Planned and actual: the reconciliation that shows you where the hours go
Echipa HR 365 · reviewed 2026-09-02 · 5 min read
Reconciliation means comparing, for each person and each day, what was planned with what happened, and classifying every difference. Differences are not errors — they are information. What matters is that none of them reaches the final timesheet without somebody having seen and labelled it.
Why one of them alone is not enough
Companies that plan shifts but never check delivery are, in effect, paying the plan — including shifts nobody covered. Those that record only attendance, with no plan, can never say whether coverage was sufficient, because there is nothing to compare against. The two together answer the useful question: was the right person in the right place?
The five types of difference
| The difference | What happened | Who resolves it | An alarm signal if… |
|---|---|---|---|
| Planned, not delivered | The shift was not covered | Manager | It recurs on the same weekday |
| Delivered, not planned | Somebody came who was not in the plan | Manager | It happens often — the plan is not being used |
| Longer duration | They stayed beyond schedule | Manager, then HR | It is constant for the same person or post |
| Shorter duration | They left early | Manager | There is no recorded reason |
| An unrecorded swap | Two people swapped shifts between themselves | Manager | It surfaces at reconciliation rather than before |
The monthly procedure
Five steps, in the same order every month
- System or HR — generates the list of differences, not the whole timesheet — you work only on what does not match
- Team manager — classifies each difference against the five types, within two days of month end
- Manager — adds the reason where the type alone does not explain it (left early — why)
- HR — checks only the unclassified differences and the recurring ones, not all of them
- HR — closes the month; after closing, any correction leaves a trace and a reason
The first step is what makes the procedure sustainable. In an ordinary month, differences are under 10% of the cells. A manager who receives the list of differences finishes in twenty minutes; one who receives the whole timesheet and has to read it never reads it.
What you read from the pattern of differences
- Differences concentrated on one shift or location — the problem is in the planning, not the people. Usually that shift is undersized from the start.
- Consistent overruns on the same position — the post has more work than fits the schedule. Solved by redistribution or by formally recognising the hours, not by individual conversations.
- Many unplanned entries — the plan is made but not used. Check first whether it reaches people and when: a rota published two days ahead cannot be followed.
- Differences appearing only in busy months — normal and acceptable, if they are recorded. They become a problem only when they no longer have a written reason.
Closing the month and why the written trace matters
Once closed, the month is not changed silently. Any later correction stays visible, with the author, the date and the reason. It is not a measure of distrust: it is the only way that, six months on, anybody can reconstruct why a day looks different from the report sent at the time.
What you do when the differences are many and constant
Above roughly 15% of cells differing, the problem is no longer execution but planning. A plan that constantly departs from reality does not describe the work, and reconciliation becomes a monthly transcription of what happened anyway. In that situation, the right move is to rebuild the plan from the actuals, not to insist that actuals move towards the plan.
The practical check takes ten minutes: take the last three months and count how many times the same position had a difference on the same weekday. If Friday evening is always undercovered, the plan tells a story nobody believes any more, and people have adjusted on their own. Their adjustment is usually closer to the truth than the plan.
Who sees the reconciliation and who does not
The result of reconciliation is operational information, not a disciplinary file. The manager sees their team, HR sees the aggregate and the recurring differences, the employee sees their own days. Nobody sees a list of colleagues with deviations — the moment such a table circulates is the moment people start covering for each other, and the data becomes useless.
What reconciliation is not
It is not a tool for controlling people and it produces no sanctions. Presented that way, people start reporting exactly what was planned, whatever happened — and you lose the only source of information about what the work actually looks like.
The test that shows which direction the process has taken at your place: look at the number of differences reported over the last three months. If it drops steadily towards zero, it is unlikely you fixed the planning; far more likely you taught the team that differences bring uncomfortable questions, and they have disappeared from the report rather than from reality.
Do I reconcile monthly or weekly?
Weekly for classification, monthly for closing. A week later the manager remembers what happened; a month later they reconstruct from assumptions.
What if the manager does not classify the differences?
Do not classify them yourself, by assumption. Unclassified differences stay marked as such in the closed timesheet — visible in the report. It is the only mechanism that produces an effect, because the problem becomes theirs rather than yours.
Planned-versus-actual reconciliation, generated automatically on the differences
The manager receives only the cells that do not match, classifies them in one click, and the monthly timesheet closes with a reason on every deviation.
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