The most common mistakes in working time recording
06.09.2026
Working time recording mistakes are rarely technical in nature - most of them come from unwritten rules and from processes that rely on human memory. What these mistakes have in common is that they are not visible immediately: the report is produced, the numbers look plausible, and the problem only surfaces during a dispute. This guide covers the seven most common mistakes and the fix for each.
1. The schedule is not written down
The most common and the most serious mistake. Without a plan it is impossible to say whether the actual hours are too many or too few. There is no concept of lateness either, because there is no basis for comparison.
Fix: write a work pattern for every role - start time, daily norm, break policy. It is a one-page document and the foundation of the entire record.
2. The break rule differs between departments
In one department lunch is deducted from working time, in another it is not. As a result two people in the same role differ by up to twenty hours a month, and when that difference appears in pay it produces complaints.
Fix: a single rule, written down and applied without exception.
3. Exceptions are recorded as absences
When leave, a business trip or training is recorded as "did not attend", the attendance percentage becomes meaningless. The employee was on an official assignment yet their indicator worsens.
Fix: create a list of exception types and mark each one separately.
4. Night shifts are split across two days
A 22:00–06:00 shift falls across two calendar days. A simple calculation either returns a negative number or shows half a shift on each day.
Fix: count the shift as one whole and assign it to the starting day. This is covered on the night shift working time page.
5. There is no rule for incomplete records
There is an entry but no exit. Dozens of such cases occur every month and each one is decided individually - one person enters the scheduled time, another leaves the day blank.
Fix: define the rule in advance. In practice the best option is to flag the row for correction and require the manager's approval.
6. Corrections leave no trace
A row is changed and the original value disappears. Later there is no answer to "who changed it, when and why?". That reduces the document's evidential value to zero.
Fix: keep every correction with its reason and author, and never delete the original value.
7. Only actual hours are stored
If the report shows only hours worked, lateness and overtime are invisible. Two employees both worked 168 hours - one was twenty minutes late every day and stayed on in the evening, the other followed the schedule exactly. The report shows no difference.
Fix: show plan, actual and deviation together.
Consequences of the mistakes
| Mistake | Visible consequence | Hidden consequence |
|---|---|---|
| No schedule | Lateness is not measured | Planning becomes impossible |
| Break rule differs | Pay complaints | The sense of fairness is damaged |
| Exceptions mixed in | The percentage looks low | Wrong personnel decision |
| Corrections untraceable | Not visible | No evidence in a dispute |
A practical example
At one company an employee was dismissed with reference to their attendance record. The employee objected, stating that business trip days had been recorded as absences.
The review found the claim to be correct: there was no separate symbol for business trips and the HR specialist had left those days blank. On top of that the timesheet had been corrected later, and because no history was kept it was impossible to show what had changed.
The company could not substantiate its position. The mistake was not technical - the recording rules were incomplete.
How to check yourself
- Are the schedules in written form?
- Is the break rule identical across all departments?
- Does a list of exception types exist?
- Is there a defined rule for incomplete records?
- Is the correction history preserved?
- Do plan and actual sit side by side in the report?
If two of the six answers are "no", there is a real risk to the reliability of your records.
Technical mistakes
The seven mistakes above are organisational. Beyond them, Excel-based recording carries recurring technical errors that stay hidden even longer.
Hours stored as text. If the cell is formatted as text, the total comes out as zero or wrong. This is the most common and hardest to spot.
A broken formula range. When a row is added the formula range does not expand and the new row is excluded from the total.
Negative results on night shifts. Subtracting the entry time from the exit time gives a negative number once the date changes.
Multiple copies of the file. Different versions circulate for the same month and nobody knows which is final.
What these errors share is that they produce no error message - the result is simply wrong.
Detecting mistakes
Most recording problems either go undetected or surface during a dispute. Regular checking finds them in advance.
A practical check has three steps. The first is anomaly hunting: sixteen-hour days, zero-hour working days, consecutive incomplete records. The second is comparison: do one department's indicators differ sharply from the rest? The third is a trace test: pick a random cell and follow the source of the number step by step.
Run monthly, these three checks noticeably improve the quality of the record and require no additional tooling.
Preventing mistakes
The most effective prevention is documentation. A one-page recording rule - lateness threshold, break, overtime, rounding, incomplete records and exceptions - eliminates most of the mistakes listed above.
The second measure is role separation: who makes the record, who approves it, who may correct it. When authority is unclear everyone corrects a little and nobody is responsible.
The third measure is transparency - when employees can see their own records, errors are found on the day rather than at month end. In practice this is the single measure that reduces corrections the most.
The organisational root of these mistakes
Most of the mistakes listed here share one source: recording rests on a single person.
The typical picture is this - the HR specialist collects the data, verifies it, corrects it and approves it. In such a structure the probability of catching an error is low, because there is no second party checking.
In a correct structure the responsibility is divided: the employee makes the record and sees their own data, the direct manager approves exceptions, the HR specialist ensures the rules are applied consistently, and payroll is the end user setting requirements on the format.
That division does not merely spread the workload - it creates a checkpoint at every stage. In practice, companies that move to this structure see a noticeable fall in both corrections and disputes.
The next step
Most of these mistakes can be fixed without buying software - simply by writing the rules down. An electronic system then ensures those rules are applied consistently.
QRGate keeps the rules in one place and records the trace of every correction. See what QRGate can do or calculate the price.
