Setting up Timesheets

Caroline Dunnell

Hi, what is the best way of setting up Timesheets on Smartsheet. I have tried a few different ways, but none of them work how I want it.

Engineers will submit a timesheet once a week covering 5 days - 5 different hours to submit inc overtime - possibly including 5 different projects to allocate to. I was going to do this on a form to be submitted once a week onto a master tracker.

This seems to be the most efficient way. Unless anyone else has any other ideas.

We have approximately 25 Engineers and will need to be approved by different Project Managers (we can do on dynamic view).

Does anyone have any other ways?

Matt Lynn-PCG

@Caroline Dunnell

There's a few ways to do this but they're all similar IMO. The way you outline is fine / acceptable. The only issue you have really is managing the data and with 25 people once a week that doesn't seem like a big deal. The possible risk is if someone doesn't submit or someone submits more than once thinking it didn't work etc. I've done time systems that have to analyze the data and only select the one based on some logic to determine if it's within the realm of possibility. If they're just submitting total hours it's easier than if you were doing a clock in / clock out cycle as then you'd have to build a rule to auto clock out after X hours etc. If you see something missing in yours you could do an update request to clear it up.

The other way would be to build a sheet with the 25 names and the days those times are due and pre-populate it for a long period of time, maybe a year at a time for example; then set up a automation to send those specific people an update request on those days. Then you'd be able to track who has responded etc. But I'm not sure that's better than your original idea, just an option.

With the pre-populated idea you could do a "current user" filtered to "this week" and share that report to all 25. Then they'd only see their own rows that are this week…. or this month etc. Could put a status on it so they could enter it then mark it final or approved etc.

Caroline Dunnell

I have trialled a few ways and they work ok, but seem laborious and not sure it's making my life any easier than what I am currently doing on excel.

I think I will give your one a go and see how that works out. Thanks