Bosses requesting me to misrepresent the hours in the timesheet

What is the purpose of a timesheet? For most companies, it is a whole pile of purposes, some of which conflict with each other.

• the way to tell The Computer whether you worked a full week, used vacation days, used sick days, worked overtime, etc
• the way to tell The Computer how to bill a customer for work that has been delivered to them
• a record of how you spent your week, so your boss knows if you're following the company guidelines and priorities (some people spend too much time on admin and other nonbillable things, others too little. Some spend a lot of time on less important projects while important projects are behind schedule.)
• a record of how long a project actually took, to improve the team's accuracy on future estimates

If you put some of your time that was "Smith Project" onto "Jones Project", or worse "Online Training and Learning", then not only are future estimates likely to be even more inaccurate (which may not matter if bids are based on guesses of what the market will pay, not how long it will actually take), but a manager who isn't aware of all this misreporting may tell you "you've already had more than enough training this year" or "you were so slow on the Jones Project, your colleague [who put their Smith overage somewhere else] produced the same number of whatevers as you in half the time!"

NB: This practice isn't necessarily theft - both Smith and Jones may have agreed to a flat price regardless of the time you put in, and your company may not have a way to do flat price billing and may be required to create fictional time sheets. By using this workaround, they would be wasting information, though. And it could be theft.

If I was in charge, I wouldn't use your time sheets to bill the customer, and I'd tell you to tell the truth on them. But I'm not in charge. Assuming you're not willing to walk away, can you and your team mates find a way to retain information while complying somewhat? Such as a project called "unbillable overwork" that you put this time to. Or a project called "Jones UBO S" which is charged to Jones, but really represents unbillable overwork on the Smith project. I mean don't be too obvious (a good piece of advice is to write all emails as though they will some day be read aloud to you by someone else's lawyer) but try not to set yourself up for future trouble by participating too thoroughly in today's fiction.

My question is: is it moral to comply with my bosses' request?

Not really.

Using falsified data to do billing or accounting is fraud or theft.

Using falsified data to do resource tracking or forecasting is just plain dumb.

So there is really no good reason for this that I can think of.

Is it a common occurrence in the corporate world that is simply a result of corporate mess and should not be considered a big deal?

This may depend on the location but in most "good" corporations that would be a no-no and indeed a big deal. Fudging data is VERY hard to justify.

Is it something that I should quit the job over rather than comply with?

Not yet. I think the next step would be to ask your manager about the reasons behind that. I think it's fair to state that you feel uncomfortable providing incorrect information on purpose. You should ask why this is necessary and who would be using the incorrect data for what purposes.

If you get an answer that's acceptable to you, you can comply. If you get a hard shutdown or an answer that's incompatible with your own values, it's probably time to start looking elsewhere. Keep in mind that a company that's dishonest and defrauds their clients will likely be dishonest and defrauding you as well whenever its convenient for them. Not a good place for a long term career.

This is a difficult position.

Now - before you do anything, you need to ask yourself whether or not you have an immediate exit strategy.

For example - if you go ahead with this or try to raise it, one way or another - you may be fired or otherwise let go immediately:

Are you ready to leave the company on short notice?

If the answer is No, then I would suggest that you make sure you address that before doing anything else.

Okay, assuming you have your exit strategy in place

Let me first discuss the Ethics side of things:

• If you are instructed to put billable hours against a client for work NOT done, this is absolutely Fraud and I would not do this, ever.

• However, Your situation is that your company has quoted fixed price contracts for clients, some of these have been under-quoted, your Boss and their Boss have asked you to log your hours to a Non-Billable code.

That, in-of-itself, is not unusual. Case in point, I spent some time developing a solution for a client - it had significant re-usability across a number of clients - My Boss suggested we should bill half of the time it took to create the solution to the original Client as it would enable us to do other billable tasks for other clients much better.

The problem here is that it sounds like that this is being done without proper authorization.

And here is the Moral Dilemma.

My Sincere Recommendation is that you decline to do this. If being Moral was easy, it would not be considered Virtuous. It is easy to take the Bribe, it is easy to look the other way. It is hard to stand on your principles and suffer the consequences.

My personal experience, however, is that people who consistently do this carry this reputation around with them - do well in the long run, because people will see them as dependable, uncorruptable etc.

You may decide that because of circumstances, you cant afford to be brave - I get that, but as above, what you are selling now, you cant buy back.

Finally, what to do

Get some proof as to what is being done. Ideally Memos, something in writing, timesheets etc.

Then, you will need to find a way to raise this with upper management. Ideally you should be able to raise the issue, present the evidence, in under around a minute. You may need to practice this as a pitch so as to not muddle your message or confuse them. It needs to be short, concise and give them the relevant information that they can start looking into the issue in an official capacity.

This is easy to say, harder to live depending on the location: Do not lie. Don't work for a company that asks you to lie.

It might be much harder to do the right thing in some countries.

Just be clear about what a lie is.

What the company sells something for is not your concern.

Documenting your time is your concern.

Being told to charge time for one client to a different client is a clear lie. Same for not being truthful about the amount of time. Documenting administration time and possibly some training time is much more nuanced. Admin and training might belong to the project. If you are told to charge those type of things to a project, confirm it in an email (CYA).

Reputation shouldn't be wasted.