Photographing timesheets instead of typing them: what is technically possible today

Can handwritten timesheets really be read automatically?

Partly, and that is the honest answer. Digits in pre-printed fields can be read reliably. Free text on an empty line markedly less so. What is decisive is therefore not whether a vendor promises “handwriting recognition”, but what happens to the uncertain values.

A system that guesses and quietly carries on calculating causes errors nobody notices. A system that flags uncertain values and puts them up for confirmation still saves the greater part of the work – because the preparing is the effort, not the confirming.

Why paper at all?

The same question as with the take-off, and the same answer: nobody operates a tablet on site. With timesheets there is a second point – they are often signed, and on dayworks that signature is the evidence towards the client.

The full reasoning is in Digitising handwritten site sheets .

What is on a timesheet – and how much of it is readable

The table shows the most important lever: structure beats model. A sheet with pre-printed fields and tick boxes is read markedly better than a blank sheet – whatever technology sits behind it.

The three things that help most

1. Job number instead of site name. There are three “Müllerstraße” in the district, the job number only once. A number is also easier to read than a word.
2. Boxes instead of lines. Every digit gets its place. It sounds pedantic and it is the biggest jump in quality you can achieve without software.
3. A decent photo. Lay the sheet flat, even light, whole sheet in frame. Costs nothing and has more effect than any model improvement.

What the office routine saves

Work it out on your own numbers:

At fifteen employees, one sheet a week and three minutes of capture, that is around three hours a month – manageable. With daily sheets and supplement types it quickly becomes a multiple of that. The point at which a changeover pays off is different for every firm; what matters is that you calculate it rather than estimate it.

What this is not: a working-time record

A timesheet that has been read out assigns times to a site. That is something different from a legally sound record of working time, and it should not be sold as one.

On the legal position: the German Federal Ministry of Labour’s draft bill on recording working time has not passed the Bundestag. The draft provides a transition period of several years for firms under 50 employees and exemptions for very small firms. Anyone trying to sell you software with the argument “the law is coming anyway” is arguing on unsafe ground.

Data protection: timesheets are personnel data

A timesheet says who worked when and for how long. That is personal data about employees – with corresponding requirements:

• processing in Germany, with a data processing agreement
• no use of the contents to train someone else’s models
• clear deletion periods
• involvement of the works council where one exists

Ask about it before you upload sheets into any system. That applies to every vendor, ourselves included.

Frequently asked

Does the employee have to do anything differently? No, if the template stays. A one-off revision of the template towards boxes and job numbers is worthwhile – after that nothing changes for the crew.

What happens with illegible handwriting? The value is flagged and put up for confirmation instead of guessed. If a person cannot decipher it, the software cannot either – then the only thing that helps is asking.

Can we map our own supplement types? Yes, that is a question of the template. Ticked boxes are recognised well, precisely because they are not handwriting.

Do the hours stay attached to the site? Yes, and that is where the real benefit lies: an hour that only appears in the payroll says nothing about whether a job paid off.

What about employees who send their hours by message? It happens and it is the worst of all routes: no structure, no signature, no completeness check. If it cannot be stopped, at least the same structure as on the sheet should be kept – date, job number, times, break.

Can we merge timesheets and take-off sheets? Possible, but rarely sensible. The two are filled in by different people, checked at different times and needed for different purposes. A combined sheet leads in practice to one of the two halves regularly staying empty.

How long do we have to keep timesheets? They belong to the records evidencing wages and – on dayworks – the remuneration, and are subject to corresponding retention periods. Settle the specific duration, and whether purely digital filing is enough, with your tax adviser; it depends on the type of record and on your bookkeeping.

What if our crew fills the sheet in in Polish or Turkish? Digits and ticked boxes are language-independent – and they are what is actually read. For the name field use a list to tick or a personnel number; that makes the language it is written in entirely irrelevant. A remark in free text is a hint whatever language it is in, not a data source.

A template that can be read out

The difference between a hard-to-read and a well-readable timesheet lies in the layout, not in the handwriting. Concretely:

The change costs an hour’s work on the form and then has effect on every single sheet. It is worthwhile even if you never use software: a sheet with mandatory fields is filled in more completely than one with empty lines.

Daywork hours: the case where the sheet is worth money

On dayworks, billing is by effort, not by item. The timesheet is then not administration but the basis of the invoice – and is checked by the client accordingly.

What a daywork sheet has to carry:

1. Date and times, not just the total of hours.
2. Names of the employees deployed, with qualification if billing depends on it.
3. Equipment used with its deployment time – an excavator and a plate compactor are paid separately.
4. Description of the work, as brief as possible, as specific as necessary.
5. Signature of the client or site management on site.

Point 5 is the decisive one and the one most often missing. Confirmation obtained after the fact is markedly harder to get than one on site – and without it the daywork hour is hard to enforce in a dispute.

The handover to payroll

A timesheet that has been read out serves two purposes that have to be kept apart:

All three evaluations come from the same sheets but answer different questions. Producing only the second means knowing at month end what the wages cost – but not whether the job paid for itself.

What the change triggers in the firm

Honestly, part of this is that a change to the timesheet is not automatically welcomed by employees. Two things help:

• Explain the purpose. Boxes instead of lines look like control. But the point is that the hours arrive complete – including the supplements that otherwise get lost.
• Do not ask for anything extra. If the new template has more fields than the old one, it is badly designed. It should take the same entries in a more readable form.

Where a works council exists, the introduction belongs on its agenda anyway – timesheets are behavioural and performance data.

Keeping timesheets and the site diary apart

Both are written on site, both end up in the office, and both are regularly mixed up. But they answer different questions:

The mistake that costs money is leaving out the second. If a site stands still because the access was blocked or an instruction was missing, that is an obstruction – and it has to be documented and notified in order to come back to it later.

A timesheet saying “8 hrs” evidences attendance. It does not evidence that four of them were waiting time. If your sheet template has a field for obstructions, that costs one line and, in case of doubt, saves a variation.

In summary

Reading timesheets automatically works well where the form plays along – fixed fields, digits, tick boxes. The biggest lever lies not in the software but in the template and the photo. And the approval step stays: a human confirms, because responsibility for the hour billed is yours.

What the same routine looks like for the take-off is on the page about Zettel recognition ; assigning times to sites is described on Staff and vehicle fleet .