Timesheet Template

How to fill in this timesheet

1. Enter the employee's name, pay period, start date, and hourly rate. Choose weekly for a 7-day sheet or biweekly for 14 days. The start date should be the first day of your company's defined workweek; many businesses use Monday or Sunday.
2. Record clock-in and clock-out times for each day. Use the time picker or type 08:00 and 16:30. Leave both blank for days off.
3. Enter unpaid break minutes. A 30-minute unpaid lunch is 30. Paid rest breaks are not subtracted, so do not enter them.
4. Check the hours column. Each day's hours are computed as clock-out minus clock-in minus breaks, rounded to two decimals. If clock-out is earlier than clock-in, the template treats the shift as running past midnight.
5. Download. The Excel file keeps the same layout, with formulas for daily hours, weekly totals, the 40-hour overtime split, and gross pay, plus signature lines for the employee and supervisor. The CSV export is a flat table you can paste into payroll software or Google Sheets.

Gross pay shown here is before any deductions. To see federal withholding, Social Security, Medicare, and state tax, carry the gross figure into our payroll calculator.

Converting minutes to decimal hours

Payroll systems work in decimal hours, not hours and minutes. Divide the minutes by 60:

An employee who worked 7 hours and 50 minutes has 7.83 hours. At $22 per hour that is $172.26, not $165.00 as you would get by treating 7:50 as 7.50 hours. The template does this conversion for you, and the Excel formula does it with (out − in) × 24, adding one day first when the shift crosses midnight.

FLSA record-keeping requirements

The Fair Labor Standards Act does not prescribe a form, but 29 CFR Part 516 requires employers to keep specific information for every non-exempt employee:

• Full name, address, and Social Security number, plus birth date if under 19
• Sex and occupation
• The time and day of the week the workweek begins
• Hours worked each day and total hours each workweek
• The basis of pay (for example, $22 per hour) and the regular hourly rate
• Total daily or weekly straight-time earnings
• Total overtime earnings for the workweek
• All additions to or deductions from wages
• Total wages paid each pay period, and the date of payment and pay period covered

Payroll records must be kept for three years. The supporting documents, including time cards, work schedules, and records of additions or deductions, must be kept for two years. Records must be available for inspection by the Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division. Filing a signed timesheet like this one each pay period satisfies the daily and weekly hours requirements; the rest lives in your payroll file.

Rounding and the 7-minute rule

Federal regulations (29 CFR 785.48) allow employers to round clock times to the nearest 5 minutes, tenth of an hour, or quarter hour, provided the rounding does not consistently favour the employer. The most common system rounds to the nearest quarter hour using the 7-minute rule:

Seven minutes or fewer past the quarter rounds down; eight or more rounds up. Applied consistently to both clock-in and clock-out, this averages out over time. Rounding only clock-in down and clock-out up, or refusing to pay for minutes worked before a scheduled start, violates the rule. If you round, enter the rounded times on this sheet and keep the raw times from the clock.

Some states restrict rounding more tightly, and several court decisions have held that rounding is not permitted when an employer's electronic system captures exact times anyway. The safest modern practice is to pay to the minute.

Overtime basics

Under the FLSA, non-exempt employees must receive at least 1.5 times their regular rate for every hour over 40 in a workweek. Four rules catch small employers out:

1. The workweek is fixed. It is a recurring 168-hour period you define, and it does not change from week to week. Overtime is calculated for each workweek separately.
2. Biweekly pay periods do not average. Working 45 hours one week and 35 the next earns 5 hours of overtime, even though the two-week total is 80. This template computes each week independently for exactly that reason.
3. The regular rate includes more than base pay. Non-discretionary bonuses, shift differentials, and commissions must be folded into the rate before multiplying by 1.5. If you pay these, the overtime premium is slightly higher than 1.5 × base.
4. Salary does not mean exempt. Exemption depends on job duties and a minimum salary threshold. A salaried office assistant is still owed overtime.

State law can add daily overtime. California requires 1.5× after 8 hours in a day and 2× after 12; Alaska, Nevada, and Colorado have daily rules too. Where state and federal law differ, the employee gets whichever is more generous. This template applies the federal 40-hour weekly rule; adjust the pay summary if your state adds daily premiums.

Converting an hourly rate to an annual figure for budgeting? Use the hourly to salary calculator.

Timesheets for freelancers and billing

If you bill clients by the hour, the same sheet works as a billing record. Put the client or project name in the employee field, your billing rate in the hourly rate field, and log each session. A few habits make invoicing painless:

• Log time the same day. Reconstructed hours are always lower than actual hours, and clients trust contemporaneous records.
• Note the task in the break column's neighbour, or keep a one-line description per row in the downloaded spreadsheet. Detailed entries reduce invoice disputes.
• Round in the client's favour on individual entries and bill in the increments your contract specifies (6-minute tenths are common in legal and consulting work, 15-minute quarters elsewhere).
• Keep the signed or emailed timesheet with the invoice. Attach the CSV or spreadsheet when you send the invoice so the client can reconcile the hours.

Overtime does not apply to independent contractors, so you can ignore the regular/overtime split and use the total hours line for billing.

Common timesheet mistakes

• Forgetting unpaid breaks. A 30-minute lunch not subtracted adds 2.5 paid hours a week per employee.
• Subtracting paid rest breaks. Breaks of roughly 5 to 20 minutes must be paid under federal law and should not appear in the break column.
• Averaging overtime across pay periods. See above; each workweek stands alone.
• Not counting off-the-clock work. Answering emails at home, setup before opening, and closing duties are hours worked.
• Missing signatures. An employee-signed timesheet is your best evidence if hours are disputed later. The Excel download includes signature lines.

When to move to time-tracking software

A spreadsheet is fine for one to five hourly employees with predictable schedules. Consider dedicated software when:

• Employees work at multiple sites or remotely, and you need GPS or app-based clock-ins
• You have more than about ten hourly staff and totalling sheets takes hours each pay period
• Your state has daily overtime, meal-break penalties, or predictive scheduling rules that are easy to get wrong by hand
• You want hours to flow directly into payroll without re-keying

Most payroll providers bundle a time-clock app that syncs to pay runs. Until then, this template and the payroll calculator cover the arithmetic, and the expense tracker handles the reimbursements that often ride along with timesheets.