Contractor Timesheet Approvals: Hours Paid Within the SOW and the PO Balance

Every approved hour draws down a purchase order

A contractor timesheet is approved when its hours fit three limits: the rate and weekly cap in the statement of work, the SOW's end date, and what is left on the purchase order. The PO limit is the one that bites, because it is shared. Two timesheets on the same project draw on one balance, so the order in which they are approved decides which one fits.

SOWs are PDFs in Box, PO balances sit on project records in Salesforce, each timesheet is an item in ClickUp, the policy and holiday calendar live in Google Drive, and project leads answer questions in Slack. When an SOW is extended, a PO is increased or the holiday calendar is corrected, approvals made earlier in the week may no longer hold, and nobody wants to learn that from a contractor's invoice.

Who works in the room

The contractor program keeps one Kylon room. Ryan is the default agent, so a question about any timesheet goes to it. Ada runs finance's spot-checks and the closeout count, and Myco handles anything that has to reach a contractor or an agency. When a correction touches every contractor, Ryan splits the reading of 28 SOWs and timesheets across parallel helpers and gets one result back before it proposes anything.

One week of timesheets

The policy is in Google Drive, and the processing order is in the room guidelines: each project's queue is worked in ascending timesheet id, so PO balances are drawn down the same way every time.

Corrections that reach back into earlier approvals

Order matters most when something changes. If finance raises the PO on a project, the held timesheets on that project are re-run in ascending timesheet id, and a timesheet that was held for balance may now fit while a later one still does not. If a contractor corrects hours on an early timesheet, every later timesheet on that project is re-checked, because the balance each one saw has changed.

The holiday correction is the wide one. When people operations moves a company holiday, it affects all 28 contractors, and Ryan re-reads each week from current data in ClickUp and Salesforce rather than from what it proposed on Monday. At closeout, Ada lists the timesheets again from ClickUp and counts held timesheets against closeout comments. The two numbers have to agree before the week is signed.

What the checks catch

• A timesheet approved out of order, using balance that a lower-numbered timesheet needed
• A spot-check batch that quietly includes timesheets finance did not name
• Hours logged on a corrected holiday in a contractor's already-approved week
• A held count at closeout that does not match the closeout comments in ClickUp
• Hours approved past an SOW end date that was never extended

What stays with people

• Approving every timesheet on a project, which the project lead does
• Approving PO increases and SOW extensions
• Deciding how a holiday is treated for contractors
• Sending notes to contractors and agencies, which Myco prepares as Gmail drafts

Integrations in this workflow

Kylon is not a vendor management system and it does not replace one. It sits across the files, records and work tracker the team already keeps, and holds each week's coordination in one place.

• Box
• ClickUp
• Gmail
• Google Drive
• Salesforce
• Slack

• ClickUp holds one item per timesheet, with its status and closeout comment
• Box holds each contractor's SOW: rate, weekly cap and end date
• Salesforce holds the project records and each PO's remaining balance
• Google Drive keeps the timesheet policy, the holiday calendar and finance's spot-check lists
• Gmail carries notes to contractors and agencies, as drafts a person sends
• Slack is where project leads confirm extensions and answer questions about hours

Where to start

A single project and a single week make a good first cycle. Connect ClickUp and the Box folder of SOWs, and write one rule in the room guidelines: each project's timesheets are processed in ascending id, and a project lead approves every one before its status changes in ClickUp.

“Closeout is counted from ClickUp as it stands, not from what the thread said on Tuesday.”

Set it up with your agent

Open a new Room, add your agent and paste this prompt. It connects the tools, builds the App with you and asks for your rules one step at a time, and nothing goes out until a person approves it.