Labour allocation vs timesheets

A timesheet and a labour allocation sheet both record hours, so it's easy to think you only need one of them. In fact they answer different questions, and if there is ever a claim or an audit, you will need both.

• The timesheet, and the payroll that is worked out from it, shows how many hours each person was paid for that week and what they cost.
• The labour allocation sheet shows what those hours were spent on: which task, which area, and which change or daywork job.

The Society of Construction Law's guide on delay claims, which is widely used across the industry, splits them in the same way. It treats daily allocation records, which show where each worker and machine was working, as a record of where the resources went. It treats payroll and timesheets as a record of what they cost.^[1]

Why the two never quite match

The hours on the payroll and the hours on the allocation sheet will always be a little different, and that's fine. People are paid for time that doesn't belong to any one task. That includes travel time, paid breaks, inductions, training, holidays, overtime, and time spent waiting because of someone else's delay.

Your job isn't to make the two match exactly. It's to be able to explain the difference. The industry guide says that when two records don't agree, the reasons for the difference should be written down. A difference you can explain is evidence. A difference you can't explain gives the other side something to argue with.^[1]

Why the commercial team needs both

• Changes and daywork are paid on the hours spent on them, and only the allocation sheet says which hours those were.
• Some NEC4 contracts, which are common on large infrastructure jobs, pay the contractor what the work actually cost. On these jobs, the client's auditors check the hours claimed against timesheets, payslips and the site's gate or sign-in records, and any cost the records can't back up can be refused. One of the common problems NEC lists is time claimed for people who weren't actually working on the site.^[2]
• Claims for disruption compare how much work got done per hour when things were going wrong with how much got done when things were normal. To do that, you need the hours booked to each task, every day.^[1] Without daily allocation records, contractors “will struggle” to prove that they lost productivity, according to a 2024 talk by the construction law firm Fenwick Elliott and the consultants J.S. Held.^[3]

Mistakes that cost money

1. Filling in the allocation sheet later by copying the payroll. It will match perfectly, but it proves nothing, because it was never a record of what happened that day.
2. Booking a whole day to one task when someone split their time. Write down the split as it happens.
3. Leaving out agency workers and subcontractors because they aren't on your payroll. They still worked on your tasks.
4. Booking time spent waiting to the task instead of recording it as a delay. See standing time.

Where weekly returns fit in

A weekly return is a summary of the workers and machines on site that week. It usually shows how many workers of each trade and how many machines of each type were on site each day, including subcontractors. It is sent to whoever the contract names, such as the client's engineer, the project manager or the client's representative. The idea comes from older civil engineering contracts, which let the engineer ask for these returns in any format and as often as they liked.^[4]

NEC4 contracts don't ask for a weekly return as standard. If you have to send one, the requirement will be in the client's own documents for the job, which often also ask for weekly timesheets and checks against the gate or sign-in records.^[2] Check what format they want. Don't confuse it with the monthly CIS return to HMRC either, which is about tax and is something else entirely.

Most importantly, the weekly return should be added up from your daily allocation sheets, not counted separately. If the two disagree, that difference can be used against you later.^[1]