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 — the routing mirrors the real build; 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 — 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 — 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 — I'll tell you exactly how I'd automate it.

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