A Tour of a Zipwire Timesheet
A visual walkthrough of every feature on a Zipwire timesheet — flags, skills, verified proofs, and the actions available to approvers and processors.
A Zipwire timesheet is more than a list of hours. It's a verified record of work — with automatic anomaly detection, AI-extracted skills, and a cryptographic proof you can download and keep forever.
This page walks through every section of a real timesheet so you know exactly what you're looking at.
Technical contractor? Everything you see here can also be done from the command line. The Zipwire CLI lets you track time, create timesheets, and send them without leaving your terminal — the same mental model as Git. See Why the Zipwire CLI is a Big Deal.
The Card Header
At the top you see the sender's name, the number of days covered, and the period. Two badges can appear on the right:
Recent — the timesheet arrived recently and hasn't been acted on yet. It fades once the sheet has been reviewed.
Warning badge — a visual signal that something on this timesheet is worth attention before you approve. It appears whenever one or more flags are present (see below). You'll see this on the inbox list too, so interesting sheets stand out before you even open them.
Below the sender name, a timestamp shows when the timesheet was received and its current status — here, "Received 17 minutes ago. The item needs approving."
Flags
The orange "Something to flag" banner lists every condition Zipwire detected automatically. In this example: Underworked, Overworked, and No rate plan.
Flags are not a verdict — they don't block approval. They're information. The approver decides what to do with them.
Flags are recalculated if a processor adjusts which units are billed, so they always reflect the current billed state, not just the snapshot from submission.
See Timesheet Flags for the full list of conditions Zipwire checks for.
Daily Time Bars
The body of the timesheet shows one row per day. Each row has:
The date and a short activity description — what the sender logged for that day
A coloured bar representing billed hours, with the hour count displayed at the end
Days with no billable time — public holidays, weekends — appear as empty rows with a label. In this example, Monday 25 May is labelled "Spring bank holiday" with no bar.
The bars are colour-coded by activity, so at a glance you can see whether work was spread across multiple projects or concentrated on one.
Hourly vs. day rate billing. The example above shows an hourly-billed contractor — each bar represents hours logged. For day rate contractors, Zipwire uses half-day units instead. The sender bills a minimum of half a day and a maximum you configure on their billing plan. The bars still appear, but they represent units (full days and half days) rather than raw hours. See Billing Plans to configure which model applies.
Activity Breakdown
Below the daily rows, a summary chart shows how time was distributed across activities as percentages. This example shows:
HMRC > MTD > Coding — 66%
HMRC > MTD > Consulting — 19%
HMRC > MTD > Testing — 16%
This gives agencies and approvers an instant read on what kind of work was actually done during the period, without having to add up each day manually.
Total Charge
The billed amount is shown here. When a No rate plan flag is present — as in this example — the total will be £0.00 or $0.00. This means the sender submitted before a rate plan was configured on their workflow. The timesheet can still be approved; billing can be resolved separately.
See Rate Plans for how rates are applied.
Skills
The "These skills were used" section lists every professional skill the AI identified from the sender's activity descriptions. Each entry shows:
Coding
Technical
90%
Fraud prevention
Technical
70%
VAT obligations
Technical
80%
Consulting
Soft
90%
Client communication
Soft
90%
Skills are extracted automatically — the sender doesn't fill this in. The AI reads the activity names, companies, projects, and any notes, then identifies both technical and soft skills.
These skills become part of the verified record. When the timesheet is approved, the skills are frozen into an immutable snapshot, included in a Merkle tree, and attested to the Base blockchain via EAS. The sender can then generate a selective-disclosure proof — a signed token that cryptographically proves they used a specific skill, without revealing their client, rates, or any other fields they choose to keep private.
See Skills Extraction and Verifiable Timesheets for how this works.
Hours Summary and View Controls
At the bottom of the time section, a summary line shows total hours and the number of working days: "32 hours over 4 days." This accounts for the public holiday — five calendar days, four billable.
The Hide times button collapses the day-by-day bar chart, leaving just the activity breakdown and totals. Useful when you're scanning a busy inbox and only need the headline figures.
Comments
The comment thread lets approvers, processors, and senders exchange messages directly on the timesheet. The conversation is part of the timesheet's history and audit trail.
In this example, the approver has already left a note: "Approved! Thanks for your hard work, Luke."
Actions
Three buttons appear at the bottom:
Approve — approves the timesheet as the current user. The button label reflects your role: "Approve as Finn" in this example. On approval, the frozen record is created, the Merkle tree is built, and attestation to the blockchain begins automatically.
Reject — sends the timesheet back to the sender with the option to add a reason.
Download PDF — generates a PDF of the timesheet. For approved timesheets this is a verified proof — a signed document that includes the attestation details and can be shared as evidence of the work.
What Happens After Approval
Approval triggers several things automatically:
The timesheet is locked — no further edits
A frozen record is created capturing all fields, skills, and context
A Merkle tree is built from the frozen data
The Merkle root is attested to the Base blockchain via EAS
The sender can generate selective-disclosure proofs from the verified record
The result: an approved Zipwire timesheet is not just a document — it's a cryptographically verifiable proof of work that the sender can carry with them, share selectively, and use to prove experience without revealing anything they don't want to.
See Verifiable Timesheets to learn more.
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Timesheet FlagsSkills ExtractionVerifiable Timesheets with Selective DisclosureRate PlansLast updated