4 Disadvantages of Paper Timesheets

Still using tracking your time on paper? Put the paper timesheet down and watch this episode of Time Tracking Tuesday, where Curt tells you about 4 disadvantages of using paper timesheets.

Paper timesheets are a really dumb idea. Why are paper timesheets…paper timesheets are a great idea. They’re better than not having timesheets. It’s important, it’s incredibly valuable to have time tracking data. And if you have to do it on paper, with a crayon and some construction paper, I guess that’s one way to go. The disadvantage is –

So reason number one why time tracking on paper is bad. This is not the 1900’s.

Reason number two is there’s no audit trail. You can’t really tell who changed what when and where the paper went, and how do you know somebody didn’t take it out of the file and do something to it and put it back.

Reason number three is there’s no real approval workflow either. I guess, well, I guess there could be. I guess you could say “Fred said this is OK,” and “Sally, payroll said it’s OK too.” You know, you could do that. But how do you know that’s really not just a forged signature. It’s easier to forge something with your hand on paper than it is to do it digitally with computers. It’s an assumption of bad actors that there might be bad actors or people just helping each other out or the “buddy punching” idea. That kind of thing.

Buddy punching is when I don’t make it in on time and I ask Matt to clock in for me. Well that could be done on paper, too. Theoretically. So buddy punching…there’s nothing you can do to stop buddy punching when it’s paper.

The last reason I wanna mention about why paper is bad is…well, actually there’s two more reasons. Somebody has to take that paper and type it into a computer somewhere so that payroll can happen. Why not just have it go right into the computer in the first place? Hello.

And the last reason is data security. You’ve got pieces of paper flying around and faxes and mail, laying on the desk and getting stuck under the car seat. What’s to stop a competitor from getting hold of one of those pieces of paper and going “Oh, look! They’re working for customer A, B and C and they’ve got their best engineer on that job.” So there’s a data security issue from having paper floating around. Paper’s got issues.

And then, of course, maybe somebody cares about the trees. Trees…trees…trees. Trees are good. Why are we…trees.