R-20 Compliant Timesheet: How to Keep It Right? A Guide for Construction Employers

On a job site governed by Bill R-20, the timesheet is not just an internal management tool: it is the document that feeds your register of daily activities and payroll, your monthly report to the CCQ and the calculation of contributions. An incomplete or inaccurate timesheet can lead to pay discrepancies, monthly report corrections and, in some cases, penalties. Yet with the right entries and a consistent method, keeping a compliant timesheet becomes a simple, reliable routine.

This guide is written for construction employers and managers in Quebec: what a timesheet must contain to comply with Bill R-20 and the collective agreements, how to distinguish regular, time-and-a-half and double-time hours, how long to keep your records, the most common mistakes and how to automate the whole thing.

Important notice: this article is for information purposes only and does not replace legal or professional advice. Rules may vary depending on the sector, the trade and the applicable collective agreement. Always confirm your situation with the CCQ, your payroll service or a qualified professional.

What is a compliant timesheet in construction?

A compliant timesheet is an hours record that makes it possible to reconstruct, for each employee and each day, the time worked on each job site, with enough detail to feed the register of daily activities and payroll required by Bill R-20. This register must be kept at the employer’s place of business and made available to the CCQ on request.

In other words, your timesheet is the source of the data; the register is its official form. The more accurate the timesheet is at the source, the more reliable the register, the monthly report and the payroll become. For the official rules, see the CCQ page on the register of daily activities and payroll.

What entries must a timesheet contain?

Based on the information required in the register by Bill R-20, a timesheet should make it possible to find at least the following elements for each working day:

• Identification of the employee and the employer: employee name, employer concerned and the employer’s licence number.
• Exact working times: start time, interruptions and end of work for each day.
• Breakdown of hours by rate: regular hours, time-and-a-half hours and double-time hours.
• Job site and awarder of the contract: hours broken down for each job site and for each awarder with whom the employer has a contract.
• Nature and address of the job site: type of job site, nature of the work and address.

These entries are what make a timesheet truly usable for compliance. A timesheet that shows only a weekly total, without a breakdown by job site or by rate, is generally not enough.

The daily or weekly record of hours worked proposed by the Association de la construction du Québec (ACQ) illustrates these fields well: one line per day, with the job site, the nature of the work, the sector, the start, break and end times, then the totals of regular, time-and-a-half and double-time hours and travel hours. You can consult this ACQ daily or weekly record template as a point of comparison, and our 2021-2025 collective agreement for the residential sector for the rules specific to that sector.

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How do you classify regular, time-and-a-half and double-time hours?

The construction collective agreements set, by sector and by trade, the regular schedules and the premium rates for overtime. The timesheet must therefore distinguish regular hours, time-and-a-half hours (50 %) and double-time hours (100 %), because these categories are not contributed on or paid in the same way.

The exact thresholds and rates depend on the sector (residential, institutional and commercial, industrial, civil engineering and roadwork) and on the applicable agreement. Always consult the construction collective agreements for the up-to-date rules of your sector.

Simplified example (fictional amounts): in a single week, an employee may work 35 regular hours, 3 time-and-a-half hours and 2 double-time hours, spread over two job sites. The timesheet must indicate, day by day and job site by job site, which category of time each hour worked belongs to. This classification determines the calculation of wages and contributions. Always confirm the real thresholds and rates for your sector with the CCQ.

Why break hours down by job site and by awarder of the contract?

Because Bill R-20 requires it and because the monthly report to the CCQ depends on it. Hours worked must be declared by sector of activity, and the register calls for the detail of hours for each job site and each awarder of the contract. A timesheet that mixes all job sites into a single total forces you to rebuild the information by hand at the end of the month, with a high risk of error.

How long must timesheets be kept?

The register of daily activities and payroll must be kept at the employer’s place of business and remain accessible to the CCQ, which may request it at any reasonable time and make copies of it.

Since February 27, 2020, construction employers must keep their documents for more than six years. This obligation covers, among other things, the payroll book, timesheets, contracts, invoices and purchase orders. This retention period is the same as the one required by Revenu Québec and follows a regulatory amendment made to the Regulation respecting the register, the monthly report, notices from employers and the designation of a representative (chapter R-20, r. 11).

Timesheets are source documents that make it possible to reconstruct the register and must therefore be kept appropriately. To learn the precise retention periods, see our article on record-keeping obligations as well as the official CCQ directives.

What is the link between the timesheet and the CCQ monthly report?

All employers governed by Bill R-20 must submit a monthly report to the CCQ, even if no work was carried out, no later than the 15th of the following month for the period covered. This report declares hours worked by sector and comes with the payment of the remittances and contributions provided for in the collective agreements and Bill R-20.

A monthly report submitted or paid late exposes the employer to a penalty. According to the CCQ, this penalty is in the order of 20 % on the total of the amounts corresponding to paid vacation and statutory holidays and to fringe benefits, in accordance with section 81 c) of Bill R-20. An accurate timesheet is what allows you to produce this report on time and without corrections. To go further, see our guide on the register of daily activities and payroll.

Compliant timesheet: summary of the elements to track

The table below summarizes what the CCQ record of hours worked must contain and why.

The most common mistakes to avoid

• Recording only a weekly total: without detail by day, by job site and by rate, the timesheet is not enough for the register or for the monthly report.
• Forgetting to break down by job site: mixing several job sites into a single total complicates the declaration by sector.
• Misclassifying overtime: confusing time-and-a-half and double-time distorts the calculation of wages and contributions.
• Correcting from memory at the end of the month: reconstructing hours after the fact multiplies errors and delays.
• Not keeping source documents: without archived timesheets, it is impossible to justify the register if the CCQ asks for it.

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Is mobile punching compliant with Bill R-20?

Yes, mobile punching is recognized as compliant, provided certain guidelines are respected. An arbitration decision clarified the conditions under which a punching app can be used to fill out the timesheet without infringing on the employee’s rights. In practice, a compliant app respects the following principles:

• Choice of device: the app can be installed on the smart device provided by the employer or on the employee’s own device.
• Employee consent: a consent form must be completed by the employee.
• Entry by the employee: the employee must punch in the information about their own working hours.
• No continuous geolocation: geolocation can only be activated when the employee performs the action of punching in the app, never continuously.
• Single, targeted location point: the app collects a single geolocation point, within a radius of 350 metres of the job site address.
• Data hosted in Quebec: the data collected must be kept in Quebec.
• Certified provider: the provider must hold a cybersecurity certification.

These conditions also align with your obligations regarding the protection of personal information in Quebec. Choosing an app designed around these guidelines saves you from having to check them yourself point by point.

How do you keep a compliant timesheet with punching software?

A mobile punching tool does not replace the CCQ rules or your payroll service, but it makes the raw material of compliance more reliable: the hours. With an app like Mobile-Punch, hours are recorded by job site, by task and by sector of activity, in real time and timestamped, which makes the breakdown by job site and by rate automatic rather than manual. The app is designed to respect the mobile punching compliance conditions described above, including employee consent, data hosting in Quebec and the absence of continuous geolocation.

The data structured this way transfers directly into your CCQ timesheet and into the calculation of working hours, with export to Quebec accounting software (Acomba, Nethris, Avantage). You reduce data-entry errors, manual re-transcription and the risk of fraudulent punching between co-workers.

Mobile-Punch was designed precisely so that compliance with Bill R-20 follows naturally from the data you collect, instead of being an end-of-month chore.

New: employee mileage directly on the timesheet

The record of travel hours and the calculation of travel allowances are often among the most tedious lines to reconstruct at the end of a period. Mobile-Punch’s new mileage module automatically calculates the distance travelled by your employees between home and the job site, or between the office and the job site. You set the unit in kilometres or miles, you find the distances directly on the employee’s timesheet, and you export the data collected for your payroll. Calculating the travel allowances set out in your collective agreement becomes much simpler.

Would you like to see how Mobile-Punch can make your timesheets compliant and simplify your CCQ monthly report?

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