Monitask blog

A payroll check template is a reusable layout for the check and the itemized statement attached to it. Federal law does not require an employer to hand an employee a pay stub at all — 29 CFR part 516 requires records to be kept, not furnished. Whether a statement must be issued, and what it…

Schedule variance is SV = EV − PV: earned value minus planned value at a point in time. Negative means behind plan. The result is in currency, not days, and it has a property most explanations omit — as a project finishes, earned value converges on planned value, so SV approaches zero and the schedule…

A timesheet error is a difference between hours worked and hours recorded. The expensive ones are small and regular rather than large and rare: 6 minutes a day costs $27,500.00 a year across 50 people at $22.00 an hour, and amounts to 1.25% of a 40-hour week — below the threshold any practical review would…

Contractor time tracking records hours against work rather than against a schedule. The distinction matters beyond bookkeeping: the IRS asks whether a business controls “or has the right to control what the worker does and how the worker does his or her job,” so a system that sets a contractor’s hours is itself a factor….

A GPS time clock records a location alongside each clock-in and clock-out, so a timesheet carries where the work started as well as when. It answers the attendance question for field crews that a desk time clock cannot. It does not provide continuous proof of presence: the accuracy figures in circulation measure the satellite signal…

The Defense Contract Audit Agency issues no timekeeping regulation. The requirements come from the contract: DFARS 252.242-7006(c)(9) and (c)(10) require a timekeeping system that identifies labor by cost objective and a labor distribution system that charges direct and indirect labor correctly. Everything else called a “DCAA requirement” is audit practice derived from those two criteria…

Law firms bill time in tenths of an hour: six minutes is 0.1. Each entry carries a matter number, a timekeeper, the time, and a description of the work. Firms acting for corporate clients and insurers add UTBMS task codes and submit invoices in the LEDES format. The ABA Model Rules require the fee to…

Tracking project progress means producing one defensible number: the percentage of planned work actually finished. That number depends on the method used to credit partially finished work, and the choice changes the answer. A project with four of ten tasks done reads 40% under a 0/100 rule and 55% under a 50/50 rule — the…

A project management dashboard shows the few numbers that tell you whether a project will finish on time and on budget. The core set is schedule variance, cost variance, the schedule and cost performance indexes, and a forecast of final cost. All four come from three inputs: the budget, the percentage of work actually complete,…

Decimal hours express minutes as a fraction of an hour: 8 hours 12 minutes becomes 8.20, not 8.12. Divide the minutes by 60 and add the result to the whole hours. Payroll systems need decimal hours because pay is hours multiplied by a rate, and 8:12 cannot be multiplied. Entering 8:12 as 8.12 shorts the…

Accounting firms track time to calculate three numbers: realization rate, write-downs and work in progress. Realization is the amount billed divided by the standard value of hours worked. Because hours sit in the denominator, unrecorded time makes realization look higher than it is — a firm capturing 85% of its hours can show 100% realization…

The best time tracking software for consultants records time against a client and a project, separates billable from non-billable hours, and turns approved time into an invoice without re-entry. Beyond those three, the choice depends on how you bill: hourly work needs billing increments, retainers need a running balance, and fixed-fee work needs an effective…