What paper timesheets really cost a cleaning company
The biggest cost of paper timesheets isn’t theft. In my experience, it’s the handwriting. Someone writes down their hours, someone else has to read them, and when that second person can’t tell whether it’s a 6 or an 8, somebody pays for the guess.
Is it a 6 or an 8?
A cleaner finishes a shift and writes the hours on a sheet, usually in a hurry. The sheet reaches the office a day or a week later. Then someone has to read it and type it into payroll, and that person wasn’t there and can’t ask what the number meant.
Say they read a 6 as an 8. You’ve paid two hours you didn’t owe: $36 at $18 an hour. Say they read an 8 as a 6. A cleaner has been paid two hours short, and they will notice. (These are example numbers, not a statistic.)
Either way, someone pays. The money is often the smaller cost. The underpaid cleaner has to chase it. The manager has to find the sheet, work out what it really said, and have an awkward conversation. And a cleaner who has to ask twice for what they have earned starts to wonder what else gets missed. That makes people unhappy.
Every handoff is a chance to get it wrong
A paper timesheet is written, handed in, read, typed and checked. That is at least four handoffs, and the person who knows what the number meant, the cleaner, is not in the room when it is typed. Nothing about the sheet can tell you it was misread. You find out when someone complains.
The other costs, kept honest
Transcription is the one I see catch people out most often, but it isn’t the only cost:
- Your time. Collecting the sheets, deciphering them, chasing the missing ones and typing them into payroll. Published figures vary: one vendor says 3 to 5 hours per pay period for 20 employees. Our calculator assumes two hours for a crew of ten.
- Small rounding and padding. A few minutes added to a start or finish time. Most of it is rounding, not deliberate theft, and published estimates vary widely, so our calculator uses a cautious 1.5% of payroll.
- Disputes. When a client or a cleaner questions the hours, a handwritten sheet is a weak answer.
How much each one costs you depends on your crew. That is why we built a timesheet cost calculator with assumptions you can see and change, and sources listed with it.
What changes with mobile check-in
With digital time and attendance there is no handwriting to read. The cleaner taps in and out on their own phone, the time is stamped automatically, and GPS confirms the check-in happened at the site. The hours flow into a timesheet you approve and export, so nobody retypes a number and nobody has to ask, “Is that a 6 or an 8?”
What it can’t do
It doesn’t fix everything. A cleaner can still forget to check out, and checking in at the right place doesn’t prove how well the work was done. That is why SeeMySite also shows who is still checked in, lets cleaners attach photos to a job, and compares budgeted hours with actual hours for every site.
A ten-minute test with your own sheets
Take last pay period’s sheets and count three things:
- How many entries were hard to read.
- How many you had to query or correct.
- How long you spent collecting, reading and typing them.
Then put your own numbers into the timesheet cost calculator instead of the defaults. If the result surprises you, you will know it is your own figures, not ours.
No card required. Looking for the bigger picture? See scheduling and time tracking for cleaning companies.
Next guide: the first 30 days for a new cleaner. Or see all guides.
Related: the case of the Phantom Cleaner, on ghost employees and how to catch them.