Home / Resources / What is time and effort reporting?
Updated August 2026
If you pay anyone from a federal grant, you have to be able to show how they actually spent their time. Here's what that means in practice.
Time and effort reporting is the documentation showing that salary charged to a grant matches the work actually done. Federal rules require records that reasonably reflect the work performed — not a particular form, and not necessarily a timesheet.
When a funder pays part of someone's salary, they are buying a share of that person's time. If your program director is budgeted at 40% on a federal grant but spent the year almost entirely on something else, the grant was charged for work it didn't get.
Time and effort documentation is how you demonstrate that didn't happen. It is one of the most commonly examined areas in a federal audit, because payroll is usually the largest cost in a nonprofit's budget and therefore the largest thing to get wrong.
The relevant rule is 2 CFR 200.430, part of the Uniform Guidance that governs federal awards. It asks that charges for salaries be based on records that accurately reflect the work performed. Those records should:
Note the third and fourth points. This is where small organizations most often go wrong: documenting only the grant-funded slice. If someone is 30% on a grant, the record needs to account for the other 70% too, or there is nothing to compare the 30% against.
They do not name a form. They do not mandate a particular software product. And — this surprises people — they do not require timesheets in the way most people imagine them. What they require is a documented, consistently applied method that produces defensible records.
What is explicitly not enough is a budget estimate on its own. Deciding at the start of the year that someone is 40% on a grant, charging 40% every month, and never revisiting it is the classic finding. Budget estimates can be used for interim charging, but they have to be reconciled to what actually happened.
Any organization charging personnel costs to a federal award — including a subaward passed through a state agency, a city, or a larger nonprofit. Pass-through money is still federal money, and this catches a lot of small organizations by surprise. If your funding came originally from a federal agency, these rules follow it down the chain.
One page: who records time, how often, what counts, who reviews it, who certifies it. An auditor asking "what is your process?" should get a document, not a description.
Every hour lands somewhere — a grant, a program, general administration, fundraising.
Contemporaneous records carry far more weight than a reconstruction. A record created in March about March beats one created in December about March.
Someone with firsthand knowledge of the work should certify the record, and that certification should be dated.
What you charged the grant and what your payroll system paid should agree. Where estimates were used for interim charging, reconcile them to actuals and adjust.
This is general information, not legal or accounting advice. Federal grant rules change and are applied differently by different agencies and auditors. Check with your auditor, your grant officer, or an attorney before relying on any of it.
The Ember tool for thisEmber Staff logs staff time, splits it across grants and programs by actual effort, routes it for supervisor certification, and produces an audit-ready time-and-effort report — with unlimited users on every plan.
Not specifically. 2 CFR 200.430 requires records that accurately reflect the work performed and are supported by an internal control system. Timesheets are one way to meet that; they are not the only way and they are not named in the rule.
A timesheet records hours worked. Time and effort reporting documents how an employee's total activity was distributed across grants, programs and other functions — and is certified by someone with firsthand knowledge.
Yes. Federal money passed through a state agency, city or larger nonprofit carries the same requirements. This catches many small organizations by surprise.
For interim charging, yes — but they must be reconciled to actual activity, and adjustments made. Budget estimates alone do not support a charge.
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Sources: 2 CFR Part 200 (eCFR) — §200.430, compensation for personal services. Verified August 2026.