How often should I update my timesheet: Hourly? Daily? Weekly?

The key factor here is based on how much information you'll need to keep track of. If you can remember at the end of the day how much time you spent on the big things in your day, then doing your timesheet daily is probably fine. If you are working in a DCAA (US Defense Contract Audit Agency) compliant environment, then it is a requirement to enter your timesheet daily.

For some people however, daily will not be often enough. If they can spend 2 or 3 minutes at the end of the morning and another 2 or 3 minutes at the end of the day, they'll get better results. Some people are only doing three or four tasks in a given week. For those people, they'll be able to do their timesheet at the end of the week and get accurate data.

Like everything else in life, there are always exceptions. If we look at a plant shutdown environment, it may be critical to analyzing the effectiveness of the shutdown schedule later to get timesheet data down to the minute. In that case, having a supervisor who is updating crew progress on paper or online throughout the shift may be the only way to get the valuable data you need.