Tag Archives: timesheet audit

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The Timesheet Audit with TimeControl

Timesheet Auditability, TimeControl, Chris Vandersluis, Christopher Vandersluis, Christopher Peter VandersluisFor many organizations, there comes a time when the data in your timesheet becomes the subject of an audit.  There can be many reasons for this.  Perhaps there is a research and development tax claim and the government auditor wishes to reconcile the time you have recorded in timesheets against the task-by-task descriptions in the claim. Perhaps your organization is a publicly traded company and undergoing verification for Sarbanes-Oxley compliance.  Perhaps there is a need to reconcile and validate the time taken by each employee for sick leave, vacation or personal time against the Human Resources department records.  Or, perhaps it’s just a validation of collected timesheets for some other internal process.  Whatever the reason, TimeControl was designed to support the auditing of its records.

TimeControl Administrators never fear a timesheet audit!

When something is woven into the architecture, we rarely think about it.  Auditing isn’t a “feature” or “function” of TimeControl.  There’s no Audit button.  The manner of collecting and verifying data has been thought about since the earliest days of TimeControl’s existence decades ago.  It is a part of everything in the product.

We take care to ensure the timesheet data is auditable in so many ways.  Once data is posted, for example, it can only be changed through our adjustment or Debit/Credit functionality which tracks who made the change, what change was made and exactly the date and time of the change.  We also track who approved a timesheet and when and the path of that timesheet from draft to released to rejected (if it was) to released again and finally to posted.  We track the work of Alternate Users to ensure that the audit trail isn’t obscured by someone doing timesheet data changes on behalf of someone else.  We also make sure that the data that is going into the timesheet is coming from lists of employees and charges that have been validated and tracked by design with referential integrity.

We have had many praises from both internal and government auditors for how effectively TimeControl gives them what they need to accurately report what happened with timesheet data.

You can find out more on the TimeControl Auditability story in the TimeControl Auditability white paper on the TimeControl website or, feel free to contact the TimeControl team to discuss your interest in timesheet auditability.

 

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FAQ: Tracking approvals

Question: We now have clients sign paper timesheets to show they were approved.  How would we deal with this requirement in an automated timesheet like TimeControl?

TimesheetAuditability_300x200.jpg This is a great question and one faced by any organization that is shifting from paper-based timesheets to an automated system.  Signature approvals are designed to have evidence that the person who signed the document actually saw the document they signed and their signature signifies their approval of the content.  There are two main areas of reluctance for auditors to accept an automated version of a signature in a computer-based timesheet:

  1. How do we know that the person whose name is now on the timesheet is actually the person who approved it? And;
  2. How can we be sure that the data in the view the person approved has not been changed.

In TimeControl, both of these concerns are dealt with in the way that TimeControl deals with auditability of the movement of timesheet ownership.

When a timesheet is created.  TimeControl notes in the database the user name and the date/time.  Then, whenever the timesheet changes ownership through releasing it for approval, the timesheet being rejected, updated re-released, approved and ultimate posted, TimeControl creates an entry in the Timesheet Release Log.

If a user is using the Alternate User function to log into TimeControl as someone else, TimeControl accommodates this also.  In this case the audit log will show both the person who had the responsibility of releasing or rejecting the timesheet as well as who the actual user was who performed the action.

Since this means that there is no reason to share one’s credentials to get into TimeControl, virtually all financial auditors HMS has encountered accept the user name entry in the audit log as equivalent to a signature on a piece of paper.  This has been tested in audits by authorities such as both Revenue Canada and the US IRS for R&D Tax Credits, Defense Contract Audit Agency audits, Sarbanes-Oxley compliance audits and countless other situations where timesheet data is part of an audit.

To be certain that this functionality will pass your own auditing standards, you should consult your Finance team and, if need be, have them speak to the technical experts at HMS.

 

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FAQ: How do I make corrections in a closed timesheet?

balance_debit_credit_dice_250x250Question:
If I need to make a correction in an already closed timesheet, can I do so? And, if so, can I see what was changed?

Answer:
Yes. This has been a part of TimeControl since version 1.0 and it is something that HMS has spent a lot of time on. The function allows you to both remove hours and add hours as you adjust and you can force those changes to balance so we’ve called the function Debit/Credit just as you would in an accounting system. The Debit/Credit function occurs only once the main organizational approval has completed. You can identify every line that has been adjusted and as it must comply with the Defense Contractor Audit Agency, TimeControl must be able to re-create a timesheet as it was first entered at the time by the employee and for each change that occurs. Using the optional balanced Debit/Credit, you can ensure that any adjustments to the timesheet result in the same total that was approved by the supervisor. This allows project managers to redistribute hours from one task to another or even one project to another but not to affect the timesheet totals that may have already been sent to payroll and HR.

Debit/Credit is one of the functions that makes TimeControl completely auditable. For more information about Debit/Credit and how it is used in the Matrix Approval Process, see www.timecontrol.com/use-cases/matrix-approvals.

In the historical timesheet, TimeControl optionally shows the source user of each line and, in the background, we can see the time-date stamp for when the line was saved and posted. When you look at adjustments you can instantly see any reversed lines and their corresponding adjusting lines.