Timesheet Audit Report: 9 Fields Finance Should Check

Consider an illustrative dispute: a payroll file shows 40 hours, while the employee remembers submitting 38. A manager approved a change, but the exported total does not say which entry changed, who made the edit, or which version the manager saw.

For an agency or remote service team, a timesheet audit report should answer that dispute without reconstructing a chat thread. The report is a record of events, not a second copy of the current timesheet. These nine fields form a buyer test for the report itself and the handoff into payroll or client billing. They are a recommended checklist, not a claim that every time tracker supplies all nine.

The nine fields, in the order a reviewer needs them

The first six fields identify a change. The last three connect that change to a decision and a downstream file. Keep work date and event time separate: a correction made on Tuesday to Monday's entry belongs to Monday's work record but Tuesday's change history. Similarly, a project reassignment can leave total hours unchanged while moving cost or billable time to another client.

Vendor reports show why the distinction matters. PowerSchool's Timesheet Audit Trail documentation describes changed columns, old and new values, actor, change time, notes, and pay-period filters. DATABASICS documents separate deletion, rejection, approval, and post-accounting adjustment histories. Those are examples of report design, not evidence that all systems combine those histories in one export.

Test the report with four corrections

Ask a vendor to demonstrate the report using a disposable test workspace and these four cases. Export the result. Do not accept a screen view alone if payroll will work from a file.

1. Change hours before approval. Enter a time record, correct its duration, and check that the original and replacement values, actor, reason, and edit time appear together.
2. Change the project without changing hours. Check whether the report preserves both project assignments and whether the billing export uses the reviewed one.
3. Reject and resubmit. Confirm that the rejected version, reviewer comment, corrected version, and final approval remain distinguishable. An “Approved” label on the current row cannot explain the path there.
4. Correct after export. Make a permitted correction after the payroll file has been produced. Ask which export contains the old value, where the later adjustment appears, and who has to approve a replacement file.

Use a real pay period shape in the test, including a shift crossing the date boundary if your team works nights. The night-shift timesheet template explains how to keep one shift's identity across midnight. Mark the test as incomplete if a deleted entry simply disappears, a rejected request becomes indistinguishable from an approved one, or a later export cannot be reconciled to the earlier file.

The test must reflect the product's actual settings and permissions. Deltek's audit report options make revision details and explanations conditional on revision-audit settings. SAP's support note says its Time Sheet Change Audit Document omits custom fields, approval delegation, and approval comments. A report name alone therefore tells you little about its coverage. Ask for the exact fields your team uses, then inspect the exported rows.

Close the dispute without widening access

Give the employee a route to explain the correction, the manager a route to approve the version they reviewed, and finance a way to identify the file it received. Keep the internal audit history available to the people responsible for that decision. A client-facing time summary usually needs the approved work and billing context, not employee correction notes or internal approval comments. The client time report checklist covers that separate disclosure decision.

At close, reconcile by entry ID and period: current approved hours, all later changes, and the version sent downstream. If a correction arrives after cutoff, name the owner of the adjustment and retain the earlier export reference. The payroll integration test checks whether corrected hours survive the transfer; this audit test checks whether a reviewer can explain why they changed.

KordanoTime opens customer access on December 1, 2026. Its owner-confirmed first release includes online and offline time capture, daily timelines, approvals, and payroll-ready integrations or exports. Early Access teams can test those committed flows against this checklist. Your finance and operations leads set the correction policy, decide who may review sensitive records, and verify the exact export before payroll close. An audit report with the nine fields above is a buyer requirement to test, not a KordanoTime feature claim.

If your current close depends on a manager's memory, explore KordanoTime Early Access with a concrete test case: one corrected entry, its approval decision, and the hours finance actually receives.