A timecard approval is a sign-off that the hours on a card are correct before payroll touches them. For a trade sub, the cleanest setup is two layers: the foreman approves first because he saw the work, and the office approves second before payroll closes. Set one weekly deadline, check the same five things every time, and keep the approved record.
That is the whole system. The rest of this article shows how to run it with electrical, plumbing, HVAC, masonry, drywall and other crews, where the cards come from a truck bed, a text message or a crumpled pad.
TL;DR
- Use two layers: the foreman approves first, then a PM or office admin approves before payroll runs. Universities that use this structure describe the same split.
- Pick one deadline per pay period and set an earlier cutoff for crews to submit, so the office has time to review.
- Check the same items on every card: punches, regular hours, overtime, holidays and leave, and a job or cost code for each hour.
- Approve only when the card is complete and accurate. Late fixes go through a written correction, not a quiet edit.
- Keep approved cards. The Department of Labor requires wage-computation records for at least two years and payroll records for three.
Table of Contents
- Why timecard approval matters more on a trade sub's payroll
- The two-layer approval that works for trade crews
- What to check before you approve a card
- How often to approve and what deadline to set
- Getting crews to submit on time
- When a card is wrong, late or disputed
- Records and legal exposure
- Our view: approval should happen where the work happens
- Where software fits
- Try it on your own crews
- FAQ
- Sources
Why timecard approval matters more on a trade sub's payroll
In an office, a timecard is a payroll input. In a specialty trade business it is also your job cost. Every hour that lands on the wrong job quietly moves profit from one job to another, and you will not see it until the job closes.
Three things make trade crews harder than office staff:
- Crews are scattered. A masonry foreman may have six people on one site while a second crew is on another. Nobody in the office saw either day.
- Hours are remembered, not recorded. Cards get filled in on Friday afternoon from memory, rounded to eight hours a day.
- Approval is skipped under pressure. When payroll is due, the office pays what was submitted. Then the approval step is a rubber stamp.
A real approval step fixes the third problem and exposes the first two. It is also your best protection if a wage claim ever lands on your desk, which we cover below.
The two-layer approval that works for trade crews
The University of Minnesota's job aid on two-layer timecard approvals describes the first layer as a supervisor-level review and the second as a manager review at the end of each pay period. It also says each timecard has to be reviewed to determine whether it is correct. That is a university payroll document, but the logic carries straight over to a trade sub.
Here is how it maps to your company:
| Layer | Who | What they confirm | When |
|---|---|---|---|
| Submission | Journeyman or laborer | "These are my hours." | End of each day or by the crew cutoff |
| First approval | Foreman | "I saw this person on this job for these hours." | Daily if possible, otherwise before the crew cutoff |
| Second approval | PM, office admin or owner | "Hours, codes and totals are right for payroll and job cost." | Before payroll's deadline |
The foreman knows who showed up, who left early for a supply run and who was pulled to another site. The office knows overtime rules, job budgets and cost codes. Neither can do the other's job well.
What the foreman owns
The foreman is the only person who can say whether the hours are true. His approval should mean three things: the person was there, the time is right to the nearest quarter hour you use, and the job and phase are correct. If a foreman cannot vouch for the card, he should not approve it.
What the office owns
The office approval is about math, rules and consistency: overtime, holiday and leave entries, missing codes, hours that look off against the daily report, and whether the total fits the job's labor budget. The office should not be guessing what happened on site. If something looks wrong, it goes back to the foreman.
What to check before you approve a card
The University of Connecticut's time approver guide tells approvers to verify the schedule, in and out punches, regular hours, holidays, shift differentials, and accruals and leave balances, and to add comments where appropriate. Translate that for a trade crew and you get a short checklist.
- Start and stop times. Do they match the crew's actual day? A card that says 7:00 to 3:30 for every person on a four-man crew, every day, deserves a second look.
- Regular versus overtime hours. Confirm the split before the card reaches payroll, not after.
- Job and cost code on every hour. An hour with no job is an hour you cannot bill, bill back or cost.
- Travel, shop and yard time. Decide once how these are coded and hold everyone to it.
- Holidays, sick time and leave. Check these against the balances you track.
- Notes. If someone worked through lunch, stayed late for a pour or lost time to a weather delay, the note explains why the hours look unusual.
UCSF's Controller's Office treats approval as a pay-period close control: managers clear exceptions and review the period before approving. Do the same. Scan for missing punches, blank cards and odd totals first, then approve in one pass.
A worked example
Say a plumbing foreman has four plumbers on a mid-size tenant improvement. On Thursday, one plumber's card shows 10 hours on Tuesday. The foreman remembers the crew stayed late to finish a rough-in inspection. He adds a note, approves, and the office sees the note and does not have to ask. If there were no note, the office would either call the foreman or pay the overtime and wonder. One sentence saves a phone call and a dispute.
How often to approve and what deadline to set
There is no single legal answer for approval frequency. It depends on your pay cycle, and the examples published by large institutions show a range:
- The University of Minnesota says approvals can be done daily or at the end of the pay period, but every card must be approved by Friday at the end of the pay period or Monday at the start of the next.
- UConn Health asks approvers to approve staff timecards every two weeks, with approval due by noon on Payroll Fridays, before payroll locks the cards that afternoon.
- UCSF sets a biweekly manager deadline of 6:00 a.m. on the Tuesday after the period closes, and notes that supervisors may set an earlier employee deadline so there is time to review.
- Prince George's County Public Schools requires approval by 5:00 p.m. on Timecard Friday and warns approvers not to approve before 3:00 p.m., because late entries cannot be added once a card is approved.
Two lessons for a trade sub. First, build a buffer between the crew's deadline and payroll's deadline. Second, do not approve early. Once a card is approved, edits usually mean removing the approval, so approving on Wednesday what will change on Friday just creates rework.
A schedule you can steal
For a weekly payroll running on Monday:
- Daily: Crew submits hours before leaving the site or by the evening.
- Friday, 3:00 p.m.: Foreman approves his crew's cards.
- Monday, 10:00 a.m.: Office reviews and gives second approval.
- Monday, noon: Payroll is run from approved cards only.
Adjust the hours to your own cycle. The point is that each step has an owner and a time.
Getting crews to submit on time
Approval can only happen after submission, and for trade crews, submission is where it breaks. Electrical, plumbing, masonry and drywall crews all share the same problem: the person who knows the hours is on a ladder, and the person who needs them is in the office.
What tends to work:
- Make the foreman the collection point. One person per crew submits or confirms hours. You chase five foremen, not thirty field employees.
- Collect at end of day. Memory of Tuesday is good on Tuesday and poor on Friday.
- Use the phone the crew already carries. Paper cards that ride around in a truck get lost. We cover this in detail in our guides to how foremen track crew hours on the job site and digital timecards for construction.
- Pilot before you switch. If you move from paper to mobile, run one full pay cycle with one crew first. Our mobile timesheet rollout guide walks through it.
- Treat late cards as a payroll rule. If a card misses the cutoff, it goes into the next cycle, or gets a documented correction. Apply it to everyone, starting with the foremen.
Steel and rebar crews have their own collection quirks, with several gangs on one site and hours by pour or placement. See our guide to steel contractor timecard collection methods if that is your trade.
When a card is wrong, late or disputed
Some cards will be wrong. The question is whether you have a clean way to fix them.
Before approval: send the card back to the foreman or employee with a specific question. "Tuesday shows 10 hours, which job was the last two on?" beats "fix your card."
After the card is approved but before payroll runs: remove the approval, correct the card, and approve again. UConn's guide says that once a card is approved, edits require removing the approval, which keeps a trail of who changed what.
After payroll has run: do not edit the old card silently. The same UConn guide tells approvers to send payroll a detailed correction by email, no later than Tuesday morning once payroll sign-off is complete. Your version: a written correction, with the employee, date, old hours, new hours and reason, handled in the next pay run.
A short correction log, even a shared spreadsheet, answers the question "how did this number change?" months later.
Records and legal exposure
This section is general information about federal rules, not legal advice. Your state may add requirements, so confirm with your payroll provider or an employment attorney.
How long to keep timecards
The U.S. Department of Labor's Fact Sheet #21 says employers must keep payroll records for at least three years, and records underlying wage computations, such as timecards and work schedules, for at least two years. It also says the FLSA prescribes no particular timekeeping form, but records must be complete and accurate. Keeping the approval stamp with the card, who approved it and when, is the easiest way to show your records are reliable.
Federal and federally funded jobs
If you work on federal or federally financed construction, you submit payroll information weekly. The Department of Labor's Form WH-347 is optional, and an equivalent statement of compliance may be used. An October 2026 payroll readiness guide from a construction trade association advises reviewing classifications, straight time, overtime, fringe treatment and deductions with a qualified payroll reviewer, keeping supporting records and correcting discrepancies promptly. Approved timecards are the supporting records.
What falsified time records can cost
In 2022 a federal court sanctioned an Arizona construction employer for false records and failure to maintain a reliable timekeeping system. The Department of Labor's release describes civil contempt sanctions, mandatory training on FLSA requirements and potential fines of up to $10,000 per week. The takeaway for a small sub is not fear. It is that a documented, two-layer approval process is what a reliable timekeeping system looks like on paper.
Perspective
Our view: approval should happen where the work happens
Most of the timecard trouble we hear about from trade subs is not an approval problem. It is a timing problem. The hours live in a foreman's head until Friday, then get typed into a card, then get approved by someone in the office who was not there.
We built CrewTrack for that gap. The idea is that the foreman records crew hours and daily reports from the phone while the day is still fresh, so the card the office sees is closer to what actually happened. That means the first approval layer is a real check and not a formality.
We also think the card should connect to the job. An hour that lands on a job code feeds your budget-versus-actual numbers while the job is still open, which is when you can still do something about a job that is losing money. Timecards that live in a separate system from your job costs just move the retyping to the office.
If you take one thing from this article: pick a deadline, name an approver for each crew, and stop paying from cards nobody signed off. The software helps, but the habit is what protects your payroll.
Dave
Where software fits
A spreadsheet and a group text can run a two-layer approval for a two-person shop. They get shaky once you have three crews, two job sites a day and a payroll clerk chasing photos of paper cards.
What you want from a tool, in any trade:
- Crew hours entered from the phone by the foreman or each worker.
- Hours tied to a job, phase or cost code at the moment of entry.
- A clear status on each card: submitted, foreman-approved, office-approved.
- A way to see what is missing before payroll day.
- A sync to your accounting system so nobody retypes totals.
If you want to see the potential savings from moving off paper, our article on mobile timecards for trade subcontractors lays out the math. Once approved hours feed job costs, they also support the invoicing side. See our guide to an invoice approval workflow for trade subcontractors for the next step in the money chain.
Try it on your own crews
Sub Ascent is job and bid management software built for specialty trade subcontractors. It includes labor and crew tracking with a mobile app, daily field reporting, QuickBooks sync and profit analytics. The CrewTrack mobile app for foremen is free as part of a subscription.
Published plans are Starter at $49 per month or $490 per year, Scale at $99 per month or $990 per year, and Pro at $179 per month or $1,790 per year. PDF takeoff is available as a separate Takeoff plan at $99 per month. See plans and pricing and read about CrewTrack for crew timesheets and daily reports.
If you want to see how approved hours connect to budget versus actual, look at the job tracking features.
FAQ
How often should timecards be approved?
Match your pay period. Approve at least once per pay cycle, before payroll locks. Daily or end-of-week foreman approval works best for trade crews, since the foreman remembers the days clearly. The University of Minnesota allows daily or end-of-period approval, as long as everything is approved by the cutoff.
Who should approve timecards on a construction crew?
Use two layers. The foreman approves first because he saw the work. A project manager, office admin or owner approves second, checking overtime, codes and totals before payroll. A foreman should not be the only check on his own hours.
What should I do if I find an error after approving?
If payroll has not run, remove the approval, fix the card and approve again. If payroll has run, document a written correction with the old hours, new hours and reason, and process it in the next pay run. Do not overwrite the original silently.
How long do I need to keep approved timecards?
Under the federal FLSA, records underlying wage computations such as timecards must be kept at least two years, and payroll records at least three, according to the Department of Labor. Your state may require longer, so check with your payroll provider.
Sources
- Two Layer Time Card Approvals, University of Minnesota
- Review & Approve Time Cards, University of Minnesota
- Time Approver Guide for Editing Hourly Timecards, UConn Health
- Pay Period Close Quick Reference Guide, UCSF Controller's Office
- Bulletin M-12-27 Payroll Guidelines, Prince George's County Public Schools
- Fact Sheet #21: Recordkeeping Requirements under the FLSA, U.S. Department of Labor
- Davis-Bacon and Related Acts Weekly Certified Payroll Form WH-347, U.S. Department of Labor
- Federal court orders Arizona construction employer to pay, U.S. Department of Labor
- Construction Payroll Readiness Guide, NAMC