Most contractors do not have a timesheet problem. They have a form their crew already knows, with columns the foreman fills in the same way every day. Software that asks everyone to learn a new layout loses to the clipboard.
So Chantro goes the other direction. You upload the paper form, and it drafts the digital version of that same form.
Upload, read, check, publish
The order matters, and the last step belongs to a person.
- Upload the paper timesheet: a PDF, a photo, a Word or Excel file. You can also send a phone photo through a QR code.
- Chantro reads the page and drafts a form: sections, tables, checklist rows, the questions.
- You review it on a split screen. The page with numbered boxes is on the left, the draft cards on the right. Click box 4 and its card highlights.
- You fix what is off and send it to the form builder.
- You publish. Nothing publishes itself.
What the review screen shows you
The draft is not just a pile of fields. The review shows counts that add up, per-column meanings, and any codes matched against your own list of work codes. It also tells you what it left out. You can re-read a single box or a whole page if something came out wrong.
Handwriting quality matters. A clean printed form reads better than a faded photocopy. We do not put a percentage on it, because it depends on your form.
Then it behaves like a real timesheet
A published form is yours to assign by person, position, classification or group, with a preview of who will start using it. Published versions never change, so last month's sheets still mean what they meant.
From there, the rest of the time system works around it.
| Piece | What it does |
|---|---|
| The clock | Start on a project or task, switch, lunch, stop. Hours and minutes only |
| Add time later | "From and to" or just hours, shown before you save |
| Approvals | Days are submitted, approved or sent back with a note |
| Flags | Each flagged day carries a one-sentence reason for the approver |
| Pay periods | Close, export and reopen with a history |
| Payroll export | A generic CSV |
| Labor cost | Hours and cost on each project's Labor tab |
For the office
Jenna runs payroll at Corvane Builders. She does not want to retype anything. Approved hours come out as a CSV, kept as it was sent, and she brings it to whatever she uses today. Chantro does not push into other payroll or accounting systems. It is not a payroll processor, and overtime rules are settings your company configures and owns.
For the foreman
Andre Mitchell runs a carpenter crew, and some of them do not have logins. A crew sheet lets him enter a day for the people on his crew, with the same hours applied to everyone he ticks, such as 7:00 to 3:30 with lunch. The approver sees one row per person.
For the job
Once hours carry a rate, each project's Labor tab shows cost to date, cost by week and the pace against a labor budget. That is labor cost, not a full job-costing ledger. Materials, equipment and subcontracts are not in it, and cost is visible only to people with permission to see it.
Where it stops
A person on a weekly hours-only form has no clock. Union and certified payroll reports are not built. And the paper upload gets you a good draft quickly, not a finished form without looking.
The short version
Keep the form your crew trusts. Let Chantro do the first pass of turning it into something that feeds approvals, pay and project labor, then check it yourself and publish when it is right.
