Last Updated: February 12 2021
How to Use Timesheets
Overview
Timesheets display how many hours of each schedule rate each employee has worked for a selected period. Use timesheets to reconcile your schedule-based timesheets into an output appropriate for payroll purposes.
To use timesheets effectively, you can:
- Set up your schedule rates to match your payroll. Learn more in How to Create Schedule Rates.
- Schedule employees for all paid hours to leads
, quotes, jobs, or activities, and change the default schedule rate if required. Learn more in About Schedules.
- Report activity hours separately using specific schedule rates.

In order to view content or perform actions referred to in this article you need to have the appropriate permissions enabled in your security group. Go to System > Setup > Security Groups and access your security group to update your permissions. The relevant security group tab and specific permissions for this article can be found here:
About Security Groups: Schedule
Before performing the steps detailed below, ensure that this part of your build is set up correctly. The relevant steps to set up the features and workflows detailed in this article can be found here:

To generate a timesheet:
- Go to Schedules
> Timesheets.
- Select a Date Range.
- Under Display View, select:
- Calendar to display all relevant schedules in Week View format for each employee.
- Summary to display the number of hours for each schedule rate for each employee, as well as the labour cost for each employee. This can be downloaded as a CSV file.
- Breakdown to display Dates, Employee IDs, employee names, Schedule Rates, Notes, Hours and Labour Costs. This can be downloaded as a CSV file and is suitable to import into most accounting packages and payroll software.
- Select the Schedule Type.
- Select to show Leads
, Quotes, Jobs and / or Activities as required.
- If you have selected:
- Calendar: select Employees and Contractors
from the drop-down list to view their relevant schedules.
- Summary or Breakdown
: select whether to include only Contractors, only Employees or All.
- Calendar: select Employees and Contractors
- Click Submit.
The timesheet displays below. To print the timesheet, click Print.
If you use a Multi-Company build, the schedule rates for all companies that the employee is assigned to are displayed on the timesheet.
Timesheet Lock
Toggle on Timesheet Lock to lock all timesheets until a selected date. This helps to prevent any updates to existing schedules or new schedules being created ensuring correct hours are recorded in the payroll system.
Select the Lock Until date and click Apply. This locks all schedules until the selected end date and a warning appears in the schedule views to advise users that the timesheet is locked and changes cannot be made. In simPRO Mobile, any updates to schedules triggers a push notification that the timesheet is locked and changes cannot be saved.
To allow schedules to be updated and created, you can toggle off the Timesheet Lock.
Removing access to Lock/Unlock Schedules in the security group preserves any locked date in simPRO. To unlock the timesheets, the security group permission must be enabled.

If you use MYOB as an accounting package, you can download timesheets from simPRO to import into MYOB after you have set up your employees and schedule rates correctly.
To export a timesheet to MYOB:
- Generate a timesheet as normal.
- Select Summary as the Display Format.
- Click Submit.
- Click the
icon on the far right above the table.
- Click MYOB Payroll.
This gives you a CSV file that can be imported into MYOB. The CSV describes the following information:
- Each row represents a different time block in simPRO
- Column C - labour type
- Column D - lead, quote or job number
- Column H - schedule date
- Column I - number of hours
- Column J - employee ID
For information on importing timesheets into MYOB visit the MYOB help guide.
If you use a Multi-Company build, the timesheet exported from simPRO may contain data from other companies that are associated with your MYOB account. The CSV contains all hours the employee is scheduled from all companies they are assigned to in simPRO, in addition to the one you are exporting the CSV from.

You can report hours separately for specific activities using schedule rates.
For example, if you have created an activity named 'Annual Leave' and you want your timesheet to report the hours for this activity separately:
- Create a schedule rate also named 'Annual Leave'.
- Access the 'Annual Leave' activity. Learn more in Edit an activity.
- Under Schedule Rate, select the newly-created 'Annual Leave' schedule rate.
- Click Save.
Activities such as travel, workshop time, and toolbox meetings are typically standard working hour activities, so they would typically be linked to the schedule rate for normal time.
Learn more in How to Use Activities.