Q. Our electronic timekeeping system provides for only one approval signature.  We use many firms who provide subcontractors to work on our contract so if we only have room for one signature who should sign it?

A. The immediate supervisor of the subcontract employees should sign off. If the subcontract employee is primarily supervised by one of your (Prime contractor) employees then that person should sign off; if the immediate supervisor is an employee of the subcontractor firm, then they should sign off. In order to show that the Prime contractor has validated the accuracy of the subcontractor hours, I would make sure that a labor distribution report identifying all hours worked be generated and a member of the Prime management (e.g. project manager) sign off on it before labor costs are entered into the system and are invoiced to the client. Better yet, I would see whether you can alter the format of the timesheet to provide for two signatures – one from the subcontract supervisor and the other from the Prime contractor manager.

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