If your payroll person is still spending hours every week adding up and typing in paper timesheets, you’re letting valuable time slip away. Manually calculating and keying paper timesheets takes ages, and it’s easy to make mistakes, especially when you’re juggling heaps of them week in and week out.
Doing things this way holds your business back in a few big ways:
It eats time that could be better spent
Your payroll admin could be doing much smarter work than repetitive data entry. Instead of focusing on fixing numbers, they could be looking at ways to improve their processes or to help drive business decisions.
Errors are almost guaranteed
Handwriting can be hard to read, and manual entries can slip through with typos or missing hours. These mistakes mean extra time chasing corrections and frustration for staff who just want to be paid properly.
Payroll gets slower as you grow
When your team grows or shifts become more complex, that pile of paper grows taller and harder to manage. What once seemed manageable becomes a real bottleneck.
No automation means no easy wins
Paper systems can’t handle complex pay rules, automatic overtime, breaks or deductions the way digital tools can. That means more manual work and a higher risk of errors.
Keeping compliant gets tougher
With employment record-keeping rules in New Zealand, you’ve got to keep accurate time and wage records. Doing this by hand increases the risk of missing important details and having to fix them later.
Analysis and reporting are blind spots
With paper, you’re guessing at trends. Digital systems give data you can actually use to plan better rosters, track labour costs, and spot issues early.
Paper can get lost or damaged
Timesheets on desks or in filing cabinets don’t travel well. They get misplaced, smudged, or forgotten.
For 2026, the message is simple: don’t keep doing the same thing because “that’s how we’ve always done it.” Many Kiwi businesses are ditching paper and moving to digital timesheet tools that make payroll quicker, more accurate, and much less painful.
If you want your people focused on work that actually matters this year, now’s the time to make the switch.