A plain explanation
The Defense Contract Audit Agency audits the costs contractors charge to the federal government, and on most contracts the largest cost is labor. Labor has no receipt. The timesheet is the receipt, which is why the timesheet is where an audit looks hardest, and why the expectations for it are stricter than most people meet by habit. This page says what those expectations are, where they come from, and how to meet them.
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Any firm whose labor is billed or claimed to the federal government under a contract that pays for hours or reimburses costs: time-and-materials and labor-hour contracts (FAR 52.232-7), cost-reimbursement contracts (FAR 52.216-7), and the subcontractors those primes flow the same terms down to. If your hours become an invoice to an agency or a cost claimed against a federal award, assume these expectations apply and read the contract for the clause that makes them binding.
Four passages of the Federal Acquisition Regulation carry most of the weight: the two payment clauses that put the timesheet behind the invoice, the cost principle that makes the record decisive, and the retention rule. Each is quoted as published, with what it means for a timesheet beneath it.
... The Contractor shall substantiate vouchers (including any subcontractor hours reimbursed at the hourly rate in the schedule) by evidence of actual payment and by-- (i) Individual daily job timekeeping records; (ii) Records that verify the employees meet the qualifications for the labor categories specified in the contract; or (iii) Other substantiation approved by the Contracting Officer.
On a time-and-materials or labor-hour contract, the clause lists what substantiates the hours you invoice: individual daily timekeeping records, records that the people meet the labor categories, or other substantiation the contracting officer approves. The record it names first, and the cadence it names, is the daily one; the third limb is an approval you hold in writing, not an assumption.
The Government will make payments to the Contractor when requested as work progresses, but (except for small business concerns) not more often than once every 2 weeks, in amounts determined to be allowable by the Contracting Officer in accordance with Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) subpart 31.2 in effect on the date of this contract and the terms of this contract. The Contractor may submit to an authorized representative of the Contracting Officer, in such form and reasonable detail as the representative may require, an invoice or voucher supported by a statement of the claimed allowable cost for performing this contract.
On a cost-reimbursement contract, what is paid is what the contracting officer determines to be allowable under FAR subpart 31.2, on a voucher supported by a statement of the claimed cost. Labor is claimed, not invoiced by the hour, which is why the next passage, on what makes a cost allowable, is the one that reaches the timesheet.
A contractor is responsible for accounting for costs appropriately and for maintaining records, including supporting documentation, adequate to demonstrate that costs claimed have been incurred, are allocable to the contract, and comply with applicable cost principles in this subpart and agency supplements. The contracting officer may disallow all or part of a claimed cost that is inadequately supported.
Labor is a cost like any other, and the last sentence is the consequence: a cost with an inadequate record can be disallowed. For labor, the record is the timesheet and the trail behind it: who worked, on what, when it was recorded, and who approved it.
Except as stated in 4.703(b), contractors shall make available records, which includes books, documents, accounting procedures and practices, and other data, regardless of type and regardless of whether such items are in written form, in the form of computer data, or in any other form, and other supporting evidence to satisfy contract negotiation, administration, and audit requirements of the contracting agencies and the Comptroller General for-- (1) 3 years after final payment; or (2) For certain records the period specified in 4.705 through 4.705-3, whichever of these periods expires first.
Three years after final payment is the general period, and the second subparagraph is the one most people miss: for some classes of record a shorter period in FAR 4.705 applies instead, whichever expires first. FAR 4.705-2(b) lists clock cards or other time and attendance cards at two years, and FAR 4.704(a) starts that clock at the end of the fiscal year in which the cost was entered, not at final payment. Paragraph (b) then lengthens the period when a contract clause says so, when a final indirect cost rate proposal is late, or when you keep records longer for your own purposes (then your own period or three years after final payment, whichever expires first). Keep the timesheet, and the history behind it, for the longest period that applies to you; your contract sets it, not a default.
Read from acquisition.gov on 2026-09-02 and quoted as published, with the FAR's dashes rendered as double hyphens and the one excerpt marked by three dots. The practices an auditor applies to labor, described next, come from how DCAA explains its audits to contractors in its Contract Audit Manual and its guide for contractors: the agency's practice rather than the regulation's text, and each section that describes them says so.
As DCAA describes its own practice to contractors, in the order a timesheet meets them. Each is stated as what the auditor looks for, so you can test your own timekeeping against it.
The person records their own hours on the day they work them, not a manager on their behalf and not the whole week on Friday. A week entered in one sitting is a reconstruction, and an auditor treats a reconstruction as an estimate.
Hours go to the contract, project, or task they were spent on, and a person can only charge what they are authorized to charge. A generic bucket that absorbs whatever did not fit is a finding; so is an hour on a project the person was never assigned to.
Direct hours and indirect hours (leave, training, proposal work, overhead) are recorded together, so that the total accounts for the whole day. An auditor reconciles the timesheet to payroll, and a timesheet that shows only the billable hours cannot be reconciled.
When an entry changes, the original stays on the record, the change is dated and attributed, and the reason travels with it. A record that has been overwritten in place has lost exactly the thing an auditor asks to see.
The person responsible for the work reviews the hours charged to it, in a way that leaves a record of who approved what and when. An approval by whoever happened to be available is a weaker record than one by the manager the project belongs to.
Every entry, change, and approval is on a record that can be produced later, with the person and the time attached. This is what the regulations above mean by records adequate to demonstrate the cost.
The record, and the history behind it, stays available for the retention period that binds you: the one the contract sets, or the one FAR 4.703 sets, three years after final payment or a shorter FAR 4.705 period for some records, whichever expires first, and longer when a contract clause or a late final indirect cost rate proposal extends it.
Three forms, as DCAA describes them to contractors. None is a regulation; each is how the expectations above are tested in practice.
An auditor arrives without notice, walks the floor, and asks people at their desks what they are working on and what they have charged today. The answer is compared with the timesheet. The check is looking for two things: that time is being recorded as it happens, and that what is recorded matches what is being done.
The auditor samples timesheets and traces each one: who recorded it and when, what it was charged to, whether the person was authorized to charge it, who approved it, and what changed afterward and why. A record that answers every step of that trace is the whole aim of the expectations above.
Beyond individual timesheets, the auditor asks whether the system itself prevents the failures: whether a week can be entered late without a reason, whether a correction can erase the original, whether anyone can approve anything. A control that exists only as a policy on paper is judged by whether the system enforces it.
The failures the expectations exist to prevent, as they appear in practice. Each is the mirror of one expectation above.
TackTime is built around these expectations rather than adapted to them afterward. What follows relates the product to each one, in the same order: what is built is stated as built, and the one capability that is still a design is stated as a design.
TackTime supports a DCAA-oriented timekeeping process and is not a certification, an attestation, or a guarantee of compliance; how your organization configures and uses it decides the outcome.
Every workspace begins with a 60-day trial of the full product. You will sign in with your work identity first, then name the company and the address the workspace answers on.
