How to stop chasing contractor timesheets before payroll cut-off

If you run a contract desk, you probably know the feeling. It’s Friday morning, payroll cut-off is looming, and someone is working down a spreadsheet of names, sending the same “just a reminder…” email they sent last week. Half the contractors reply with a photo of a paper timesheet. A couple of client managers are on holiday and haven’t approved anything. And one contractor swears they submitted it on Tuesday.

To be honest, none of this is anyone’s fault in particular. It’s what happens when the process relies on people remembering to do a small, boring task at the end of a long week. But it costs you. Contractors get paid late, invoices go out late, cash comes in late, and some of the best hours of your team’s week go on chasing rather than placing.

I’ve spent seven years in recruitment software looking at how agencies handle pay and bill, and the honest truth is that most of the fix isn’t software. It’s process. So here’s what I’d do, roughly in the order I’d do it.

Why timesheets always turn up late

Before fixing anything, it’s worth being clear about why timesheets are late in the first place. In my experience it usually comes down to a handful of things:

• The deadline is vague. “End of the week” means something different to everyone.
• Submitting is a faff. Downloading a template, filling it in, signing it, scanning it and emailing it is five steps too many.
• Approval sits with someone who doesn’t care about your cut-off. The client’s hiring manager has a day job, and your payroll run isn’t on their radar.
• Nobody can see what’s missing until it’s too late. If the only way to know is to cross-reference an inbox against a spreadsheet, you’ll find out on Friday afternoon.
• There’s no consequence. If a late timesheet still gets processed with a bit of shouting, the lesson learned is that late is fine.

Each of these has a fairly simple fix. None of them needs a big project.

Make the deadline impossible to miss

Pick one cut-off and stick to it. Something like “timesheets submitted by 10am Monday, approved by 12pm Monday” is far better than “as soon as possible”. Then put it everywhere:

• In the contractor’s onboarding pack and their first-day email.
• In the client’s terms, so approvers know it’s a commitment rather than a favour.
• In every reminder, written the same way every time.

Bank holidays are where this falls apart, so publish the adjusted dates well ahead. A short email in early December saying exactly when Christmas timesheets are due will save you a very stressful week.

Make submitting a timesheet as easy as possible

The fewer steps it takes, the more likely it gets done on time. If your contractors are still printing, signing and scanning, that’s the first thing I’d change.

• Let contractors submit from their phone. Whatever you use, it should work from a car park on a Friday afternoon.
• Pre-fill what you already know. The placement, client, rate and usual hours shouldn’t need typing in every week.
• Ask for the minimum. Hours or days per day, and a note if something was unusual. That’s it.
• Send reminders at the right time. A nudge on the last working day of the week, while the hours are fresh, beats a chase on Monday when they’ve forgotten what they did on Wednesday.

Don’t get me wrong, a shared form and a calendar reminder can go a long way here. You don’t need anything fancy to make this better than a scanned PDF.

Know who’s missing before cut-off, not after

This is the bit most agencies get wrong. The chasing isn’t really the problem; the problem is that you only find out who to chase at the last minute.

What you want is a single view, ideally a day before cut-off, showing every active placement and where its timesheet is:

1. not submitted, 2) submitted but awaiting approval, 3) approved and ready for payroll, 4) queried.

Even a well-kept spreadsheet with those four columns is better than an inbox. Once you can see it, you can chase the right people early and politely, rather than everyone late and in a panic. It also tells you something useful over time: if it’s the same three contractors or the same client every week, that’s a conversation to have, not a reminder to send.

Get approvals moving, not just submissions

A submitted timesheet that’s sat in a client manager’s inbox is no more use to payroll than one that hasn’t been submitted at all. A few things help:

• Agree who approves at the start of the placement, and who covers when they’re away. Holidays are the number one reason approvals stall.
• Make approving one click, not a reply-all with “approved” in it.
• Chase approvers separately from contractors, with a message that makes the consequence clear: if this isn’t approved by Monday lunchtime, your contractor gets paid late.

Most hiring managers don’t want their contractor paid late. They just need it put in front of them at the right moment.

Decide what happens when a timesheet is late

This is the uncomfortable one. If late timesheets still get rushed through every week, people learn that the deadline isn’t real.

Decide your policy, write it down and apply it consistently. For example: anything not approved by cut-off rolls into the following week’s pay run. Tell contractors and clients up front, then stick to it. The first couple of weeks might be awkward. After that, honestly, it tends to sort itself out, because nobody wants to wait an extra week to be paid.

A lot of agencies put the onus on the consultant instead. Miss the last Friday of the month and the timesheet rolls into the next commission period, so it’s your problem if you didn’t chase. Don’t get me wrong, it creates an incentive. But it isn’t a great solution. When a consultant stands to earn more commission in the following month, they can end up sandbagging: holding a timesheet back on purpose so the placement, and the commission, lands later. That helps nobody, least of all the contractor waiting to be paid.

If you do make exceptions, make them deliberately and record why, so the exception doesn’t quietly become the rule.

Where Paid & Billed fits in

I’m building Paid & Billed because I think this whole Friday scramble should be a lot calmer for small UK contract desks. The idea is simple: timesheets in, invoices out, with the chasing and the “who’s missing?” question handled for you rather than by someone working down a spreadsheet.

It’s still in development, so I’m not going to pretend it does all of that today. What I can say is that everything above is the kind of process I want the product to make easy by default, and I’d much rather build it with agencies who live this every week than guess.

In the meantime, the steps above will help whatever tools you use. Fix the deadline, make submitting easy, get visibility before cut-off, chase approvers properly and make late mean late.

If you’d like to follow along, or help shape what gets built, you can join the waitlist at paidandbilled.com.