How should you audit field-service timesheets before payroll?
Audit field-service timesheets in five passes: population, punches, payable time, approvals, and payroll tie-out. Do not start by eyeballing a weekly total. Start with who should be on the file, then follow each exception to a documented resolution.
Under the federal baseline, covered employers must keep accurate employee records that include hours worked and wages earned. The Department of Labor explains the required records. The law requires no particular timekeeping format, but the plan must be complete and accurate. That standard applies regardless of the tool used.
- Freeze the pay-period file and employee roster so late edits cannot move underneath the audit.
- Find exceptions: missing or duplicate punches, overlaps, unusually long shifts, time outside the schedule, and entries with no job or service code.
- Decide what time is payable before deciding where it belongs for job costing.
- Require a named approver and a reason for every correction. Preserve the original entry.
- Recalculate regular and overtime hours by workweek, then tie employee totals to the payroll import and control total.
A clean result is not a screen full of green check marks. It is a file in which every active hourly worker is accounted for, every flagged entry has an owner and resolution, and the approved totals match what payroll will import.
Run this pre-payroll checklist in order
Start with completeness, then test whether recorded time is payable, then test coding. That sequence keeps a missing punch from disappearing inside a job-cost report. If you are still choosing a capture method, the construction time-tracking software guide explains the tradeoffs without replacing this control.
Hours worked each day and total hours worked each workweek are basic records under the federal rules. See the DOL recordkeeping list. For a fixed schedule, an exception still has to record actual hours when the worker spends more or less time than scheduled. The DOL addresses fixed-schedule exceptions directly.
| Control | What to compare | Release condition |
|---|---|---|
| Population | Active hourly roster, new hires, terminations, leave, and submitted timesheets | Every expected worker is present or explained |
| Punch integrity | Starts, stops, breaks, manual entries, overlaps, and duplicate entries | Every gap or collision is corrected or documented |
| Payable time | Dispatch history, work orders, schedule, training, travel, and after-hours messages | Work time is captured even when coding was wrong |
| Breaks | Punches against what actually happened on the shift | No automatic deduction remains where duties continued |
| Job coding | Customer, job, phase, cost code, service item, and work order | Every paid hour has the best supported destination |
| Edits | Original value, new value, editor, timestamp, and reason | Every manual change has a visible audit trail |
| Approval | Worker submission and supervisor review | The person closest to the work resolves field facts |
| Tie-out | Approved hours by worker versus payroll import totals | Headcount, regular hours, overtime hours, and paid-time categories agree |
Federal guidance treats short rest periods, usually 20 minutes or less, as paid working time. The DOL also distinguishes bona fide meal periods from working breaks. Travel from job site to job site during the workday is work time under federal guidance. See the DOL travel-time examples.
Use location, dispatch, and vehicle data as exception evidence, not as an automatic reason to delete time. A location mismatch can mean a wrong job code, a weak signal, a supply-house stop, or an actual time error. The reviewer still needs to establish what happened.
Test overtime by workweek, not by pay-period average
Federal overtime generally applies after 40 hours in a workweek for covered, nonexempt employees. The DOL summarizes the federal overtime threshold. The federal workweek is a fixed, recurring 168-hour period, and averaging hours across two or more weeks is not permitted. The DOL describes the federal workweek test. This matters when a two-week payroll shows 38 hours in one week and 42 in the next. A pay-period total of 80 does not erase the second-week overtime.
Audit each employee with these fields visible: workweek start, daily hours, weekly total, pay code, rate inputs, and overtime result. If a bonus, piece rate, or multiple straight-time rates may affect the regular rate, route the record to the payroll owner instead of forcing a simple hours-only calculation.
Advance authorization is a management control, not a basis for removing worked time: federal guidance says a no-unauthorized-overtime rule does not defeat the right to pay for compensable overtime that was worked. See the DOL discussion of overtime that was not approved in advance. Pay the supported time, document the policy issue separately, and stop the same exception from recurring.
After the wage-hour test, make sure the same approved hours land in the accounting system. Use the separate workflow to reconcile job costs between QuickBooks and field service software when payroll hours and job-cost hours travel through different integrations.
Worked example: a travel-code error changes overtime
This is a hypothetical example, not a report from a live payroll.
A technician has 41.5 recorded hours before review. The dispatcher log and two work orders show another 0.5 hour spent driving from one customer job to the next. The time exists in the field system, but it was marked nonpayable because the wrong activity code was selected. Travel from job site to job site during the workday is work time under federal guidance. The DOL gives this exact category as an hours-worked example.
| Check | Before correction | After correction |
|---|---|---|
| Total hours | 41.5 | 42.0 |
| Regular hours | 40.0 | 40.0 |
| Overtime hours | 1.5 | 2.0 |
| Gross pay at a $24 regular rate and $36 overtime rate | $1,014 | $1,032 |
| Difference | $18 |
The reviewer should change the activity to the proper paid travel code, assign the correct jobs or overhead treatment under company policy, record why the edit was made, and rerun the workweek calculation. This simplified example assumes the stated regular rate applies and no other pay changes the calculation. The useful control is the chain from evidence to correction to recalculated payroll, not the neatness of the original timesheet.
Keep the evidence behind the approved total
DOL guidance says employers should preserve payroll records for at least three years and records used for wage computations, including time cards and work schedules, for two years. Read the federal retention summary. State, local, contract, union, and prevailing-wage requirements can add obligations, so the payroll owner should apply the rules that cover the actual workforce and job.
For each closed pay period, retain the raw entry, corrected entry, editor, timestamp, reason, approval, final payroll export, exception report, and tie-out. Restrict post-approval changes. If a correction arrives after release, process it through a visible adjustment workflow rather than overwriting the closed record.
Software should make this evidence easy to retrieve. Before relying on an accounting sync, verify a contractor software-to-QuickBooks connection, including which record wins after an edit and whether rejected entries are visible. A successful sync notification is not a payroll tie-out.