A foreman's weekly timesheet checklist

When should a foreman review the week?

A foreman should review a few minutes each day and do the full pass on Friday before leaving the site. A gap is easy to fix the afternoon it happens, when the worker remembers where the truck was. By the next Wednesday it is a guess.

What is on the checklist, and why does each step matter?

Twelve steps cover the week, and each one exists because of something that goes wrong when it is skipped. Work through them in order. The reasons are written beside the steps so you can decide what to do when a case does not fit.

1. 1

   Count heads against the schedule

   Who was supposed to be here and who was? A missing person is the quickest error to find, and the one that costs most when it is not found.

2. 2

   Check that every day has a start and an end

   An open-ended day is the most expensive question on Monday. It is a call to the worker, a guess at the time and a correction the office has to explain.

3. 3

   Add up each day

   On site, driving and other time should add up to the shift. A hole means time nobody recorded. The worked example below shows how to check it in a minute.

4. 4

   Look at lunch

   A meal period is not work time only when the worker is completely relieved of duty. Ordinarily 30 minutes or more is long enough (29 CFR 785.19). If a worker ate while watching a delivery, that was not a meal period, so record what happened.

5. 5

   Check drives and supply runs

   They should be on their own lines and not folded into the next job. Drives between sites are paid time, and where they land decides what each job cost. See drive time policy.

6. 6

   Look at anyone who changed sites

   Each job should carry the hours it used, and a worker who moved at 11:00 should not show one job for the whole shift.

7. 7

   Look for work off the record

   Anything before power-on, after power-off, or on a phone call from the super at night. If the company knows work is being done and takes the benefit, it has to pay for it, and management has to stop the work it does not want (29 CFR 785.13).

8. 8

   Say why for late starts and early finishes

   A reason on the record saves the office a phone call and stops the same exception coming back every week.

9. 9

   Mark rain days, sent-home days and time off

   A recorded day off is not an exception. An unexplained zero is.

10. 10

    Correct with a reason, and tell the worker

    Never overwrite a time silently. A correction carries who, when and why, and the worker should hear about it from you before they see it on a sheet.

11. 11

    Do not round

    Rounding is accepted only when it averages out so workers are paid for all the time they work (29 CFR 785.48(b)). A foreman rounding everyone to 8.0 hours is the case that does not average out.

12. 12

    Hand off before the deadline

    Tell the office what is cleared, what is open and which crew moves next week. The payroll calendar starts when you finish. See the weekly payroll process.

How do you check a day in one minute?

Multiply the crew by the scheduled shift, subtract what the record shows, and make sure the difference is explained by named items. If a gap is left over, that is the hour to chase, and it is better to find it Friday afternoon than at payroll.

What should a foreman not do with a timesheet?

Do not copy Monday's times to the other four days, do not approve for anyone but yourself, and do not clear an exception you have not read. Each of these makes a record look finished while it is wrong, and each is hard to defend later.

• Copying one day across the week. Real days differ. A record where every day starts at 6:00 sharp tells the reader nobody looked.
• Signing for a worker. If a worker cannot confirm a time, mark it as open and let the office follow up.
• Changing a time without telling the person. They will find out on payday, and the correction will look like an accusation.
• Holding the week for one open item. Hand off what is clean and flag the rest.
• Using the record to settle a score. The record is for the week's accuracy. A foreman who uses it as a weapon trains the crew to stop correcting honest mistakes.

What do you do when a worker says the record is wrong?

Look at the record together, ask what the worker remembers and correct it with a reason if they are right. Start from the record, not from memory, and treat the question as ordinary. Most disputes are a missed power-on, a stop that was not recorded or a lunch that was not a real lunch.

1. 1

   Open the day

   Look at the start, the end and each stretch in between. Ask the worker to walk through the day.

2. 2

   Find the cause

   A late power-on, a dead battery, a drive that was not recorded or a shop stop. Name it.

3. 3

   Correct it with a reason

   Write the cause. The original stays on file.

4. 4

   Send what you cannot settle to the office

   If the worker still disagrees, the office reviews it. If your company has a worker portal, a correction request goes in with the worker's own reason.

What is the short version for the truck dash?

• Everyone who worked is on the record, and nobody who did not.
• Every day has a start and an end.
• Each day adds up to the shift.
• Lunches are what they say they are.
• Drives and supply runs are their own lines.
• Workers who changed sites show both sites.
• No work happened before power-on or after power-off.
• Late, early and off days have a reason.
• Every correction has a reason and the worker knows.
• Nothing is rounded.
• The office knows what is open and where the crew goes Monday.

How ZeroBadge handles this

ZeroBadge builds the week from each worker's badge, so a foreman starts from a record and not a blank sheet. An exceptions list shows missing clock-outs, late starts, early finishes and time outside approved sites. Every minute is classified on site, in transit or other, so the day-adds-up check is done for you. Corrections keep an audit trail and nothing is silently edited. A badge records the badge, not who wears it, so the foreman's headcount is still the check. See timesheet approval.