We'll I guess the info wasn't valuable to your manager if he didn't notice for a year. That's just plain bad management. It was valuable in the organization I was in that required it. It was used to bill customers, as well as to estimate the time it would take to complete new projects. I definitely get the pain of everyone that needs to turn in time cards.
Yes, very poor management. In fairness, we rarely billed our clients as they were almost always internal, even the rare external clients weren't billed based on time (flat rate chemical analysis).