Timesheets for EU-funded projects: what Horizon Europe and Erasmus+ auditors expect (2026)

This guide is general information, not legal or financial advice. Your signed grant agreement, its Data Sheet, and the funder’s current guidance always take precedence. Rules differ between programs, calls, and grant types, and they are revised. Check the latest version of each document and ask your project officer or national contact point when your case is not covered. National programs, Interreg, and co-funded partnerships have their own guidance, which this guide does not cover.

People who manage EU grants at universities, research institutes, and nonprofits tend to learn the timesheet rules the hard way: during the first audit. The rules themselves are short and public. This guide collects them in one place, quotes only what the European Commission and the European Court of Auditors actually publish, and shows how to keep records that hold up when someone checks them years later.

Why time records decide whether personnel costs survive an audit

Personnel is usually the largest cost in a research or education project, and it is the one auditors find wrong most often. In its annual report for the 2024 financial year, the European Court of Auditors found errors linked to personnel costs in 24 of the 99 research transactions it examined (chapter 5, paragraph 5.15), and it reported no significant difference between Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe.

The consequence is written into the grant agreement itself. Article 20 of the EU Grants Annotated Grant Agreement (the AGA) says that if a beneficiary breaches its record-keeping obligations, costs that are insufficiently substantiated are ineligible and rejected, and the grant may be reduced. The AGA also puts the risk plainly: beneficiaries that do not keep sufficient and appropriate supporting documents “bear the full risk”.

Time records do two jobs. They prove how many days each person worked on the action, and, together with a documented decision assigning that person to the project, they prove the person belonged to the action at all. The AGA’s annotation on Article 6.2.A.1 says a correctly signed monthly declaration or reliable time records will normally be sufficient proof of assignment, unless other evidence contradicts it.

What counts as a personnel cost in Horizon Europe

For employees (budget category A.1 in the AGA), eligible personnel costs are limited to salaries, social security contributions, taxes, and other costs linked to remuneration that arise from national law or the employment contract. They must be the costs actually incurred and recorded in your accounts, not budgeted amounts.

The AGA lists what may not be included, for example remuneration that was not an actual cost for you (such as salary reimbursed by social security during long sick leave), bonuses based on commercial or fundraising targets, arbitrary bonuses, and bonuses paid only if money is left in a project budget.

The calculation, set out in Article 6.2.A.1, is:

• personnel costs = daily rate for the person × number of day-equivalents worked on the action, rounded to the nearest half day,
• daily rate = actual personnel costs for the months in the reporting period ÷ maximum declarable day-equivalents,
• maximum declarable day-equivalents = (215 ÷ 12) × months employed in the reporting period × working time factor (1 for full time, 0.5 for half time), rounded to the nearest half day.

On top of that, the AGA sets a horizontal ceiling: across all EU grants, the day-equivalents declared for one person cannot exceed 215 per calendar year, or the pro-rata amount for part-time staff. That ceiling is the reason a grants office needs one view of each person’s time across every grant, not a separate spreadsheet per project.

Two ways to prove the days: a monthly declaration or time records

Article 20 of the AGA requires that time worked on the action “be supported by declarations signed monthly by the person and their supervisor, unless another reliable time-record system is in place”. The annotation says this applies to everyone who works on the action, full-time or part-time, whether or not they work on it exclusively, which the AGA marks as new for 2021-2027.

You can choose either route.

The monthly declaration of days worked. This is the default, and the Commission publishes a template: the EU Grants declaration of days worked on a project. It is kept on file for audits rather than submitted. For each month of the year it asks for the days worked in the action, the work packages worked on, the date and signature of the person, and the name, date, and signature of the supervisor, under a header with the project acronym and number, the participant, the person, and the type of personnel. Its footnote defines one day as the hours a full-time employee of the participant must work in a standard day. The AGA recommends exploring this option because it avoids converting hours into days.

A reliable time-recording system. Alternatively, you can use a paper or computer-based system that records at least all the time, in days or hours, worked for the action. The AGA says these records must be dated and signed at least monthly by the person and their supervisor. In a computer-based system, signatures may be electronic, provided there is a documented and secure process for managing user rights and an auditable log of all electronic transactions.

Two rules apply to both routes:

• No rounding in the monthly record. The AGA’s example: a person with an eight-hour standard day who worked two hours on the action in a month records 0.25 days. Rounding to the nearest half day happens only later, in the cost calculation.
• Parallel records must agree. If you keep weekly timesheets in hours and monthly declarations in days, they must be consistent. Where auditors find significant discrepancies, the AGA says only the set of documents recording the lower number of days is accepted.

What an audit-proof timesheet must contain

Every item except the last comes from the Commission’s template and Article 20 of the AGA. The last comes from what auditors actually find, which the next section covers.

A practical addition, not a requirement: record all working time, including other projects, teaching, administration, and internal work, not just the hours on the grant. A timesheet that only shows the funded project cannot show that those hours fit inside a working month. A complete one reconciles against the contract, absences, and other grants on its own.

Converting hours into day-equivalents

If you record hours rather than days, you convert the total hours worked on the action in each reporting period into day-equivalents: hours on the action ÷ hours in one day-equivalent, rounded to the nearest half day (the AGA’s examples: 17.79 becomes 18, 17.64 becomes 17.5). Article 20 gives three options for the length of a day-equivalent:

1. Eight hours.
2. Average working hours under the contract or another binding document. For a daily figure, divide by the working time factor. For a weekly or monthly figure, divide by the working time factor and then by the standard number of working days in the week or month, usually five a week. For an annual figure, divide by the working time factor and then by 215.
3. Annual productive hours, if your usual cost accounting practice sets them: the higher of the standard annual productive hours of a full-time employee and 90% of the standard annual workable hours, divided by 215.

The chosen option must be applied consistently, at least per group of staff employed under similar conditions. You cannot pick the most favorable option person by person. The conversion is normally done once per person per reporting period, so there is no need to keep a second record that converts every day’s hours.

Common audit findings

The European Court of Auditors’ 2024 annual report (chapter 5, “Single market, innovation and digital”) gives the most recent public picture of what goes wrong:

• Absences charged as project days. In Box 5.2, a nonprofit beneficiary in Belgium claimed the maximum 215 days for one person in a 12-month reporting period. The person had registered 261.5 days on the project, but the beneficiary’s own records showed 55.5 days of annual leave, short-term sick leave, and other absences, so only 206 days had been worked. The claim was too high.
• Estimates instead of actual costs, and costs the beneficiary never incurred (paragraph 5.21).
• The old Horizon 2020 method. Horizon 2020 used hourly rates; Horizon Europe uses daily rates and day-equivalents. In 5 of the 34 Horizon Europe transactions sampled, beneficiaries still used the previous method or did not fully follow the new rules, and in three of them that led to incorrect cost claims (paragraph 5.18).
• Seconded researchers. Costs claimed for researchers seconded from other organizations, where the eligibility conditions were not met (paragraphs 5.19 and 5.20).

The first finding is the one a time-recording habit prevents. When every working day is recorded and absences sit in the same calendar, a timesheet that claims a project day during annual leave stands out before anyone signs it.

Keeping records across several grants and non-project time

Most people paid from EU grants also work on something else. A setup that holds up:

• One project per grant, or per work package when you report time by work package, named with the grant’s acronym so exports read the same way as the grant agreement.
• Separate projects for everything else: nationally funded projects, teaching, administration, and internal work. Nothing gets logged against a grant because there was nowhere else to put it.
• One source for absences. Keep annual leave and sick leave in your HR or payroll system and check each month’s project days against it before anyone signs.
• A check against the 215-day ceiling per person per calendar year across all EU grants, done centrally rather than project by project.
• A fixed monthly close: people complete the month, supervisors review and sign, and the month is then closed to edits, with any later correction documented.

Erasmus+: when timesheets are not the basis

Erasmus+ works differently, and it is worth being precise. The Erasmus+ Programme Guide 2026 says in Part C, “Step 3: check the financial conditions”, that the majority of grants are financed as lump sums or unit costs. For those, the guide says, applicants do not have to justify the costs incurred by the project.

That does not mean there is nothing to prove. For unit costs, the number of units must be identifiable and verifiable. For lump sums, the work must be properly implemented and the deliverables achieved. If a check finds that activities did not happen as approved, the National or Executive Agency can recover up to the amount of the grant, or reduce it for poor implementation. For actions managed by the Executive Agency, a budget-based lump sum is fixed from an estimated budget that must still meet the basic eligibility conditions for actual-cost grants, so staff days in that budget need to be realistic.

The same logic applies to Horizon Europe lump-sum grants. Article 20 of the AGA says that for simplified costs (units, lump sums, flat rates) you do not need financial records of the actual costs incurred, but you must keep adequate records proving the units declared or the proper implementation of the work. It also warns that this does not release you from record-keeping rules under national law.

So in an Erasmus+ project, a timesheet is rarely what the grant is paid against. It still helps you show that the work was done, plan staff time across projects, and meet national payroll and working-time record duties. Check the “What are the funding rules?” section for your action in Part B of the guide, and your grant agreement, to see which form applies.

How long to keep the records

The AGA’s annotation on Article 20 says evidence must be kept for the period in the Data Sheet of the grant agreement (point 6): in general at least five years after the balance is paid, or three years for low-value grants up to EUR 60,000, and longer if an audit, investigation, or litigation is ongoing. National law may require longer. The Erasmus+ Programme Guide 2026 uses the same thresholds: checks may happen up to five years after final payment, or three years for grants not exceeding EUR 60,000.

Keep originals in the format in which they were created. The AGA says documents created electronically should be kept electronically, with no need for paper copies, and that digital documents count as originals where national law allows.

A worked example

Take a researcher employed full time throughout 2026, with a contract of 37.5 hours a week over five days. The Horizon Europe reporting period is January 1 to December 31, 2026. The numbers are illustrative.

1. Day-equivalent: under option 2, 37.5 ÷ 1 ÷ 5 = 7.5 hours.
2. Maximum declarable day-equivalents: (215 ÷ 12) × 12 × 1 = 215.
3. Daily rate: eligible personnel costs recorded in the accounts for 2026 are EUR 51,600, so 51,600 ÷ 215 = EUR 240.
4. Hours on the action: the signed monthly timesheets show 812 hours on the grant. In March, for example, the researcher logged 70 hours on it, recorded as 70 hours (9.33 day-equivalents), not rounded.
5. Conversion: 812 ÷ 7.5 = 108.27, rounded to the nearest half day = 108.5 day-equivalents.
6. Personnel costs claimed: 108.5 × 240 = EUR 26,040.
7. Ceiling check: if the same person has 95 day-equivalents on a second EU grant in 2026, the total is 203.5, within the 215-day ceiling. The same timesheets also show the other projects and the absences, so the month-by-month picture adds up.

How Sandtime.io helps, and where it stops

Sandtime.io is a time tracker, not grant management software. Here is what it does for EU-funded teams, verified against the product:

• Projects per grant or work package, plus separate projects for other funding and internal work, so reports group time the way the grant agreement does.
• Timesheet reminders by email every Friday, before the week locks, so hours are recorded while the week is still fresh instead of rebuilt at the end of the month.
• Timesheet approvals: each person submits their week with Submit for approval and an Administrator approves or rejects it. Every decision records who asked, who resolved it, and when. Approvals are made by organization Administrators, so the supervisor who signs for the grant needs that role.
• Timesheet locking: approved weeks lock, past weeks can lock automatically, and a correction goes through an unlock request that reopens the week only for a set time.
• Overlap detection flags overlapping or implausible entries before they reach a report.
• Reports and exports: a Monthly timesheet report template, grouping by member, project, and date, Excel and CSV export, and print to PDF.
• Cost rates with history: hourly cost rates with start dates, so a raise does not rewrite last year’s figures.

And what it does not do:

• It does not produce the Commission’s declaration of days worked, and it does not calculate daily rates, day-equivalents, or the 215-day ceiling. You calculate those from exported hours and your payroll figures.
• It does not sign documents. Whether a submission and approval in the app count as the electronic signatures described in the AGA is for your organization and your auditor to decide. Many teams export the month and sign it the way their grants office already does.
• It does not manage leave. Keep absences in your HR system and check them against project time.
• It records self-reported time only, with no screenshots or activity monitoring.

Sandtime.io is free for unlimited users, and registered nonprofits can ask about a custom offer. See how nonprofits set it up on the time tracking for nonprofits page, or compare options in best time tracking apps for nonprofits. If you are not ready for an app, start with the free monthly timesheet template and add the work package, signature, and date fields from the checklist above.

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