Hours at Work › FAQ

Frequently asked questions.

The longer answers live here. If something isn’t covered, email us — we’ll happily walk you through it.

Questions and answers

The basics

What does Hours at Work do?

It’s a timesheet system. Staff log their hours each week. Approvers sign off. At the end of every week you get a signed PDF that says who worked, on what, when it was signed, and by whom.

It also gives you a dashboard for closing payroll on time, reports for checking that grant time matches grant budgets, and a way to bundle every signed week for a funder or auditor into a single PDF.

Who is it for?

Two main groups:

  • Government finance teams — city, county, and state agencies that need to defend payroll to auditors and federal program officers.
  • Grant-funded nonprofits — teams that report time against specific funders and need clean records when funders ask.

Any team that has to prove who worked on what is a fit.

How does the timesheet flow work, step by step?
  1. Log. Staff open the weekly grid and type their hours by day, by what they worked on.
  2. Submit. They submit the week. It’s locked from further edits.
  3. Approve. Their approver sees the timesheet in a queue and signs it in the browser.
  4. Signed PDF. The system generates a PDF with both signatures, the date and time, and a verification code.
  5. Close payroll. When everyone is signed, you export a CSV for your payroll provider.
  6. Bundle for funders. When a funder asks for records, you bundle every signed week for a date range into one PDF.

The records

What’s the “signed PDF”?

It’s the official record for one staff member, for one week. It shows:

  • Who the staff member is, and how they spent their hours.
  • The staff signature and the approver signature.
  • The exact date and time both signatures happened.
  • A verification code at the bottom of the page.

If you pull the same PDF back six months from now, the verification code will match. If anything was changed after signature, the record will tell you.

What’s the “bundle PDF”?

It’s every signed week, for a grant or date range you pick, in one downloadable PDF. The first page is a cover sheet. After that, every signed weekly timesheet is included in order, indexed by staff member and pay period. You send the bundle to a funder, auditor, or program officer instead of forwarding twenty emails.

What about audits and compliance?

We take this seriously. The short version:

  • Accessibility. The product is designed to meet Section 508 and WCAG 2.1 AA from day one.
  • Security audit. SOC 2 Type II audit is underway. The report is available under NDA on request.
  • Federal data handling. Our setup is FedRAMP-aware. Each customer’s data sits in its own isolated workspace.
  • Audit trail. Every signed PDF includes a verification code (a SHA-256 hash). If the file changes, the code stops matching, and the audit log shows what changed.
  • Inspector General and Auditor General requests. Bundle PDFs can be re-issued at any time and verified by the receiver.

If you want the full posture for an IT or procurement review, email us and we’ll send a packet.

What about security?

Every customer gets a dedicated workspace. Data is not shared between customers. Data is encrypted in transit and at rest. We don’t resell or share customer data. Backups are taken daily.

For the long form, email us — we’ll walk you through the controls a CIO or security reviewer cares about.

Grants and funding

How do funding splits work?

Each staff member can have a funding split — the share of their hours that’s expected to land on each grant or program. For example, 60% on Grant A and 40% on Grant B.

The system compares the expected split to the actual hours worked, week by week. If a staff member spent 70% on Grant A and only 30% on Grant B, the report shows the gap. You catch it before someone else does.

Splits are version-aware. A change in the middle of a fiscal year doesn’t break the records before it.

What do you mean by “charge code”?

It’s our in-app word for anything staff can log hours to: a grant, a program, a leave bucket, an administrative line. Your accounting system probably calls it something else — object code, cost center, PCA, GL code, fund. Your fiscal team can map our charge codes to whatever your accounting system uses.

Does it handle federal pass-through grants?

Yes. The bundle PDF and funding reconciliation report were built with federal pass-through reporting in mind. You can produce a signed, verifiable record of effort for any grant and any date range. A program officer can verify the bundle without contacting us.

Payroll and integrations

Does it work with our payroll system?

At the end of every pay period, you export a CSV. The CSV has the columns most payroll providers expect — including MUNIS, Workday, Tyler Technologies, and ADP. If your provider needs a different format, email us and we’ll talk about a custom mapping.

Procurement

What about procurement — sole source?

We can provide sole-source justification documentation for state, county, and city procurement reviews. Email us and we’ll send a packet you can pass along to your procurement officer.

Is there a free trial?

We don’t do open self-signup for government customers — procurement doesn’t work that way. For nonprofits and small teams, we offer a 30-day pilot workspace so you can run a real pay period through the system before signing a contract.

Getting started

How fast can we start?

Most workspaces are ready in under fifteen minutes once procurement is sorted. A typical rollout runs a single pilot pay period (two weeks), then turns on the rest of the team.

Still have a question?

Still have a question? Email us at support@hoursatwork.com — we usually reply within one business day.

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