Most businesses employ consultants or hourly employees to some capacity. Commonly, these types of employees log their working hours in a timesheet, which – depending on the business’s operations – may be handled at a daily, weekly, or even monthly scale. These timesheets are extremely critical for a variety of HR tasks, such as payroll and vacation entitlement calculations, as well as project management and workflow control. There are many ways to collect and manage employee timesheets, ranging from more manual operations, such as paper-based submissions, to more complex systems, such as web-based time tracking software applications.
One of the easiest and most popular tools for timesheet data collection is spreadsheets. This, however, comes in spite of their shortcomings, which include a lack of a centralized data persistence layer and an inability to easily aggregate the source data. The decentralized nature of a file-based approach, along with a lack of systematic version control, can make the task of using spreadsheets for timesheet data capture a monumental – and highly error-prone – feat.
With SpreadsheetWeb, you can convert custom spreadsheet-based timesheets into a web application without any programming. These applications can then be easily integrated into your business’s workflow in monday.com to be used in the collection and aggregation of timesheet data. monday.com is used by businesses of all sizes and across a diverse set of industries. Its core functionalities revolve around project management, including team collaboration, work organization, and improved productivity. monday.com is in the category of software called Work Operating Systems (Work OS), which offers a platform for managing the entire workflow and data processing across an organization.
Let’s see how a timesheet spreadsheet application that is built on SpreadsheetWeb can be integrated with monday.com. First, create a board and arrange its columns according to the timesheet application. After that, go to the "Apps" module and add SpreadsheetWeb Apps to your account. Once it has been added to the account, you can integrate your timesheet application with your monday.com board.
While adding the application, the system will ask for an application name, which is just a friendly identifier to remind you of its purpose later. Additionally, you must provide the application link and the application identifier, which can be found from the SpreadsheetWeb Control Panel. Finally, click on "Auto Populate" and the system will automatically detect the binding names from monday.com and SpreadsheetWeb. You can always edit or change them if any have been missed, or if some should not be included.
Now, it’s time to run the application. When you click Run, you will see the SpreadsheetWeb application open with an empty timesheet, ready for user input. In this example, you may fill in the time-ins and time-outs of a set of working days, and you will see the Grand Total calculated at the bottom of the page, which will be consistent with the calculations in the timesheet spreadsheet.
When you click Submit, the data will be saved to the board. If a change is needed, or when it comes time to add new data, you can always run the application again, with each set of changes being stored to the board upon save.
In conclusion, timesheets are an important tool for businesses of all sizes and across various industries, as they aid with workload management, salary calculations, and time tracking. Converting these custom-built timesheet spreadsheets into web applications with SpreadsheetWeb and managing them in monday.com offers businesses a cost-effective and flexible solution for all of their timesheet requirement.
