Case Study: Reimagining Timesheets, Leaves, and Payroll

For K-12 school districts, payroll does not begin on payday, it begins weeks earlier with stacks of paper timesheets, spreadsheets, emails, and manual approvals. Every employee hour, extra duty assignment, leave request, and payroll report depends on administrative teams collecting, verifying, and entering information accurately and on time. 

For many school districts, these manual processes have become increasingly difficult to sustain. Paper forms slow down tracking and approvals, disconnected systems create duplicate work, and payroll staff spend countless hours reconciling and calculating time sheets and leaves instead of having time to focus on more strategic priorities.

Many districts have recognized these challenges and turned to Helios to help them streamline this cumbersome process. For instance, Jurupa Unified School District (JUSD), Monrovia Unified School District (MUSD), and Victor Elementary School District (VESD) adopted Helios to connect time sheets, leaves and substitutes in one place, automate approvals, and gain greater visibility into employee time and payroll reporting. 

Although each of these districts faced different operational priorities, they shared a common goal: eliminating manual work, improving accuracy, and creating more efficient experience for employees, supervisors, HR, and payroll. 

The Challenge: Manual Processes Were Costing Time, Visibility, and Resources 

Before using Helios for time and leaves, districts relied heavily either on paper forms and manual workflows or digital forms that needed reconciliation with other systems and manual calculations. Every pay period required administrators to collect timesheets, verify hours, route approvals, manually enter payroll information, and resolve discrepancies before payroll could be finalized. 

Paper-based timekeeping creates a substantial administrative burden. With each timecard requiring approximately 10-15 minutes to collect, process, and verify, organizations with hundreds or thousands of employees can spend hundreds of staff hours every pay cycle on manual administration rather than strategic or service-focused work. JUSD found that manual processes create costs beyond efficiency. When payroll errors or delays occur, they can lower morale and increase the administrative effort required to resolve issues. Risks of penalties and audits are also increased in such cases. 

Extra duty assignments, including coaching, tutoring, after-school programs, and special events, introduced another layer of complexity. Without a centralized system, districts struggled to monitor time sheets, track funding sources, and ensure payroll accurately reflected work performed.  

MUSD faced an equally common challenge: managing timesheets, leave requests, stipend approvals, and other personnel actions across forms, emails, and disconnected systems. Every request followed a different path, making approvals difficult to track and creating unnecessary delays.  

VESD also found that employees had limited visibility into the hours appearing on their paychecks, often leading to questions during payroll processing. 

Other districts have implemented some form of digital time sheets. However, these systems just stop at getting those digital forms approved in isolation. They do not connect to anything else. There is so much more beyond digital time sheets – absences, leave balances, substitutes, and extra duty. All of these live in multiple other systems. Districts have reported that they still need to reconcile all of these disconnected systems at payroll time with their own internal spreadsheets. This results in significant delays and error-prone manual work. 

While each district utilizes their own unique workflows, each experienced many of the same operational challenges: 

• Time-consuming approvals 

• Manual payroll preparation and reporting 

• Duplicate data entry across multiple systems 

• Limited visibility into employee hours and labor costs 

• Increased risk of payroll errors 

• Lengthy approval cycles 

• Difficulty tracking extra duty budgets and funding 

The Solution: One Platform Connecting Timekeeping, Leaves, and Payroll 

Rather than simply digitizing paper forms, the districts implemented Helios to streamline how employee time and leaves were managed. 

Employees began submitting electronic timesheets and absences online while configurable workflows automatically routed approvals to the appropriate supervisors and administrators. For districts managing supplemental work, Helios introduced electronic extra duty requests that are connected directly to employee timesheets. Once approved, hours could be tracked automatically, eliminating duplicate data entry while providing administrators with real-time visibility into assignments across schools, departments, and programs. 

Helios consolidates these in one place: 

• Employee absences go through approvals and also help find substitutes 

• Time sheets for substitutes 

• Track real time leave balances 

• Extra duty timesheets 

• End of month approvals for leaves and timesheets 

• End of month payroll reports 

Employees simply enter their absences using integrated schedules and calendars, and this single action powers several key processes within the system: 

1. Absences are routed for approval to reflect each district’s unique approval path (to supervisors, HR, site administrator, etc.) based on absence types. 
2. Time is deducted from their leave balance. 
3. If using Helios for sub finding, qualified and available substitutes are notified of these absence assignments and subs can then pick those jobs. 
4. Time sheets are generated or entered by either the substitutes or the school sites depending on the district’s preference. 
5. When automatically generated, substitute time sheets are linked to each absence. 

Helios updates the employee absence, leave balance, and sub time all at once in one place. The end of month payroll process then gets streamlined to the steps below: 

1. Ensure that all leaves and time sheets are approved by the appropriate administrators and supervisors. 
2. Helios can help send automated reminders to administrators to approve all time sheets. 
3. Time sheet approvals can be routed to multiple approvers based on criteria and the district’s approval path. 
4. Payroll then locks the pay period so that others cannot make changes to that pay period. 
5. Payroll then runs the available payroll reports and reviews to make sure the data looks good and make any adjustments if necessary. 
6. Payroll can then run reports and export them to Excel or CSV formats to upload directly into their payroll or ERP system. Reports can be formatted to match the payroll or ERP system’s requirements. 

For extra duty, districts improved financial control significantly by: 

• Pre-approving extra duty assignments and aligning them with a dedicated extra duty budget code. 

• Establishing a clear “bank” of extra duty funds, districts can plan spending in advance and ensure they only spend what has already been allocated. 

• Tracking time sheets tied to these approvals and paying only what has been allocated and approved. 

Districts now use Helios reports to monitor outstanding extra duty balances by funding code lines, allowing fiscal teams to accurately encumber departmental budgets within their financial system. For example, Jackie Benson, Director of Fiscal Services at Jurupa Unified School District said:  

“Helios offered extra duty functionality out of the box, and we were also able to customize the request to meet our needs.” 

Districts have expanded their use of Helios beyond timesheets, bringing leave requests, stipend approvals, employee requests, and other administrative workflows into the same platform. Automated notifications, role-based routing, and approval tracking replaced manual follow-ups, creating a consistent and auditable process from start to finish.  

By consolidating timesheets, workflows, and absence management within Helios, MUSD transformed a manual, time-intensive process into an efficient, seamless process. Automated routing and approvals reduced processing time, minimized errors, and provided greater visibility into the status of employee requests. The streamlined approach improved operational efficiency, enhanced the employee experience, and freed staff to focus on higher-value initiatives that support schools and students. 

Erica Madrid, Secretary of Fiscal Services at Victor Elementary School District, explained that they have saved significant hours in their payroll processes since partnering with Helios. 

“We don’t have to spend an inordinate amount of hours deciphering payroll,” said Madrid. 

Across these districts, key capabilities included: 

• Electronic timesheet submission and approvals 

• Automated workflow routing and notifications 

• Extra duty assignments tied to timesheets for budgeting 

• Integrated absence management and substitute finding 

• Centralized reporting and audit history 

• Configurable workflows tied directly to timesheets 

• Faster payroll reporting and exporting to their payroll systems 

The Impact: District Staff Save Thousands of Hours  

While each district measured success differently, all reported meaningful operational improvements after streamlining with Helios. 

For example, JUSD estimates that improved tracking of extra duty assignments now saves up to $150,000 annually, while giving administrators far greater visibility into labor costs and program budgets. Jackie Benson at JUSD at the district notes: 

“This is really helping our sites stay within their site budgets and helping us to stay fiscally solvent as a district. So, in this regard, the system pays for itself”  

Another district, VESD, dramatically reduced payroll administration by streamlining timesheet collection and approvals, saving hundreds of administrative hours overall. Yet another district, MUSD, transformed its paper-based workflow into a digital process, saving more than 40% in staff hours and reducing administrative costs.  

Beyond the measurable savings, district leaders consistently pointed to improvements that are harder to quantify but equally valuable: 

• Ability to bring disparate processes in one place 

• Faster approvals 

• Fewer payroll errors 

• Greater accountability through standardized workflows 

• Improved visibility and ease of use for employees and administrators 

• Better reporting for payroll and fiscal teams 

• Reduced administrative burden across HR and payroll 

• More time for staff to focus on supporting schools and students 

Looking Ahead 

Although each district began its modernization journey with different priorities, whether improving extra duty tracking, accelerating payroll reporting, or consolidating employee time sheets, they arrived at the same outcome. Moreover, with Helios these districts have been able to keep up with new compliance requirements such as the new federal overtime reporting for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. 

By replacing paper-based processes, or siloed digital forms with a connected digital platform, school districts streamlined payroll operations, improved data accuracy, strengthened fiscal oversight, as well as saved thousands of hours. 

Their experiences demonstrate that modernizing workforce management isn’t simply about eliminating paper or implementing a digital form. It’s about giving employees greater transparency, providing administrators with better visibility, and allowing districts to devote more of their time and resources to the people and programs that matter most. 

“You will not go wrong if you go with Helios,” said Madrid of VESD.