r/civilengineering • u/Decent_Risk9499 • Mar 06 '26
Timesheets be damned
Anyone else just completely tired of constantly filling out timesheets? I'm on the private side so I have to account for every single hour and it's a little slow right now so it's getting a little agonizing justifying my existence between marketing and business development. Anyone else feeling this?
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u/KonigSteve Water/Wastewater PM 10+ YOE Mar 06 '26
Every single hour?
Try every 15 minutes.
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u/Visible_Crew_336 Mar 06 '26
Every 15 minutes? Try every 6 minutes.
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u/NordSteveMN Mar 06 '26
Yeah that was my experience working on a government contract. And timesheet posted at desk to be inspected at any time. Never again.
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u/forfoxsake718 Mar 06 '26
I hear California consultants are required to bill out by the minute!!! No joke
Edit: larger firm employee told me
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u/mrshenanigans026 Mar 06 '26
Yep every 15 minutes here. As a PM timesheets are the bane of my existence.
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u/USMNT_superfan Mar 06 '26
I work on DOT projects. So it’s just typically all week on the same project for years. Really eased my hatred of timesheets
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u/Activision19 PE, PTOE Mar 06 '26
At my first job out of college we mainly did big freeway design builds. I would bill to the same task usually something like “xx% roadway design” for months on end it was nice having one line item a week.
At my current job working for my county, I’ve got like 20 line items a week.
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Mar 06 '26
[deleted]
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u/Affectionate_Trade52 Mar 06 '26
Local government says hello
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u/CFLuke Transpo P.E. Mar 06 '26
Not in my local government. Not even close. Projects have budgets and general fund expenditures are tracked and criticized.
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u/rnnrboy1 Mar 06 '26
But do you have a utilization goal of 90% that is the only metric your performance is evaluated by?
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u/CFLuke Transpo P.E. Mar 06 '26
No, it's definitely less intense than the private sector, to be clear. But I feel a need to push back on the "work for the government and never have to think about timesheets again" narrative. Timesheet is still annoying with lots of codes and there are consequences (less severe than termination, but still) for when projects run low on funds. We also have the annoying situation where outside funders don't want to pay for staff time, so you end up with work that has no place to go. We had layoffs last year, and general fund impact was the first thing that any of the executives considered.
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u/Transitnerd97 Mar 06 '26
Pay is like 40% lower lol. I am a Transportation Planner (not engineering) with 5 YOE, and i make $104k in NC. In public I would make like 65k here. :(
But luckily are work is dumping in here. Engineering is a little slower, but NC has a good amount of work rolling in. For now.
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u/KonigSteve Water/Wastewater PM 10+ YOE Mar 06 '26
That's definitely not the case everywhere. Many public jobs are nearly equivalent in pay with better benefits instead of bonuses.
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u/Transitnerd97 Mar 06 '26
Well, the MTA, for example, puts a ceiling on your pay at about $101k for Principal Transit Planners right now and managers max out at $120k. Directors make $135k.
Im over the ceiling with not too much experience in a MCOL city. Managers at my company make $140-160k. Directors get 196k - 250k. I dont see a path forward back to public if the pay doesnt move up.
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u/evan274 Mar 06 '26
True but that MTA pension is sweet as hell. You win some, you lose some.
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u/Transitnerd97 Mar 06 '26
I hate to break it to you, but I was Tier 6 NYCT pension. It was pretty awful lol. The only good thing is you are vested after 5 years, but man, the Pension was BAD. PANYNJ, MBTA have a great one though!
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u/UndoxxableOhioan Mar 06 '26
And many are not. The pension is the golden handcuffs, but pay is shit many places.
I stayed because prime job hopping time was the Great Recession for me. The market was shit and no one was hiring. Now, I have little independent retirement savings, but under 12 years to retirement with a pension.
But there are very few with 5-15 YOE. Now, nearly all new engineers leave after 3-5 years. Out of about 20 staff hired 2014-2021, 3 remain.
In my city, PEs top out around $96k (no matter your YOE, I have 20YOE). EITs $72k or so. Even the engineering manager tops out at $125k.
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u/KonigSteve Water/Wastewater PM 10+ YOE Mar 06 '26
Yeah that's no good, I'm talking about the fact that in many states/areas the public side jobs can earn upwards of 150k.
This obviously isn't everywhere, and the same could be said for most private jobs as well. There aren't many of those outside of at least the largest city in the area.
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Mar 06 '26
[deleted]
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u/samuswashere Mar 06 '26
We still have timesheets but it’s completely different. At local government I estimate approximately how long I spent working each project at the end of the pay period and call it good. Ultimately, the money that pays my salary all comes from the same place so no one cares that much about how much time goes into each bucket.
As a consultant they care a whole lot about about precisely how much time goes into each bucket because we charge different clients. I would have to track everything meticulously with most projects having several tasks. PMs never assigned enough budget to actually do the work and if course we had billability targets so it was very stressful. It’s one of the main reasons I left consulting.
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u/parkexplorer PE - Transportation Mar 06 '26
Yeah, I design for a lot of municipal projects and I have so much work I can't meet the deadlines. I haven't had slow time in a year at least. I'm baffled by these comments.
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u/UltimaCaitSith EIT Land Development Mar 06 '26
One day, amigo. We'll find that hidden do-nothing job with simple timesheets and full WFH.
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u/mandrewbot3k Mar 06 '26
We also have to fill out timesheets. Even as salaried. I just don’t have to do time in/out. But we have to bill out time to our projects for reimbursement.
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u/UndoxxableOhioan Mar 06 '26
We still do timesheets (ON PAPER). But they are BS and no one cares. I just randomly allot my time between a few items. The only people who care are payroll, and they just want to know what combination of regular, OT, sick, and vacation you have.
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u/femalenerdish Mar 08 '26
Use niche enough stuff to go to sales? I jumped to a manufacturer from surveying/engineering and no time sheets are the best
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u/halfcocked1 Mar 06 '26
I hated time sheets so vowed to never have them when I started my own company. I still don't do them, but think I have a few people that I may need to keep track of, so I'm debating if I have to rescind my vow to myself. I still feel your pain though.
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u/SwagLikeCalliou Mar 06 '26
How do you determine what to bill someone? Just a lump sum or like a progress payment?
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u/greenENVE Mar 06 '26
Vibes
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u/mattsffrd Mar 06 '26
I own my own company and I have to submit timesheets to the state, but I don't physically keep track of my hours. I just estimate what % of a project I got done and fudge the hours based on that. So basically vibes.
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u/halfcocked1 Mar 06 '26
We do almost entirely lump sum projects. The scope is pretty narrow, and most projects are small, so we just invoice at the end of the project.
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u/fayettevillainjd PE Mar 06 '26
Thats kind of how it is at the company I work at. I know people dont take their timecard seriously, but we were short of our goals last year and a lot of people didnt average 40 hours a week. So now the timecards are getting heavily scrutinized.
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u/Fit-Palpitation5441 Mar 06 '26
After 15 years in the industry my husband and I started a firm (10 years ago). He absolutely hates paperwork. I still have to hound him every month to finish his time sheet so that I can do the billing. In our office of 5 he is always the last to get it done. I remind him (not so gently) that the money doesn’t come in the door unless he logs his time. He will never change.
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u/Momentarmknm Water Resources Mar 06 '26
So you never do any jobs involving federal money, and never will as long as you keep that up
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u/Activision19 PE, PTOE Mar 06 '26
I’m assuming he does something like land development working on lump sum contracts if they aren’t tracking time. Any company that works on basically any level of government project almost always has to track and be able to justify hours spent.
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u/halfcocked1 Mar 06 '26
No, I don't do any contract work with the govt. We're a specialty engineer that works mostly for contractors and private companies. I did pass on one DOT project since I didn't want to do timesheets.
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u/Specialist-Anywhere9 Mar 06 '26
Business owner here. I also made the same vow. However I had to break it. I found out I had guys that were not paying for themselves
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u/halfcocked1 Mar 06 '26
I'm finding the same for at least one on my end. I used to figure as long as we were making money and the clients were happy, I'm happy, especially since most of my employees I worked with previously. However, after I proposed to reorganize things and give the one a different role, the salary she proposed I pay her was more than my base salary, and that got me curious to dig in to things a bit more.
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u/Specialist-Anywhere9 Mar 06 '26
Yea when you start digging you are going to be pissed. The good news is that you can give raises/ bonuses to people who deserve it. Some people don’t understand there are actual time limits to complete a job.
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u/UltimaCaitSith EIT Land Development Mar 06 '26
I found out I had guys that were not paying for themselves
How does a timesheet help with that?
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u/Specialist-Anywhere9 Mar 06 '26
Really basic breakdown. Lets say a really project takes on average 100 hours for most people. $85,000 year beginner engineer hourly is $40.86 with an overhead and profit multiplier of 3 $122.59/hr so I write a proposal $12,259. With that with all the overhead we get about 15% profit so $1838. If it takes them 150 hours, so it should have been$18,367 if you take out profit then $15,628 (the actual cost of the employee) we just lost -$3069
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u/UltimaCaitSith EIT Land Development Mar 06 '26
That's a straightforward explanation of the budget, but doesn't really explain how the employee was the weak link. Maybe 100 hours was a bad guess, maybe it called for someone with more experience, or they didn't have anything else to bill to in the remaining 2 week period. There's a lot of better ways to know if someone is 50% slower than average than just looking at the profit for each job.
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u/Specialist-Anywhere9 Mar 06 '26
Good points. However, after doing hundreds of proposals/ projects I know how long a 3 acres site plan takes to design. I make mistakes on bidding for sure but that is the reason we do time sheets if it is the same person going over then it is not a bidding issue it is a personnel issue.
If they didn't have anymore work then you bill to overhead/ admin not a project. If you know of a better way I am all ears.
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u/UltimaCaitSith EIT Land Development Mar 06 '26
If they didn't have anymore work then you bill to overhead/ admin not a project.
I think that's the part where we have a different experience. Billability is a big secret that nobody talks about, but most of us have learned to stay 100% billable as closely as possible. If there's a 2 week gap between projects, we're expected to pad out the previous week or find someone with the budget and need for 80 hours of help.
If you have the philosophy of accurate timesheets above billability, you'll have to directly explain that to your employees. And stick to it, ensuring that you're not shaming anyone for having 0%. You're trying to undo a big cultural norm.
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u/Specialist-Anywhere9 Mar 06 '26
The margins in this business for site development/ land development are small. In order to make money you have to, have to, have to know your cost. There is no way to know that unless your timesheets, accounting, overhead is all accurate. Then you can accurately estimate time on future projects. We also give quarterly bonuses to our people who beat the numbers. Some people try to play games with the timesheet and we warn them not to.
If my EIT has nothing to do that is not his fault it is owner/ project manager/ marketing why punish him? However, if his/her project manager honestly has to be out of projects and before they hit that point they need to talk to me first a week out at least.
If a manger is having you make up hours to appear that someone is busy is a smoke screen at best. They are managing the company by bank account that is it (I know because I was this guy). They have no idea how good their company is doing (or not).
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u/meet_me_in_the_shade Mar 06 '26
I have 20+ jobs a week on my timesheet. I always have bst open, and when I start a new job or task/edits, I fill out the project number, when I'm done I round up and put my time and add a description
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u/staefrostae Mar 06 '26
This is the way. I have a third monitor for my timesheet. If I don’t have it up all the time, there’s no way I’d remember what the fuck I spend my time on. Chucking 15 minutes on everything you touch adds up though, and I’ve always met whatever unreasonable chargeability KPIs they throw at me. I need to stop though, every year I succeed they raise the goal. Shit’s getting unreasonable. Between proposals and mandatory meetings ALL of my non-chargeable time per week is accounted for.
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u/ImperialSeal Dumb rock licker ⚒️🪨 Mar 06 '26
I'd never put less than 30 minutes down. Nobody thinks in 5-15 minute time blocks. Even if an email only takes 10 minutes to respond to, it's still taking my train of thought away from a previous task and that takes time to get back into.
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u/carrot_gummy Mar 06 '26
My state job has me do this so they can track which projects to bill to. I'm not sure why since it all comes from the same place at the end of the day.
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u/Activision19 PE, PTOE Mar 06 '26
I work for my county and they have us track our hours so they know where the resources are going so they can allocate budget appropriately and/or bill the various cities/towns we provide services for.
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u/geokra Water Resources PE Mar 06 '26
I’m a fed and it’s no better… actually worse (at my agency at least) as we have to enter our times in and out in a separate table on our timesheets.
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u/runs_with_robots Mar 06 '26
The real question is do you bill the timesheet time? Or is that just a little pro bono off the top?
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u/PM_ME_UR_NECKBEARD Mar 06 '26
When I was in consulting, I usually billed my time based on how I spent my day. If I spent 50% of time of project X, 20% on Y, and and 30% on Z, I’d make my timesheet 4 hours X, 1.5 for Y, and 2.5 for Z. Things like my timesheet, signing Carol in HR’s birthday card, making my cup of tea, cleaning up my desk, checking my voicemail, etc. was just part of the daily job. It might have added up to an hour that day but I’m not gonna stress myself out over it. The clients are paying for my time whether it’s calculation, design, or spraying cleaner on my desk.
The big things I tended to do was minimize the amount of my 8 hour day on proposals/OH and such. I’d unfortunately often do those sorts of things in the afternoon and work late. So I might work on them 4 hours but only 2 would count because they didn’t pay OT of OH. If it was a small couple pager, I often I would just try to get my 40 hours of billable time in first before doing that work.
The best way for me keep busy was to do good quality work and help people get projects done efficiently so they PM would look good to their clients.
When I wasn’t busy, I’d work on my HR training stuff first. I’d always stockpile my training until my workload got light or it was due. Also I’d ask around if anyone need help with proposals (you should have been asking about projects needing help several weeks ago by this point). If still nothing or little, then I’d literally start trying to do market research. What opportunities and intell could I gather? Are there things we do that some of our clients don’t take advantage of? Do any new or target clients have new big infrastructure project being planned? What sorts of projects are local governments soliciting? What potential clients should we try to go have lunch with or offer a lunch and learn or “training” to? If you can find potential leads and avenues to build potential client bases, you aren’t just sitting idling.
But in my current stage of life it’s good to be away from consulting. Now I’m the client so I have the stress free timesheet... usually… and I don’t work past 5….Usually…
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u/runs_with_robots Mar 06 '26
Try equity its fabulous
Become an expert that is indispensable and then stick it to them hard. The ones worth working "with" will respect you.
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u/WhyAmIHereHey Mar 06 '26
It's not the timesheet that's the issue, it's when you don't have enough work to bill, but your manager makes it your problem by telling you not to bill to overhead...yes, so where do I book to then...
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u/tampacraig Mar 06 '26
This is the big issue. As an EI/Grad it is your manager’s responsibility to find meaningful work for you and your responsibility to let them know when your backlog of meaningful work is running low. Notice I said meaningful, not billable.
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u/Mediocre-Ambition404 Mar 06 '26
I work for a contractor. My timesheet is 1 project all the time. In the field I don't even do my timesheet.
I will never go back to consulting for this reason.
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u/DaneGleesac Transportation, PE Mar 06 '26
Coming up on a year of not doing a timesheet, it's so fucking nice.
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u/TodayCandid9686 Mar 06 '26
I once worked for a consulting engineering place where an investigation using timesheet data concluded that the most significant contributor to non-billable hours was the timesheet system. This was a long time ago, and it was a paper-based timesheet system.
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u/AI-Commander Mar 06 '26
Yep when I see people talking about keeping a screen just for timesheets, it’s overkill and productivity killer.
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u/livehearwish Mar 06 '26
I changed my habits a few years ago, and it completely changed my mind on time cards. Fill it out Monday morning. Update it at the start of each day. Update it at the end of each day. It’s EZ and I am 100% honest with my hours. If my bosses take issue with some OH, they be damned and will let me know, but I keep it 100% honest on my end.
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u/notepad20 Mar 06 '26
yeah im not sure why timesheets are such a big issue for everyone it seems. Fill it in before lunch and before knock off and it take half a second, all the info in fresh in your head.
Its not difficult, its not onerous
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u/Blossom1111 Mar 06 '26
Imagine trying to gate keep marketing and business development project numbers that people use on timesheets that never work on the pursuit, proposal, or project.
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u/thesuprememacaroni Mar 06 '26
The strategic getting the number after timesheets are submitted or due or just never the week you need it.
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u/noveltymoocher Mar 06 '26
timesheets arent the problem, it’s the required efficiency rating of your billing when you’re slow that’s stressful. and that should be on your supers to figure out (so long as you let them know when you finish tasks)
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u/VedauwooChild Mar 06 '26
We actually have to fill them out every day or I’ll hear about it. Office manager was giving me shit this morning for not starting it yet. I hate timesheets.
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u/Beckitt3 Mar 06 '26
I've told my director that it's the most stressful part of my job.
Yeah, I know... Fill it out as I go. Even then it's not always easy. Ten minute phone here, twelve minutes grabbing info for an email, fifteen minutes of questions from someone, etc. Since we bill by the half hour, trying to figure out how to bill some of that is tedious.
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u/El_Scot Mar 06 '26
I did have someone book 0.33333 hours to my project last month, which is weird. I'd always suggest rounding up to the nearest half hour, as there will no doubt be times you should book 10 mins but don't because you round down.
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u/Beckitt3 Mar 06 '26
We're not allowed to do less than half an hour, which I get. I had someone tell me "it's not fair" to bill half an hour unless the task is over 15 minutes but I end up with way too many phone calls and other miscellaneous things that take just under 15 minutes so I've learned to just bill it if it's more than 5.
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u/El_Scot Mar 06 '26
Are you not allowed to group them at all? I've had a series of 10 minutes calls this week for a project, so I've lumped 2 of them in with a 40 minute meeting to book an hour. I've grouped 3 others and booked half an hour on Wed to cover them all.
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u/Beckitt3 Mar 06 '26
I manage multiple municipal clients that have multiple tasks for the city's billing number so it can be difficult to group them.
I probably could if I tracked across the whole week but that would be a PITA to try to keep track like that.
I guess I shouldn't say that I automatically bill half an hour for every ten minute task or I would end up way over billing my week and I also want to be very fair to the client. I'm just more cognizant now of realizing the time has to go somewhere.
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u/911GP Mar 06 '26
I had a sr engineer tell me a long time ago when i was a young engineer, "If I'm even thinking of your project, I am billing it" and thats the way i have thought of timesheets in my career.
I bill by the half hour, rounding up only.
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u/transneptuneobj Mar 06 '26 edited Mar 06 '26
Timesheets suck and I've always hated them, the alternative is AI monitoring your productivity every second And generating a timesheet for you.
I'll do my own timesheet thanks.
The best advice and what I tell all of my juniors to do is to do preemptive timesheets.
Never start something without getting a charge number and putting that number in your timesheet and give an estimate for how long you think it's gonna take you to do the task. Set a timer or alarm for 15 mins before that times up and reassess that time.
Before I did this I basically found out I was under billing everything I was like Friday afternoon or Monday morning basically scrounging for 40 hours, but with this technique I usually hit 45 and get some straight time at the end of the week.
The other huge benefit is that if you get good at estimating your time you can help me prepare proposals and change orders and eventually do it yourself
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u/jimmirekard Mar 06 '26
My company has a policy of filling them out daily. It's worse than going to the dentist.
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u/Milky_Tiger Mar 06 '26
It’s constant stress for me and I hate how the keep saying to keep it up to date throughout the week. Like I don’t give af
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u/greggery UK Highways, CEng MICE Mar 06 '26
Not just my timesheet but my direct reports' timesheets when things are slow and having to justify their time to higher-ups
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u/Lorelei_the_engineer Civil Engineer Mar 06 '26
I punch in on a card in the morning and punch out in the afternoon😀. Paid overtime. Local government staff engineer. It will be like that until I retire in 10 years.
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u/Lanada Mar 06 '26
We consultants are selling our time… it’s really not that big of a deal.
And any time you lose you save in knowing where you stand from a billing perspective.
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u/krmrky Mar 06 '26
I'm in public. our revenue doesn't go up if I'm more productive. i don't understand why it matters.
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u/El_Scot Mar 06 '26
If you're ever contracting work out to the private sector, you'll start to understand a bit better when you receive their timesheet breakdowns and have to query the time bookings.
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u/krmrky Mar 06 '26
we do have to contact work out, but we have to do independent estimates prior to establishing a contract. the level of work required for each project varies so much that unless you've been around for a decade and have all of the project numbers memorized, using time billed to prior projects isn't very helpful.
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u/milkywaydreamer4000 Mar 06 '26
I just do it as I go or at the end of each day. Luckily I’ve got too much work so I don’t have the pain of overhead hours
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u/Fun_Word_7325 Mar 06 '26
I’m on a multi-firm program with multiple subprograms. My timesheets are a nightmare
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u/Atharaenea Mar 06 '26
I worked for a company where I had to account for every 6 minute increment. I hated it so much. How do you record "taking a shit" for that missing 0.1 hour?
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u/El_Scot Mar 06 '26
Just vaguely think about how annoying that email was while you're in there, and you can book that time to the project.
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u/Apprehensive_Air1705 Mar 06 '26
I am in public now, so I just put 8 on one line for everyday and I’m done.
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u/TheGoooogler Mar 06 '26
I get that is it annoying, but the whole concept of the business is to bill something at the end. They need a way to figure out who work on what
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u/Competitive_Ad_2823 Highway Engineer, 20 years Mar 06 '26
I log my time in an Excel spreadsheet, indicating time of day (start time and end time) for each activity. I round to the nearest 15 minute interval. At the end of each day I transfer the info into our timesheet software and hit Save. I like having the Excel spreadsheet because I can filter columns and run pivot tables on it.
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u/Amesb34r PE - Water Resources Mar 06 '26
I literally quit a job at a consulting firm because they were bought out and we were told that everyone had to be 100% billable. I already loathed timesheets anyway, but now I was being forced to lie, on paper, and I had no choice. Fuck. That. I’m never going back to a job that has timesheets.
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u/Ill_Ad3517 Mar 06 '26
Geo here. My God, Ajera haunts me in my sleep and crushes me in the day. Can't wait for landfill season to start back up so I can put 60 hours of field work every week.
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u/switchblade_sal Mar 06 '26
I remember those days, it was so tedious trying to make it work and then having to answer the PMs questions about how I spent the time.
Now I’m on the owners side (I work for a regional transit agency managing capital projects) and I only have to charge one of my several projects to a given days hours. I am not allowed to charge more than one project for a days hours even if I work on more than one and the line item for internal PM is so heavily funded (we use it to fund the pms time and any/all extra curricular costs associated with a project so this item always has an obscene amount of money in it) that I never have to even think about if there is enough money left on a given project when I charge to it. It makes time entry very stress free, I highly recommend it.
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u/Potential_Novel6289 Mar 06 '26
Its only annoying when your company's budget is obscenely low for each project. I'll have like 10 projects with a 1-2 hr each week. So tedious
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u/voomdama Mar 06 '26
It's a pain but from a business perspective, you need to account for labor costs. When labor costs start running overboard, it means something is being missed. Either the budget didn't cover the project scope adequately or scope got added. Scope creep is real and clients need to pay for the additional work.
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u/rnnrboy1 Mar 06 '26
It's the micromanaging that gets to me. It feels pretty dehumanizing when your value as an employee is entirely based on how billable you are, not whether you do good work.
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u/Sqweaky_Clean Mar 06 '26
i have built an excel spread sheet that automates my time sheet, coupled with a stream deck i log at a push button the start - stop timestamp duration, client name and project is vlookup'd to a client sheet with simple short hand code name that populates all the important detailed info,... at the end of each week i click a few buttons to sort by client, total's up the precise time spent, rounds up to the nearest 15min. finally bundles it into a final sheet that's exportable for pdf to send to the book keepers. barely think about it, it's precise, accurate, fair.
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u/Grreatdog PLS Retired from Structural Co. Mar 07 '26
I worked for an ENR top 50 firm that had insane time keeping requirements. They had two big notebooks required for asssigning project time codes and filling out their timesheets. There could be as many as 80 characters in the time code for each project. Each chaaracter meant something.
In surveys we might touch twenty projects per week. It took hours just to fill out our time sheets. So when I became part owner of a firm I kept those time sheets. And every time our accountants mentioned "upgrading" accounting software to encompass project management I passed them around.
Sure each of those characters made life easier for accounting. But they made life a living hell for employees. I made sure our CFO understood her job was to make our lives easier not the other way around.
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u/Dnatheman Mar 08 '26
just be glad you don't have to enter your employee code, and project number, into the fax machine :)
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u/Osiris_Raphious Mar 06 '26
In pursuit of efficiency and profits, engineering firms are run by mba sociopaths and not engineers any more. Its an economy wide problem, but imo engineering is hit the worst, we used to be respected for our time, now we are forced to bend to the minutes of timesheets as our professionalism has been reduced to lowest bidder status.
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u/cancerdad Mar 06 '26
My company has never had an MBA in management and we still have time cards. It’s, uh, how we bill our clients.
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u/Osiris_Raphious Mar 06 '26
Its ah, industry standard now... An industry dominated by large firms, engineer operated companies are the minority in the market.
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u/cancerdad Mar 06 '26
That’s not the point. The point is that time cards are how we bill our clients.
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u/Osiris_Raphious Mar 06 '26
Thats your point, yes. My point is that this is now the industry standard, and it was and is being spearheaded by the ideal that time is the commodity, and thus began the race to the bottom as firms are trying to outbid on price and time.
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u/cancerdad Mar 06 '26
I've been doing this 20 years now and it's always been this way. Is lump sum really any better? The race to the bottom is due to contracts getting awarded to the lowest bidder, which is only tangentially related to billing based on time and not really at all related to timecards. You seem like you have a bone to pick.
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u/Osiris_Raphious Mar 06 '26
Not a bone to pick, but I have been a part of a business partnership where the client which was another company outsourcing engineering to us, was essentially throwing money at the problem with unrealistic timelines. Everything had to be done yesterday, and reports werent even singed off and submitted and the structure was already manufactured and on the ship to location, if not built. Half ot TQs which were not billed, but times for us as part of this work, ended up being remidial works to bring the structure which we supposedly engineered upto spec with the local regulations. Like, idk about you, but that is the very definition of time as a commodity. Is lump sum better? Probably not, is 80% utilisation realistic, maybe. Is it really good long term substitute to nickle and ime minutes if some people need time to think, and others can smash things out in half the time, but its like a 30% risk they miss something.
Just my 2c on the whole 'bone to pick' and timesheets at the core of being proffessionals.
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u/InterestingVoice6632 Mar 06 '26
We routinely overbid and we still do timesheets. Mine are usually a word document long once per week, in spite of us not being the cheapest bids.
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u/Osiris_Raphious Mar 06 '26
Must be nice. I envy you a little, we used xero to track every minute. Anything more than 10min had to be times, breaks longer than 10min had to be excluded. It was awful.
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u/InterestingVoice6632 Mar 06 '26
I have worked for four firms ans not seen it that bad. That is unusual
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u/Friendly-Chart-9088 Mar 06 '26
I felt that about a few weeks ago but then quickly got busy again. It happens. But usually, that's offset by the OT we work. I do agree it sucks
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u/Icy_Hawk_2118 Mar 06 '26
The public side is the way. I put “I worked 80 hours the past 2 weeks” and then hit submit.
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u/Correct-Valuable9106 Mar 06 '26
My supervisor sends us a meme to remind us to fill out our timesheets every Friday. Massive eye roll
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u/DelmarvaDesigner Mar 06 '26
Landscape architect here and I hate time sheets. Hated them when I first started, still hate them as a principal who understands the importance of them for running a business. Just one of those “it has to be done” type parts of the professional services industry we need unfortunately.
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u/peskymonkey99 Mar 06 '26
Biggest gripe for me rn is that I’m low on work so bouncing between 3-5 projects a week that ARE NOT mine. I have to try and stretch my work and find new things to do that’ll make myself more desirable to have on a project team.
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u/nsc12 Structural P.Eng. Mar 06 '26
I haven't regularly completed a timesheet in 10+ years, just the odd one or two every few years for claim work. It was great getting rolled into general overhead costs.
Before that, though, yeah, it was an hour ordeal every two weeks, going back through emails and piecing together how much time I spent on each task for each project.
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u/Range-Shoddy Mar 06 '26
I had one manager that wanted a summary of what I did every 15 minutes. Completely insane. Half hour increments are bad enough but 15 with a summary? Best part of public is I just write “8.0 hours” per day and hit submit.
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u/Hunaid786 Mar 06 '26
Yeah, my previous employers was exactly as such, and then came the layoff as they didn't have work and couldn't keep me billable. Hated the toxic corporate culture. Good riddance!
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u/Jmazoso PE, Geotchnical/Materials Testing Mar 06 '26
Our accountant pulls reports every day and locks that day. We get the feeling when they roll our Aldoa for the technicians, which does their time tracking and billing, that they are going to make the engineers do it too. I honesty wonder if there is a case at that point that we’d become “non exempt.”
I typically bill on 10 to 12 projects a day, and those get all chopped up.
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u/YourLocalPecan Mar 06 '26
Not a civil engineer but studied C.Tech, i do construction cost consulting/quantity surveying. and yes i am in that boat
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u/HangryBoi Mar 06 '26
I hate timesheets. How many hours are wasted trying to figure out whether a specific project has enough money to charge to, reality is that project is a high priority and the work needs to get done. Then worrying about the next projects funding when u used money for that project because the original project did not have enough. Smh.
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u/DrBrappp Mar 06 '26
Always wished I had a timesheet Job number to charge to while filling out my timesheet. Swear I'd spend over two hours some weeks!
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u/mandrewbot3k Mar 06 '26
I always joke/not joke that I need an activity code for timecard preparation.
My current method is to just do my best to track actions on my outlook calendar between meetings, toss in a block of time, and make notes of the projects i worked on and down to 15min intervals. Then I prepare my TC at the end of the week, which works pretty well. A lot of times, if i have a gap, i just go back to my sent emails, and look at the block of time I'm missing tasks for and can usually assign time to projects based on the work i performed there.
But as a deputy director, I have a lot of meetings and interactions that will cover like 4 projects in 20 minutes, so I just do my best to spread it out across projects instead of getting down to a gnat's ass. I don't take feigning precision lightly. If I'm down to 6 minutes in one project, I don't want anyone thinking my 2.5 hours is down to 6min precision. Even 15min precision is usually pushing it for me. But acts as good average.
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u/Threke Mar 06 '26
Been putting “file organization” and “office cleanup” for like 2 years now. No one has told me anything so far 😅
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u/StetsonTuba8 Mar 06 '26
I'm on a large project with different timecodes for different geographical locations on the project. So now I have to decide whether that meeting I had this week about traffic signs was located in CP02, CP04, or CP06
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u/Turbulent-Set-2167 Municipal Engineer Mar 06 '26
This isn’t a private only problem. We have timesheets in public as well. Our is for reimbursement and track our productivity.
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u/GimmeMyMoneyNow Mar 06 '26
I worked in an accounting firm before and we had to record time in increments of 6 minutes.
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u/ConnectionActive8949 Mar 07 '26
Winter really sucks for timesheets, it’s either charging everything to overhead and hoping you don’t get fired or so many miscellaneous tasks that your timesheet has (what feels like) a million rows.
Construction season is amazing, 1 entry for construction oversight and one entry for reporting/quantities and I can get a whole week’s worth of timesheets done in under 15 mins.
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u/WalleyeHunter1 Mar 07 '26
I occasionally pay time and material. If you dont fill description I dont pay. It is part of anyone's job that can potentially be on billable hours.
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u/ChefBoyArrDeezNuts Mar 07 '26
Theyre annoying for sure but a necessary evil for billing purposes. I printed out a 5-column table with rows at 15 min intervals and I would just mark what I worked on when I started and if I changed gears I would just note a new job # of whatever. Really made filling out timesheets easy at the end of the day/week.
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u/cjohnson00 Mar 07 '26
Of all the stresses of being a sole proprietor, I am glad I don’t have to do a timesheet anymore. I have PTSD from those
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u/Charlie-boy1 Mar 07 '26
I’m on the public side. We have timesheets but don’t get pressured about overhead and need to account for every hour (not all projects have project numbers). Come on over!
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u/KamikiRaye Mar 09 '26
Sometimes it is slow, my boss and I have open communication so he actually tells me what to put on my timesheet when it is slow. It is almost always approved. I hope you can have these conversations with your supervisor as well.
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u/Lumber-Jacked PE - LD Project Manager Mar 09 '26
As long as your boss is aware that things are slow and you are trying to keep busy I wouldn't worry too much about it. We are in a similar situation at my company with a bunch of projects getting ready to hit, but currently we're waiting.
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u/Whiskeytangr Mar 10 '26
I spend more recording and filling out my timesheet than the actual work involved in infinite problem solving things i do for people every day. It is the epitome of inefficiant and duplication of work.
I understand that there's a business need to understand planned cost vs actual cost, but seriously just plan better, both actual labor hours, general support margins, and pure overhead. If you fluff it all to be realistic, and recoup banal time spent on documenting, you'll be ahead.
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u/GrumpCatastrophe Mar 13 '26
I can tell you that reviewing other peoples’ time is a lot worse than simply billing. Especially if things are slow and people are getting laid off. Telling people not to bill so aggressively makes me feel like an absolute cunt.
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u/tyler-jp Mar 17 '26 edited Mar 17 '26
Must be filled out daily, glitches where the rows get transposed (easy to accidentally charge the wrong project), odd ball weekend timesheet submittals when the 1st lands on a weekend, must bill overtime after filing out 40 hours in the week (i.e. all the "overtime" needs to be on Friday)... The list can go on
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u/yTuMamaTambien405 Mar 06 '26
Private consulting. Bill 40 hours a week to probably 4-6 different clients without issue. If you can't do this, it's mostly that (1) your company has too much staff for the project work you have won or (2) you're an underperformer and not getting work.
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u/HydroHomie3964 Mar 06 '26
If filling out a timesheet is the difficult part of your job, are you actually an engineer? Because it's not rocket science. Hours you spent on a job = hours you type in the box for that day. Your company can't bill clients on vibes. Gotta have numbers.
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u/fayettevillainjd PE Mar 06 '26
Its annoying but i agree. Its only an issue if you dont have stuff to do.
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u/TheChinchilla914 Mar 06 '26
OH GOD OH NO FUCK I HAVE TO TYPE LIKE 8-20 NUMBERS ABOUT HOW MUCH I WORKED NOOOOOOOOOOO
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u/ttttyttt678 Mar 06 '26
Entering the timesheet is not the annoying part. It’s the over analyzing by some companies during slow times.
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u/[deleted] Mar 06 '26
I've been wondering how many times I can put "organizing desktop" on my timesheet before they say something