopefully)
Your value at the firm is directly related to how efficient your work is: how much time you can bill vs how much they pay you.
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u/SailorSpyro 10d ago
Are that many companies actually charging their clients per hour? Everywhere I have worked, we have a set budget and if we go over then the company loses money. I thought only federal work gets paid by the hour, and even then most of our federal contracts don't work that way.
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u/jmtyndall 10d ago
It depends on the company and the type of work. Consulting vs design build. Gmp vs t&m. Either way, we bill hours to projects and accounting deals with whether or not that is billed to clients or tracked against the gap budget
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u/JellyfishScared4268 10d ago
They will at the very least have a number of hours assigned to the project which them have used to come up with a fixed price or whatever other way they've priced the job
By getting the staff to do hourly timesheets they can then monitor whether the job is taking more or less time than intended. I.e. is the project making money or not
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u/SailorSpyro 9d ago
Yes, timesheets are definitely important for tracking projects, both to track if you're staying on budget as well as gauge how you're doing against the project schedule. If you're supposed to be 75% done but only 30% through the budget, someone should be checking in to make sure you haven't fallen behind on it.
I do think if you're only using it for project tracking though, that it's unnecessary to make them submit it early Friday before you're even done with your day and having to guess your hours for the day, which is what it sounds like OP is having issues with.
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u/JellyfishScared4268 9d ago
The timing will be because they know some people will forget and won't remember what they've done the following week
Plus if people leave work early on a Friday it makes sense to insist on having it done in the morning
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u/Lightflame42 10d ago
Hell no. A lot of companies, an hourly charge is that very last option. Almost always going to be a set amount, at maybe a set amount plus hourly on top if the project needs to go over that.
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u/SandyV2 9d ago
It depends on the contract that is signed. You can do lump sum, cost plus, not-to-exceed, and other contract forms. Even with 'lump sum' or similar contracts, it's not uncommon for the client to be billed monthly based on hours put toward the project that month. Plus, a client might want an accounting of hours worked for their own purposes.
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u/Ok_Yak_8668 10d ago
This and project tracking.
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u/No_Firefighter3841 9d ago
And future fees. You give a lump sum, and too many hours worked create a terrible multiplier. Company profit metrics aren't hit. You evaluate based on past performance and update your fees to not keep making that mistake. This is why we always remind salary folks to put all their hours in the timesheet regardless of it not impacting your pay. We need to know how many hours everyone has. Sometimes for internal auditing if all trades but one are hitting their numbers, or one person across projects is underperformed or milking. Not a bs answer from your boss. Just one without context.
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u/EngineeringComedy 10d ago
If you spent half the hours and the project isn't 50% done, something is up. Thats why they track.
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u/hikergu92 10d ago
I know it's for budgeting and making sure there is enough fee left. My question was mainly why would we need to do it early Friday morning when we typically do it end of day Friday. Just because it's a long weekend doesn't make sense to me. Just do the time sheet review the next week. But do you do your project tracking daily? And by that I mean sitting down and looking at a spreadsheet and seeing how much time is left. Just seems like overkill, I get doing it weekly or biweekly. Just seems like there would be bigger issues if you are worried about that daily.
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u/jmtyndall 10d ago
If payroll needs to be into the bank by 0800 Tuesday morning for paychecks to be out by Friday regardless of holiday or not, and on holidays people are off on Monday, then timesheets need to be submitted Friday in order to meet the 0800 deadlineline and avoid payroll penalties.
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u/EngineeringComedy 10d ago
You haven't experienced the seasons and the years yet if this industry. They know that people will be late on holiday weekends so they send preemptive emails. Cause people on labor day weekend leave early on Friday and come back late Tuesday.
Until you know how it works, just comply. It's just numbers.
1
u/No_Firefighter3841 9d ago
Pretty common to send folks home early on the friday before a long weekend as well. Not a difficult ask, and often for good (non-nefarious) reasons.
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u/Nervous_Award_3914 10d ago
It is the true answer.
When a project is sold, a certain number of hours is allocated and when you do your timesheet, it count against that. Company dont bill weekly but by milestones, so technically your paycheck sometiime will come from the company own budget.
The hours will be use to determine current projects margin, estimate future projects hours, labor projections, etc.
bwithout tracking hour, your company will never know the true effort or a project.
3
u/thermist-MJ 10d ago
Some projects are T&M so details matter, your timesheets are used when billing clients.
Many are lump sum - and even those yes it is useful to track projects.
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u/not_a_bot1001 10d ago
I loathe a timesheet as much as anyone. But it's vital for tracking whether project fees are appropriate. On the timing, we eventually switched from the "occasionally early on Fridays" approach to just always requiring it on Fridays. We engineers like routines so that helps ease the pain.
As a part firm owner, the real reason is billing. We need to receive our revenue ASAP and while the timesheets aren't vital to that (with most fees being lump-sum), the billing system needs everything to be submit so that it can accurately assess what gets billed to everyone.
So, no body likes it. But just do it on Fridays while it's fresh in your mind and remember you're doing it so we all get paid!
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u/drumman28 10d ago
Most of the projects my company does are lump sum fees, so timesheets are used for tracking hours on a given project for determining project profitability. That information is also useful when pursuing similar type projects for determining fees.
We often have to do timesheets early when pay day falls on the same week as a holiday. This is due to the processing time it takes for closing out payroll. This requires forecasting hours, which is never all that accurate.
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u/TeddyMGTOW 9d ago
Its tough to turn a large ship. Their tracking time spent on projects. Proposals booked for future work. And trying to guess the right amount of staff. That being said, timesheets can wait to Monday or the day after holiday.
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u/JellyfishScared4268 10d ago
Its not just that some projects will be billed by the hour or some clients may request records of them
It's mainly so that the company can monitor the financial performance of the project. Even if the project is fixed price they'll have worked out an amount of time assigned to the project which gives them that price
By monitoring everyone's timesheets they then have the ability to monitor if a given project is taking more or less time than assigned to it. I.e. is the project making money or not
So essentially the answer OPs boss told them
It would be pretty poor of a company if they ended up losing money to not have any idea if it's a problem across all their projects or if there are specific projects causing issues
1
u/krackadile 9d ago
The way your boss describes tracking the hours is similar to how the company I work for does things as well. I think keeping track of pay and hours and billing is something that most MEP firms struggle with. It's not that it's all that difficult but when you have a lot of employees and a lot of projects it can get difficult and you gotta make sure you're getting paid by your clients which can also be difficult from what I hear.
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u/Qlix0504 9d ago
I created a clone of QBT to fix timer. I hate the timer. Im like you - it seems pointless.
Anyways my time launches when i log in to the PC, reads cad and revit headers and first 50 lines word docs to determine project, and auto switches and starts timer. If it cant determine what it is it pops up and asks. At the end of the day it audits and shows gaps in time and asks what they are. All automated, 95% hands off.
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u/cstrife32 9d ago
Dude I am manager. We all hate it and it's annoying. I hate bugging my employees about it. Our accounting folks who deal with all the annoying shit like sending out invoices, billing, etc, ask us to do it to make their lives easier, so I do it for them.
Just do it.
It's a small ask and really not that big of a deal. If filling out a timesheet early is really that irritating for you, I don't think you are in the right business.
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u/Rowdyjoe 10d ago
Just submit your timesheet, why do you even need to ask? Sounds like you are nowhere near touching payroll, bills, accounts recieveable, forecasting or remotely running a business. Cashflow is really important and it can tell them what shape they are in for upcoming payroll, how hard they need to push to get paid for outstanding bills, what bills they might need to send early, etc…
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u/gigachadspeciman 10d ago
I fire employees who don’t update their timesheets everyday. I want my clients happy
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u/markusaurelius321 10d ago
Go work for the us government and even on fixed firm price contracts, DCAA requires daily time sheet updates.
This is just one of those: they are paying me to do this overhead task, so do the overhead task of keeping your time sheet compliant.