Research teams split time across awards, clients, and tasks. Everhour turns tracked hours into clear reports.
Enter your time in and out for each day. Overtime and gross pay are calculated automatically.
| Day | Time In | Break Start | Break End | Break | Time Out | Total |
|---|
The calculator gives you the number — Everhour takes it from there.
One click and you're timing. Start a timer, add an entry, edit the details. This is exactly how it feels in Everhour.
Set a budget, assign rates, and get alerted before you're over.
Measurement
Track your budget through time or costs
Every report you need — configured your way, always up to date.
Tracked hours flow straight into a polished invoice — no copy-paste, no manual math.
Researchers often divide one workweek across grants, internal projects, publications, meetings, data work, and client-funded tasks. A useful timesheet keeps those activities separate enough for review without forcing unnecessary detail into every entry. The practical goal is a record that shows who worked, the date, the project or award, the task category, and the amount of time or effort assigned.
Sponsored research and contract research need different proof. U.S. federally funded salary and wage charges must rest on records that accurately reflect work performed and support allocation across awards, direct and indirect work, and other cost objectives. Time-and-materials research contracts depend on direct labor hours at agreed fixed hourly rates, plus materials at actual cost.
A researcher timesheet should identify the person, date, project, award or client, task, role, and approval status. Useful task categories include protocol development, project-specific data work, subject coordination, report or article writing, grant-related meetings, and consulting with colleagues or graduate students when that work directly relates to the agreement.
Nonexempt research staff need wage-and-hour records that show hours worked each workday and total hours worked each workweek when covered by FLSA minimum wage or overtime provisions. Employers must preserve payroll records for at least three years and basic time and earnings records, such as time cards or sheets, for at least two years.
Academic effort reporting does not always require hour-by-hour tracking for faculty. Federal rules allow institutional salary records to reflect research, teaching, service, and administration as percentage distributions because those activities often overlap. The record still needs to reasonably reflect total compensated activity and must not exceed 100% of compensated activities.
Client or contract billing needs a different structure. A time-and-materials invoice needs direct labor hours tied to a client, project, task, and labor category because the charge comes from hours multiplied by specified fixed hourly rates. A principal investigator's effort record and a research consultant's billable-hour log can describe the same week in different valid formats.
A free one-off timesheet works for a narrow task: collecting this week's hours, checking a project total, or preparing a simple client billing backup. It is enough when one person tracks a small number of projects and no one needs recurring approvals, locked periods, scheduled reports, or a durable record across teams.
A managed workflow becomes necessary when researchers submit time for review, administrators allocate salary across awards, or contract teams bill clients from approved labor records. Everhour can connect tracked task and project time to customizable reports with columns, filters, grouping, exports, and scheduled email delivery, which gives research managers a repeatable review path.
This content is for general information only, may not be fully up to date, and is provided without any warranty or liability.
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A useful researcher timesheet includes the researcher's name, date, project or award, client when relevant, task category, role or labor category, time amount, and approval status. Sponsored work needs allocation support across awards and other cost objectives. Contract research needs client, project, task, and labor-category detail for billing.
Federal rules allow institutional salary records for higher education to reflect activity categories as percentage distributions when research, teaching, service, and administration are intermingled. The record still must reasonably reflect total compensated activity, support allocation across cost objectives, and stay within 100% of compensated activities.
NIH grant budgets report effort in person-months. Personnel justifications identify each person's name, role, and person-months, while detailed personnel budgets list base salary and effort for everyone dedicating effort to the project. Senior/key personnel named on an award must devote measurable effort, since "zero percent" effort and "as needed" are not acceptable levels.
The FLSA does not require overtime premium pay solely because covered nonexempt employees work on Saturday, Sunday, a holiday, or a regular rest day. Federal overtime applies when covered nonexempt employees work over 40 hours in a fixed 168-hour workweek, unless another law, policy, or agreement adds a separate premium.
Pre-award budget estimates do not by themselves support final federal salary charges. Interim estimates can support accounting during the award period only when final charges are adjusted through after-the-fact review. A stronger record reflects work performed and supports allocation across awards, direct and indirect work, and other cost objectives.
Everhour Reporting lets research managers build reports with 45+ columns, metadata filters, grouping, date ranges, and export options in CSV, Excel/XLSX, or PDF. Scheduled email delivery can send recurring reports to the people who review project hours, costs, budgets, or billable time.
Everhour Timesheets collect weekly project hours and working hours by person, then let managers approve, reject, or partially approve submitted time. Submitted and approved entries are protected from regular member edits, which helps preserve a cleaner record before billing, payroll, or reporting.
Turn recurring researcher time entries into reports that administrators can review and export. Everhour Reporting keeps project, client, budget, and billable-hour data organized for research operations.
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