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Checked against the product · 2026-10-05

Timekeeping — Employee Guide

For everyone who charges time. Short version: record your hours as you work them, certify the pay period, and your supervisor approves it. Nothing is filled in for you — that's deliberate, and this guide explains why.

New to Arcvue? Start with Your First Day — Signing In, which takes you from your invitation email to a working sign-in.

Where you enter time​

You record time directly in Arcvue: on the Timesheet page on the web, or in the Arcvue mobile app, which adds fast entry and voice entry for logging hours on the go. Both save to the same timesheet, so use whichever is handier; the phone is covered in Using the Arcvue Mobile App.

On the web, sign in at your company's sign-in address and open Labor → Timesheets from the navigation.

The timesheet you see is your own. If your role is allowed to record time for other people (a controller, usually), an Enter time for picker appears beside the pay-period controls; everyone else has no picker and a link naming somebody else still opens their own timesheet. Hours a controller records on your timesheet show who typed them, and you still certify your own pay period.

The pay period grid​

The web timesheet shows one pay period at a time, as a grid:

  • Each charge line you work is a row.
  • Every day of the pay period is a column — a semi-monthly period shows all fifteen or sixteen days, a biweekly one fourteen. The period comes from the payroll cycle your company has stated in Arcvue, never from a calendar week.
  • Every cell is the hours you worked on that line, that day.

At the top you'll see your name, the period's date range, and the controls to move between periods. They are arrows rather than words, and they are named Previous pay period and Next pay period — that is what you will hear if you use a screen reader, and what to look for if the arrows are not obvious. This pay period sits beside them and grays out when you are already on the current period, which is the quickest way to tell which period you are looking at. Weekends are shaded, not locked: a Saturday you actually worked takes hours like any other day.

If your company has not stated a payroll cycle yet, the page says so in an amber notice and shows one week at a time instead, with Previous week, Next week and This week. Ask your administrator to state the cycle; the timesheet then shows and certifies the full pay period.

A day with an hour on a contract that charges time by line, and no line picked, does not certify -- nothing in the period is certified until it does. The message names the lines on offer: clear that cell, enter the hours on the line, and certify again.

Onsite or offsite. A contract that bills your labor category at two rates by where the work was done lists your charge line twice -- · Onsite and · Offsite -- and never bare. Pick the one for where you worked; both can appear on one day, and each is its own line. Nobody else sees the choice: it appears only where your assignments on that contract need it.

The hours strip​

Above the grid, a small chart shows the shape of the period: one column per day, split by charge line, with a legend naming each line. It is for seeing at a glance which days are light and how your time divides across lines — the exact figures are in the grid. When you have more lines than the chart can color distinctly, the smallest ones fold into Other lines, and hovering a day still lists every line.

Adding your charge lines​

A new period starts empty — "No charge lines this pay period." A period that has not started yet says the date it opens instead; you can add your lines ahead of time, and each day takes hours when it arrives. Two ways to fill it in:

  1. Add charge line — search your authorized charge codes and pick one. A contract whose CLINs have been opened for time charging is listed as its lines — contract · CLIN number — and never as the whole contract; pick the line you worked, and each line is its own row. The row appears with empty cells.
  2. Copy previous period's lines (Copy previous period in the empty state; Copy last week's lines / Copy last week when no cycle is stated) — brings forward the same rows you charged last period, so you don't rebuild them by hand. It copies the lines only. The hours stay blank.

Each row is tagged direct, indirect, or leave. A charge line is exactly one of the three, never a blend.

What the picker offers you​

The picker is grouped into sections, and the sections are independent. Your contract and pool codes come first. Below them, if they apply to you, come Leave and Indirect.

That independence is worth knowing before you conclude a code is missing: a search that matches nothing in your contract codes can still match under Leave or Indirect. Read the whole panel, not just the top of it.

Some codes are left out on purpose:

  • Lines you are not allowed to charge. Your administrator can limit which of a contract's lines you may use. Only those lines are then listed. An hour on any other line is refused with a message naming the lines you may use, and a day holding such an hour does not certify until you move it.
  • Codes that need an approval first. Some codes, such as bereavement, appear only once you have been approved to charge them. Ask your supervisor or HR rather than charging something similar.
  • Retired codes and closed contracts. A code your company has retired, or a contract that has been closed, leaves the picker and takes no new hours.

Leave​

Leave is charged like anything else — pick it, then type hours on the day you took it.

The picker names the kind of leave, not the plan. You see the family your company offers — commonly PTO and Sick Leave — and never the internal plan variant behind it. There is no meaning to read into which one you are on, and the screen deliberately does not show it.

A kind of leave you are not enrolled in is not listed at all. That is correct, not a fault: not everyone who charges time in Arcvue accrues leave. If you expected to see one and do not, ask your administrator whether you are assigned to it.

A leave row you cannot click is different, and it means something specific. It is a kind of leave you do hold that has nowhere to post yet — an administrator step that has not been taken. The row tells you which step. You are not being denied it; the setup is unfinished.

Once saved, a leave hour reads back as what it was. A PTO hour says PTO. It does not read back as the accounting bucket it accumulates in.

Leave hours come out of your balance as you enter them. A day that asks for more than you hold of that kind of leave is refused. Recording leave here is still not asking for it: your timesheet sends nothing to your approver. Asking for the time is a time-off request. See Time Off. When you take leave, do both. A day your approver has already approved is taken from your balance once, not twice.

Indirect​

Indirect work is charged as a subclassification — commonly B&P, Business Development, R&D, Recruiting, G&A — with its account code shown beside the name.

This is the part people get wrong: the subclassification is the charge, not the pool. Several subclassifications share a single pool, so the pool name cannot tell them apart — B&P and Business Development would read identically. Pick the row that names the work you actually did.

Where several tasks post to one account, each task is its own row, named after the account and the task — for example Overhead · Training. Pick the task you actually worked on: the hour keeps it all the way to your supervisor's review. A task that is the only one on its account shows the account name alone.

An indirect row you cannot click is listed rather than hidden, and it carries its reason. That is on purpose: a row missing from a picker reads as "this company has no B&P", which is a very different and much more alarming conclusion than "this one is not set up for you yet".

Entering hours​

Click a cell, type the hours, and press Enter or click away. It saves on its own — you'll see a brief saving… under the cell. Hours go in quarter-hour steps.

Nothing is pre-filled for you, with one exception: paid holidays. There is no fill-down, no "standard day" button, and no copying yesterday's hours forward. Every worked hour on your timecard is a number you typed. That isn't an oversight — a timecard is your attestation of hours you actually worked, and a system that fills worked hours in on your behalf undermines exactly that — so Arcvue does not. Copying last period's lines saves you the setup without ever putting hours in your mouth.

The exception is a company holiday you are entitled to. When you open a pay period that contains one, Arcvue enters that day's holiday hours on the holiday line for you — the hours your holiday calendar credits, on the account your plan charges them to — and the entry says that Arcvue wrote it. It is not certified: you still read it and certify it with the rest of the period, and you can change it. If you worked that day and already have hours on it, nothing is added — your entry stands. If the holiday line does not appear when you expect it, you are not set up for a holiday plan; ask your bookkeeper rather than typing the hours onto another line.

Days that haven't happened yet don't take hours here. Any column after today is grayed out and won't accept a number, because you cannot charge time you haven't worked yet. It opens when the day arrives.

Leave is the one kind of hour that can go in ahead of the day — next week's PTO, say, so it is on your timesheet before you leave. Today the web grid grays out future days for every line, leave included, so record leave ahead from the Time tab in the mobile app, which takes leave hours on a day that has not come yet (and only leave). A time-off request is a different thing: it asks your approver and does not fill in your timesheet. See Time Off.

A day you have certified is not locked. The cell keeps a small certified mark under it and you can still change the number. When you do, Arcvue asks why — see Changing a certified day below.

The only cell that is locked is one your supervisor has approved. Approval posts the hours to the books, so it shows a lock and the note "Approved and posted — a change goes through the correction workflow." Ask your supervisor or controller; corrections are made by amendment, not by overwriting history.

The totals row. Along the bottom, Daily total turns amber for any workday up to and including today with nothing recorded. That's a nudge to finish the day, not an error. The figure on the right is your period total; if a weekly schedule is on file for you, it is shown against that schedule scaled to the weekdays in the period (a 40-hour week over an 11-weekday period reads / 88.00). If no schedule is on file, the total stands on its own and the page says so.

A line that asks for its task​

Some accounts are split into tasks, for example G&A and HR G&A. A line you used before tasks existed, including one brought back by Copy previous period, names the account but not the task. Hours on a day that already has an entry on that line save as before. For a new day:

  • If only one of the account's tasks is open to you, your hours go to that task without asking.
  • If several are, a Choose task list appears under the line's name. Pick the task first. If you type hours before picking, the line says Choose the task and your hours will save, and they are sent as soon as you pick.

A vacation or sick line from before leave was entered in Arcvue comes back from Copy previous period as your own leave row, so the hours come off your balance.

Changing a certified day​

You certified Tuesday, then realize the client meeting ran two hours, not four. Change the cell. When you leave it, a dialog headed Change certified hours opens showing the line, the day, and the old and new figures, and asks Why are the hours changing? Type the reason and click Save with reason. Cancel puts the cell back to the certified figure and sends nothing.

Two things happen when you save: the reason goes on that entry's permanent record (you can read it under Entry history, the small clock icon on the cell), and the day is no longer certified — the mark under the cell disappears, because your certification covered the old hours. Certify the pay period again once your changes are in.

That is standard timekeeping practice: hours can change, and the record shows who changed them, when, and why.

Certifying your pay period​

When the period is complete, click Certify pay period. (It stays disabled until the period has hours on it, while anything is still saving, and once every day with hours is certified.) The dialog that opens is headed Certify this pay period and shows the period's date range and total hours above the certification statement.

Read the certification statement, check "I certify the hours recorded for … are accurate," and click Certify. That one action certifies every day in the pay period that has hours on it. It attests only to hours entered in Arcvue: hours brought in from your previous timekeeping system were certified there and are not certified again.

Certifying is a legal attestation that the time you recorded is true and correct, so certify only time you actually worked.

You can certify before the period ends — say, before you leave for a vacation. The dialog then says plainly that this does not close out the pay period: anything you add or change afterwards needs certifying again, and the certification you make at period end is the one of record. Once the period has ended, the same dialog calls itself the certification of record, and your supervisor approves it at period close.

Cancel un-ticks the box as well as closing the dialog. That is deliberate: reopening it must never show you already certified, because a pre-ticked attestation would present you as having certified something you did not tick.

When no payroll cycle is stated, the button reads Certify these days, the dialog is headed Certify these days, and each day shown is certified on its own. The dialog says so.

Why "certify and get approved" matters​

Arcvue only picks up time that has been certified by you and approved by your supervisor. Until both happen, your hours sit in a waiting state and do not show up on reports or on the customer invoice.

This is on purpose — no one should bill a customer for time that hasn't been approved. In practice:

  • If you enter hours but never certify them, they won't flow through.
  • If you certify but your supervisor hasn't approved them, they won't flow through yet.
  • Once approved, your hours flow through automatically — you don't need to do anything else.

If something looks wrong​

"No employee record is linked to your account." Your login isn't connected to an employee record yet, so there's no timecard to show. Contact your administrator — this is a one-time setup step.

A cell won't let me type in it. Either it's a day that hasn't happened yet (it opens when the day arrives), or your supervisor has already approved that day (locked, with the correction-workflow note). A day you merely certified is still yours to change — it just asks why.

The charge code I need isn't in the picker. The picker only lists codes you are authorized to charge. If the contract or pool you worked on isn't there, you aren't set up for it yet — ask your supervisor rather than charging the nearest similar code. A contract that has been closed leaves the picker too, and the timesheet refuses new hours on it, even on a line already on your sheet.

My period total looks short but I entered everything. Check whether you're looking at the right period — the grid opens on the current pay period, and Previous pay period / Next pay period move it.

I have left the company and still owe my last timesheet. You can finish it for as long as your sign-in stays open after your last day: enter your hours and certify the final pay period as usual.

My hours aren't showing up on a report. The usual reason is that the period is still waiting for approval. Check with your supervisor.

An entry did not save. A red banner counts the entries that didn't reach the server and keeps the numbers you typed on screen. Retry all sends them again (each cell also has its own retry). The period cannot be certified while anything is unsaved.

What to do​

  1. Charge time to the right code, every day if you can.
  2. Certify the pay period by your team's deadline.
  3. If you get an "unlogged hours" reminder, Arcvue noticed you haven't recorded expected time — log it.
  4. If hours look missing on a report, check approval status first.

That's it. Accurate, certified, approved, on time — the rest is automatic.