Need timesheet to populate attendance/billing sheet

Hi,

My company work with individuals with disabilities. We have some problems internally with our timesheet/billing system, and I am thinking that we could use Excel to help solve these problems. Here is a description of our current system and the problems:

We have about 30 workers and about 130 clients. Each worker's timesheet has 15 minute increments, the client's last name, type of service, and then number of hours worked. This is currently done on paper. Then, the worker fills out an attendance sheet (on paper) with each client's name, and the amount of time worked with that client each day of the month. Then, our office manager collects these attendance sheets and enters the amount of time worked with each client per day into an Excel spreadsheet (each client may have more than one person work with them in the course of the month). This spreadsheet is used to bill the agencies paying us for our work with the clients.

Often times, worker's timesheets do not match the attendance sheets. There are many things that cause these errors, and our auditors want us to fix these problems. I think the best way would be to have the timesheets completed on Excel, and have these automatically populate the final attendance on an Excel spreadsheet.

So, the first question is the best way to create an Excel timesheet where start and end times for each client can be entered, and then the number of hours with each client is automatically calculated. I may be able to figure this out on my own, but any ideas of how to do this or resources where I can learn this best way to do this would be greatly appreciated.

The second question is how can we get these daily timesheets to automatically populate our final attendance spreadsheet. Each worker's timesheet will need to be linked to the final attendance spreadsheet. We have about 30 workers and about 130 clients.

We are working on Excel 2007.

Is it reasonable to ask for help with a problem like this? Is there anything more that I should provide? This is my first post to the forum.

Thank you.

Sorry, I was out on vacation for 2 weeks and just returned. Everyone has access to common PC's with a shared network drive. At this time, they can just print out and sign their timesheets manually. Better if people do not have access to each other's timesheets, and better if they can only be edited by the staff person or management.

I was hoping for a template for timesheets that goes in 15 minute increments and then adds up the daily hours. I feel like someone must've created this already. Then I could try and work out how to autopopulate the attendance sheet.

Well, I did get some help on a timesheet that adds up people's daily hours. It may not be the best, but it does work. However, now I run into my second problem. It is this: on the timesheets, in consecutive columns people write: Name of client, Time in, Time out. Then the total hours are calculated in the next column. Each client then has their own spreadsheet (called an attendance sheet), with a cell for each day of the month, and in this cell goes the total hours spent working on their case that day.

Can I get Excel to autopopulate the attendance sheet with the information on the timesheet (i.e. match the name of client and then enter the daily hours for each day)? My friend who created the timesheet said that a database would be required for this. I think it could be done on Excel.