Timesheets are meant to be a simple way of ensuring staff are paid fairly for the hours they work, while employers can keep control of labour costs. Yet in many service industries – from cleaning and security, to hospitality and facilities management – the system is far from watertight. Too often it relies on little more than goodwill and assumption. And where there’s trust without validation, there’s opportunity for fraud.
The reality is that timesheet fraud is more common than many employers realise. According to the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, payroll fraud accounts for nearly a quarter of all occupational fraud cases, with time theft ranking as one of the most frequent methods. The Global Payroll Association estimates that businesses lose, on average, about £40,000 per payroll fraud incident, with schemes typically going undetected for around 18 months – at a cost of roughly £2,217 per month. Put simply, organisations are paying for time that was never worked.
How timesheet fraud happens
The methods may vary, but the principle is the same: inflating the hours worked or disguising unproductive time as billable work. Common scenarios include:
- Buddy punching: A colleague clocks in or out on behalf of a friend. It only takes a quick swipe of a card or a signature on a sheet for someone to be recorded as present when they are nowhere near the workplace.
- Excessive breaks: Employees extend lunch or take multiple “comfort breaks” while the clock is still running, effectively being paid for downtime.
- Padding shifts: Start and finish times are exaggerated on paper forms, with minutes quietly added at either end of a shift. Over weeks, this can add up to hours of unearned pay.
- Ghost hours: In some cases, entire shifts are fabricated – an employee claims to have worked when they were never on site.
Because so many service-based roles are delivered with little direct oversight – often by lone workers, at night, or across dispersed locations – the opportunities for manipulation are wide open. Traditional paper trails and tick-box systems are simply too easy to falsify.
Why conventional tools fall short
Many organisations try to combat this with electronic time and attendance systems. Swipe cards, PIN logins or app-based check-ins may confirm that someone was present at a location. But they don’t prove that the right person stayed for the full duration or actually performed the work required.
The Covid-19 pandemic and the rise of home and hybrid working have only amplified the problem. With more jobs based on trust than ever before, businesses face a difficult balance: maintaining confidence in staff while making sure productivity and accountability are not quietly slipping away.
The hidden costs
Timesheet fraud isn’t a victimless act. It drains profitability, eats into already tight margins, and distorts workforce planning. If records suggest a task takes longer than it should, businesses may hire additional staff unnecessarily, or miss signs that training and support are needed. It also breeds resentment when some employees are seen to “game the system” while others pick up the slack.
And while each case may look small in isolation, the costs mount up quickly. The Global Payroll Association’s analysis shows just how damaging payroll fraud can be: with incidents typically undetected for well over a year, businesses are losing an average of £40,000 per case before the truth comes to light. These aren’t small discrepancies – they are material financial losses, with knock-on effects for competitiveness and staff morale.
Prevention through visibility and validation
The solution isn’t about creating a culture of suspicion. It’s about ensuring clarity, fairness and accuracy. EyeClean was designed with exactly this in mind.
Our platform doesn’t just track clock-ins and clock-outs. It validates presence and movement through GPS tags, QR codes and motion beacons, providing a timestamped log of where employees are, for how long, and what work is being completed. In effect, it operates as a new generation of field service management software, purpose-built for cleaning and facilities teams rather than repurposed from other industries.
This means:
- Employers can be confident they are only paying for hours genuinely worked.
- Disparities between staff become visible, highlighting where extra training or support is needed.
- Operational data can reveal whether jobs are realistically staffed, allowing managers to adjust resources rather than leaving gaps covered by “creative” timesheets.
Crucially, it shifts the emphasis from suspicion to empowerment. The technology provides evidence for accurate pay, fair appraisals and transparent performance metrics. It also protects staff, with built-in welfare checks for lone workers – ensuring that accountability works both ways.
Prevention through visibility and validation
The solution isn’t about creating a culture of suspicion. It’s about ensuring clarity, fairness and accuracy. EyeClean was designed with exactly this in mind.
The platform doesn’t just track clock-ins and clock-outs. It validates presence and movement through GPS tags, QR codes and motion beacons, providing a timestamped log of where employees are, for how long, and what work is being completed. It also delivers live positioning throughout a shift, giving employers peace of mind on health and safety – especially for lone workers – and providing a transparent view of time allocation across different areas of a site.
This makes it possible not only to prove that work has been done, but also to validate efficiency. Managers can be confident they are only paying for hours genuinely worked, whilst seeing if staff are spending the right amount of time in the right places, and being able to identify gaps where extra training is needed, or highlight where one employee may be carrying the load for another. Over time, this data can also reveal where historic time allocations no longer reflect reality, enabling businesses to streamline processes, redeploy resources, and deliver measurable savings for customers.
In effect, EyeClean operates as a new generation of field service management software, purpose-built for cleaning and facilities teams rather than repurposed from other industries. It transforms invisible work into visible data – data that can be used not just to prevent fraud, but to optimise operations.
Towards a culture of accountability
The risk of timesheet fraud will always exist when systems are open to abuse. But businesses need not resign themselves to it. With modern tools, invisible work can become visible. Data takes the place of blind trust, giving both employers and employees certainty.
Timesheet fraud thrives in the shadows, and the answer is transparency. EyeClean’s field service management software helps organisations shine a light on how work is actually being delivered, offering surety that every hour on the clock represents genuine value. For businesses watching their bottom line, that assurance is not just welcome. It’s essential.