Why Timesheets Matter
The Strategic Backbone of Cross-Functional Success in Local Government
In the labyrinth of local government business systems, timesheets often sit quietly as a module within a module of a larger HRP (Human Resource Planning) or ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) suite. For all intents and purposes they appear to be a mundane administrative tool: tracking hours worked, enabling payroll, and monitoring attendance. Wrong.
For local governments, timesheets embody a deeper operational reality. They are a critical piece of infrastructure that tests the strength of cross-functional workflows and the alignment between departments including HR, finance, project management, and asset management.
When digital timesheets are well-integrated into the operational processes of council, they reveal the true capacity of the organisation to manage complex processes, track real costs, and maintain financial transparency. These are in fact foundational elements and strategic levers expected in local government, but typical of any asset-heavy environment.
Therefore devolving the decision around system choice and organisation-wide business requirements to a sub-department within corporate services, or even viewing it solely through a project management lens, overlooks the strategic potential that timesheets not just offer but demand.
A misaligned or poorly managed time management function is directly related to missed opportunities for understanding the real costs of labor, underestimating asset maintenance needs, and lacking foresight into financial planning. Where paper timesheets are still utilised, often in duplicate, or triplicate, or colour coded by department, the ability to capture any meaningful information in real time is forfeit.
Ultimately, timesheets should be elevated to the level of strategic objective, requiring input and oversight from executive leadership. This ensures they are configured to support end-to-end workflows that are critical to organisational efficiency, accountability, and long-term financial health.
Might that mean changes to finance? Yes. Might that mean changes to asset management? Yes. Might that mean changes to project management? Yes.
In essence, you should not be talking about a payroll feature. Your discussion should start and be measured by improvements to governance, cost allocation accuracy, and embedded cross-functional process integrations to support the strategic ambitions of the organisation.
The Broader Role of Timesheets in Public Asset Stewardship
In local government, timesheets play a vital strategic role beyond payroll. They are essential for managing the complexity and accountability tied to extensive asset portfolios.
Since councils operate as stewards of large, diverse asset portfolios, timesheets provide the critical data needed to effectively oversee, allocate resources to, and maintain these assets, making them a core component of operational strategy.
For councils, asset valuation is more than a once-a-year accounting exercise—it’s a commitment to sustaining community assets such as libraries, parks, waste facilities, aquatic centres, stormwater systems, street lighting, roads and other infrastructure with a focus on long-term financial stewardship. Timesheets play an essential role in this, capturing labor costs associated with each asset to provide a detailed view of the true expenses of maintenance, repairs, and replacements.
Local governments use timesheets not only for payroll but also to track and allocate resources, including materials, machinery hours, and equipment costs, across critical functions. This comprehensive tracking enables an accurate assessment of costs for building, maintaining, and renewing assets, laying the groundwork for precise financial planning and effective budgeting to support sustainable asset management.
Unlike many private organisations, local governments use timesheets not only for payroll but to track and allocate resources like building materials, machinery hours, and equipment costs across essential functions, from asset upkeep to grant-funded projects. This tracking gives an accurate view of the costs involved in building, maintaining, and eventually renewing assets, supporting more accurate financial planning and budgeting.
For instance, by logging labor and materials for a road upgrade project, timesheets provide precise, real-time data for budgeting and future planning. This insight allows finance teams to make well-informed decisions on resource allocation, supporting asset sustainability and community value.
By linking hours worked, materials used, and equipment allocated to specific projects or assets, timesheets provide essential data to assess asset values, secure ongoing funding, and plan for future upkeep. This data is crucial not only for business-as-usual operations but also for post-disaster recovery.
In areas frequently impacted by cyclones, bushfires, and floods, such as many councils across Australia, timesheets offer a clear record of pre-disaster asset conditions and costs. This enables councils to undertake large-scale rebuilds based on an accurate understanding of asset value and required resources, ensuring that recovery efforts are both efficient and fiscally responsible.
Though they may seem mundane, timesheets are central to financial transparency, operational alignment, and strategic foresight, all of which are critical for effective asset, project and program management in the public sector.
A Linchpin For Cross-Departmental Workflows in Local Government
While timesheets for asset management and timesheets for project management are the same (or should be!), the way in which they are used to serve different cross-functional needs in the same council can significantly vary.
As outlined above, in asset management, timesheets provide data that helps to build a long-term picture of costs tied to the maintenance, upkeep, and lifecycle of public assets. This enables finance and operations teams to make strategic decisions about asset longevity, budget allocation, and future investments, ensuring assets can continue to deliver value to the community over time.
In contrast, for project management, timesheets are about capturing the immediate costs and efficiency of specific tasks within active projects. They provide real-time data that allows project managers and finance departments to monitor expenses closely, identify task-level efficiencies or delays, and make timely adjustments to keep projects on budget and schedule.
Here, the timesheet data enables short-term cost control and operational alignment, ensuring that current projects contribute to broader organisational goals without derailing budgets and affecting other funding obligations.
In both cases, timesheets integrate similar data on labor and resource use, but they support different strategic aims across multiple departments: one focused on the lifecycle of assets, and the other on the efficiency and budget alignment of current projects. Achieving this level of cross-functional outcome is crucial.
Why Timesheets Deserve a Promotion
The humble timesheet, so often relegated to a secondary or tertiary role in the ERP, has the potential to be a powerful enabler of cross-functional alignment in local government. Local government leaders, who may traditionally see timesheets as purely administrative, should reconsider this perspective.
When fully integrated across departments, a well-designed timesheet system doesn’t just track hours. It becomes a strategic tool for informed decision-making at the highest levels by becoming the core system of record to deliver a real-time view of operations across HR, finance, project management, and asset maintenance.
This transforms timesheets from a basic administrative task into an essential component of financial health and operational effectiveness. When used strategically they provide critical insights that shape organisational resilience and enable smarter, data-driven governance in local government.
It’s a small shift in perspective, but one with transformative potential.
Leaders who recognise this can bridge the strategy-operations gap in a way that propels local government toward a more integrated and fiscally responsible future.
Reach out through the app or on LinkedIn if you’d like to dive deeper into potential solutions or to understand the broader considerations for timesheets in your corporate systems roadmap. Or perhaps you know someone exploring this area. If so, feel free to share this link with them.