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Time sheets

Business Central has one time sheetTime sheet (Business Central)The Business Central record that registers hours per employee. Dime.Scheduler can fill it from the plan (planned time) or from released time entries (time registration); running both for the same work registers the hours twice. table. Dime.Scheduler can fill it in two different ways, and choosing between them is a decision about what the hours in your back office are supposed to mean.

Hours come fromWritten whenPage
Planned timeThe plan - what was scheduledA planner schedules the workTime Sheets
Actual timeThe actuals - what really happenedA resource submits their timeTime registration

Everything else about them differs: who acts, when it happens, what has to be configured, and which BC objects are involved. But the destination is the same table, which is exactly why the two are easy to confuse and worth separating deliberately.

Planned time​

The planner schedules an appointmentAppointmentA task scheduled to a resource for a specific period - the scheduled instance you see on the planning board.. Business Central records the hours that were scheduled, automatically, and nobody registers anything by hand.

This is the right choice when the plan is a good enough proxy for reality: fixed-price work, standard service windows, jobs where the scheduled duration is what gets costed anyway. It costs the resource nothing, because they are never asked. The hours appear as a consequence of planning.

Its limit is the same as its strength. A two-hour job that took five is recorded as two, because the plan is the only thing it ever knew about.

Actual time​

The resourceResourceAn entity that can carry out work - a person, vehicle, tool, or room - that you schedule on the planning board. says how long the work really took, from a timer or by hand, and submits it. Business Central receives what they claimedClaimThe act of turning finished work sessions into a time entry for one task and one day. A claim can also be made directly without a session; only work sessions count, travel and waiting do not..

This is the right choice when the difference between planned and actual is the thing you care about: time and materials billing, utilization, payroll, or any project where "we quoted two hours" and "it took five" must not be the same number.

Its cost is the same as its value. Somebody has to register, and time registration is only as good as the discipline behind it.

Using both​

A tenant can use either, both, or neither. If you switch on both, that one table receives planned hours off the board and actual hours from resources.

That can be legitimate: some organizations want the plan in BC immediately and the actuals correcting it later. It is also the easiest way to double-count. Before enabling both, settle which of the two is authoritative for costing and make sure the people reading the time sheets know the answer.

If you are not sure, start with one.

Where the names come from​

The two are named for what they do in Business Central rather than for the distinction between them, which is why the label alone will not tell you which you want. Read the table above rather than the titles:

  • Time Sheets is the BC module that writes planned hours.
  • Time registration is the Dime.Scheduler feature where resources register actual hours.