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Basic Account Setting

What an Hour Timesheet administrator configures first after creating a new account — company profile, pay periods, work schedules, cost codes, and user roles.

Before you begin

Hour Timesheet is built for DCAA-compliant time tracking, and the way you configure your account in the first hour shapes how every subsequent timesheet, approval, and audit trail behaves. This guide walks an administrator through the settings to review immediately after your account is provisioned, in roughly the order you should tackle them.

You don’t have to finish everything in one sitting — but the items in the first three sections (company profile, pay periods, and work schedules) should be in place before you invite your first employee, because changing them later means re-tracing entries that were already saved.

1. Set up your company profile

Your company profile is the canonical record of who the account belongs to and how it appears on exported reports, invoices, and audit logs. Get this right first, because several downstream settings inherit from it.

The company profile has its own setup guide — Setting Up Your Company Profile walks through each section. Work through it first, then return here to continue with pay periods and beyond.

2. Define your pay period

Pay periods control when timesheets open, close, and lock for approval. They also drive how overtime is calculated. Choose the schedule that matches what your payroll system already runs on — mismatched pay periods are the most common source of reconciliation pain.

  1. Open the pay period configuration

    Navigate to the pay period or payroll settings inside your company configuration area.

  2. Choose a frequency

    Select the cadence that mirrors your payroll: weekly, bi-weekly, semi-monthly, or monthly. Government contractors most often use bi-weekly or semi-monthly.

  3. Set the period start date

    Enter the first day of an upcoming pay period. Hour Timesheet will generate all future periods from this anchor date.

  4. Confirm timesheet submission and approval deadlines

    Set how long employees have to submit a timesheet after the period ends, and how long managers have to approve. These deadlines drive the reminder notifications employees receive.

3. Set up standard work schedules

Work schedules tell Hour Timesheet what a normal week looks like for your employees. They drive expected hours, daily entry validation, and how leave is deducted. Most organizations need only one or two schedules; you can always add more later for part-time or shift workers.

  1. Open the work schedules area

    Inside your company settings, find the section for work schedules or standard hours.

  2. Add a new schedule

    Create a schedule named after the group it applies to — for example, “Standard 40-hour week” or “Part-time Tuesday/Thursday.”

  3. Set expected hours per day

    Enter the hours an employee on this schedule is expected to work each weekday. Leave non-working days at zero.

  4. Mark the schedule as default if appropriate

    If most of your workforce shares the same schedule, mark it as the default so new employees inherit it automatically.

4. Add cost codes, projects, and customers

For DCAA-compliant billing, every hour an employee records has to be attributable to a specific cost objective. Hour Timesheet models this through cost codes (sometimes called charge codes), projects, and customers. The exact hierarchy your organization uses depends on how your contracts are structured.

  1. Open the cost codes or projects area

    From the main settings, navigate to the area where projects, customers, or cost codes are managed.

  2. Add your customers or top-level contracts

    Create an entry for each active customer or government contract you expect to track time against. Use the same name or contract number your accounting system uses.

  3. Add projects and cost codes under each customer

    Break each customer down into projects, tasks, or cost codes that match how you bill. Indirect categories — overhead, G&A, fringe, bid and proposal — should each get their own entries.

  4. Mark which codes are billable versus indirect

    Make sure each entry is correctly classified. DCAA-compliant reports rely on this distinction.

5. Configure roles and permissions

Hour Timesheet ships with a small set of roles — typically administrator, manager, and employee — that govern what each user can see and do. Before you invite anyone, decide who plays which role.

  • Administrator can change company-wide settings, manage users, and access all timesheets and reports.
  • Manager can review and approve timesheets for the employees assigned to them, but cannot change company settings.
  • Employee can record their own time, submit their timesheet for approval, and view their own history.

Most organizations need at least two administrators so that account maintenance never depends on a single person being available.

6. Invite your first users

Once the structure above is in place, you’re ready to bring people in. You can invite users one at a time or in bulk via import, depending on the size of your team.

  1. Open the users or team management area

    Find the section of settings where users are managed.

  2. Add the user's details

    Enter the employee’s name, work email, and role. Assign them to a work schedule and, if you use them, a default project or cost code.

  3. Assign their manager

    Specify who approves this user’s timesheets. The manager you pick will receive the submission notifications.

  4. Send the invitation

    Trigger the invitation email. The user will receive a link to set their password and sign in.

What to set up next

Once the basics above are configured, most administrators move on to:

  • Leave and PTO policies — accrual rules, balances, and the categories employees can request time off against.
  • Reminder and notification preferences — when employees and managers are nudged about open or unsubmitted timesheets.
  • Reporting and export integrations — the formats your payroll and accounting systems expect.

These each have their own articles in the help center. If you run into anything that doesn’t behave the way you expect, reach out to support@hourtimesheet.com and we’ll walk through it with you.