Trouble writting tabs

In the Praise Band at my church I write my own bass lines (which tend to use a lot of root notes). I can figure out something to play, practice it along with the band or with a recording, but when I go to tab it out I have a horrible time with the rhythm. I have it in my head and in my hands, but I can't get it down on paper.

What I finally found that works for me is to set a metronome app to the bpm of the song, and have a different sound for each beat (and half beat if I'm playing 16th notes). Then I'd play along to that, and the different sounds helped me figure out when I was playing each note.

Have any of you tried writing 1&2&&4& above the bar?

For instance, Bootsy's line for Dee Lite's, ‘Groove is in the Heart’ would look something like this, I say something like this, the bassline came from my head while I played my bas unplugged so if it's a mile out I apologise. Also don't mistake the eighth note rests for number sevens!
Let me know if this helps

The biggest thing is figuring out the time signature – how many quarter notes per bar/measure. 4/4, 3/4, 6/4, 7/4, whatever. Once you've determined how many quarter beats per bar, it's just a matter of doing your math and breaking each bar further down into 8ths and 16ths (and, occasionally, 32nds, but those don't usually occur unless the song involves a slow tempo with fast picking). Some time signature examples:

AC/DC, Back in Black - standard 4/4 timing
John Carpenter's score for Halloween - 5/4 timing
Stone Temple Pilots, Dead and Bloated - 6/4 timing
Pink Floyd, Money - 7/4 timing

Then there are odd examples of 7/8 time, 5/8 time, etc, these indicate measures that are shorter than standard 4/4, in which case you need to count 8ths instead. So a song in 7/8 is one 8th note short of standard 4/4, 5/8 is three 8ths short of standard 4/4, etc. And in case you're wondering, 6/8 time is the same thing as 3/4. Like in math class, you're just simplifying the fraction lol

Then you have triplets. Triplet 8ths means three equal-length notes per quarter instead of two. Triplet 16ths means three equal-length notes per 8th instead of two.

I understand it can appear confusing, but once you approach it from a mathematical perspective instead of a musical one, it starts to make a lot more sense.

Which is why I prefer standard notation, a tab tells you where the notes of a song appear on a fingerboard and that's it, you couldn't learn a song you never heard before from a tab, it's well worth spending some time on standard notation to get a better understanding of how music works, I'm not saying become a site reading genius overnight, I can't do that, but give me 20 minutes with some dots and I'll work the song out