Art The VA Specialist
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Harborview Agency Group (name changed)

Employee Time Tracker & Payroll

Staff punch in and out from a simple interface. Timesheets compute themselves, breaks deduct correctly, and payroll exports are ready without manual math.

5+ hours

Payroll prep time saved / cycle

Near zero

Timesheet disputes

20+

Staff on the system

Try the live demo

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Live workflow demos

Three n8n workflows run this system end to end. Hit each trigger to watch a prototype replay, where the routing mirrors the real build and the data is illustrative.

WF-1 · Overtime & Time-Off Request

The full lifecycle of a VA overtime or time-off request, from form submission to client approval and recordkeeping.

Click “Form submitted” to run the workflow.

WF-2 · VA Notification for Edit Requests / Disputes

Every pay-period cut-off, VAs are automatically notified to review timesheets and raise disputes before payroll runs.

Click “Run Today” to run the workflow.

WF-3 · Paystub Email & Google Drive Upload

On payday, each VA's timesheet is exported as a PDF, emailed to them, and filed to their Google Drive folder.

Click “Run Today is payday” to run the workflow.
View build screenshots (Drive folder) →

The problem

Remote team members reported hours in chat: "on now", "taking lunch", "done for the day". Every payroll cycle, someone reconstructed timesheets from message history, argued about break deductions, and hand-computed totals.

That's hours of admin work per cycle, and every manual computation is a chance for a payroll error that erodes trust with your team.

What I built

A time tracking system with the state logic done right:

  • Punch in / break / punch out - a simple interface with guardrails. You can't punch out while on break, can't start a break before punching in, can't double punch. The state machine makes invalid sequences impossible.
  • Automatic break deduction - break minutes are tracked per session and deducted from payable hours, consistently, every time.
  • Live timesheet - every punch writes a row. Staff and managers see the same numbers, so disputes end before they start.
  • Payroll-ready output - end of cycle, totals are already computed and exportable. A PDF timesheet generator produces clean documents for records.

Why it matters for your agency

Payroll accuracy is a trust system. When the numbers compute themselves from punch events, there's nothing to argue about and nothing to reconstruct.

The demo below runs the real state machine, so try to break it. Punch in, take a break, punch out, and watch the timesheet compute your hours.

Under the hood

Punch events write to Google Sheets through Apps Script endpoints; the timesheet recomputes payable hours (gross minus break time) per session. Getting the state transitions right was the hard part, since the first version had edge-case bugs around double punches and breaks spanning midnight, which is exactly why the demo's state machine is strict about legal transitions. A companion workflow generates PDF timesheets and syncs summaries into the agency's CRM.

Want a system like this running your agency?

Book a 30-minute call. Bring your messiest process, and I'll tell you exactly how I'd automate it.

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