Timesheet template

When to use a paper or spreadsheet timesheet

Most employers with more than a few dozen hourly staff run a timeclock or workforce system, and that is the right answer for daily punches. A timesheet template still earns its place in four situations: small teams with no timekeeping system yet, field and remote staff who do not pass a clock, a backup when the system is down, and temporary or contract workers whose hours you need to approve for a client. Staffing firms usually need a client-signed version, which is why we keep a separate staffing agency timesheet.

A timesheet records hours for pay. An attendance record tracks absences, tardies and patterns over months. They feed each other but answer different questions, so use an attendance tracker template for the second job instead of squeezing absence codes onto the timesheet.

What the FLSA requires you to record

Under the Fair Labor Standards Act record-keeping rules (29 CFR Part 516), employers must keep, for each nonexempt employee, the hours worked each workday and the total hours worked each workweek, along with the time and day the workweek begins, regular rate of pay, straight-time and overtime earnings, deductions and pay dates. The regulations do not dictate a format, which is why a simple sheet like this one is acceptable.

Three federal points shape the design of this form:

• Overtime is calculated per workweek. A workweek is a fixed, recurring period of 168 hours (seven consecutive 24-hour days). On a biweekly payroll you cannot average two weeks. An employee who works 46 hours in week 1 and 34 in week 2 is owed 6 overtime hours, even though the two-week total is exactly 80.
• Bona fide meal periods can be unpaid; short breaks cannot. Meal periods of 30 minutes or more where the employee is fully relieved of duty are generally not hours worked. Rest breaks of about 5 to 20 minutes are paid.
• Retention. Payroll records must be kept for at least 3 years, and supporting records such as time cards and timesheets for at least 2 years.

States add their own layers. California requires daily overtime after 8 hours and double time after 12, and has specific meal and rest break rules. Alaska, Nevada and Colorado also have daily overtime in some form. Several states require longer record retention. Check the rules where each employee actually works, and treat this as general information, not legal advice.

A worked example

Maria Lopez is a nonexempt warehouse lead paid $22.00 an hour on a biweekly payroll with a Sunday-to-Saturday workweek.

In week 1 she works Monday to Friday, 7:00 AM to 4:00 PM with an unpaid 30-minute lunch (8.5 hours a day), plus Saturday 7:00 AM to 12:00 PM. That is 42.5 + 5 = 47.5 hours worked, so 40 regular and 7.5 overtime.

In week 2 she takes Monday as 8 hours of PTO and works Tuesday to Friday at 8.5 hours: 34 hours worked plus 8 PTO hours.

Payroll for the period: 74 regular hours at $22.00 = $1,628.00, 7.5 overtime hours at $33.00 = $247.50, and 8 PTO hours at $22.00 = $176.00. Total gross pay is $2,051.50. If someone had simply added 81.5 worked hours and 8 PTO hours and paid overtime on anything above 80, they would have paid 9.5 hours of overtime instead of 7.5 and still had the reasoning wrong. Separating weeks and keeping PTO out of hours worked is what makes the math defensible. Your PTO rules, set out in a PTO policy, decide how leave hours are paid, but under federal law they do not count toward overtime.

Common mistakes

• Pre-filled schedules. A timesheet that shows 8:00 to 5:00 every day for every person is a schedule, not a record. Auditors and plaintiffs' lawyers spot identical times immediately.
• Automatic meal deductions without a way to report a missed break. If a nurse or agent works through lunch and the system still deducts 30 minutes, you owe that time. The missed-break question on this form exists for that reason.
• Ignoring off-the-clock work. Logging into systems before the shift, answering texts after hours and closing duties after clock-out all count when the employer knows or should know about them.
• Supervisors editing without a trail. Any change should be initialed by the employee and explained.
• Rounding that only goes one way. Rounding to the nearest 5, 6 or 15 minutes is allowed federally only if it averages out over time. Rounding that always favors the employer is a wage claim waiting to happen, and some states are stricter.
• Treating salaried as exempt. Being paid a salary does not make someone exempt. The duties and salary tests decide that.

Adapting it for high-volume and multi-site teams

With 300 hourly employees across four sites, the problem is not filling the form in, it is approving it on time. A few things help:

• Set one company-wide workweek and one submission deadline, and print both on the form.
• Have supervisors approve within 24 hours of the deadline, with a named backup when they are off.
• Keep project or client codes on the sheet if you bill hours, so payroll and finance work from one record.
• Compare scheduled hours to recorded hours each week. Big gaps point to either missed punches or unscheduled overtime, and both need a conversation.
• If you already capture time electronically, use this template only as a correction and exception form, and keep the system as the record of truth.

For teams that build shifts first and record time second, pair this form with a shift schedule template so scheduled and actual hours can be compared side by side. Once punches move into a system, digital attendance tracking removes most of the manual totals and catches missed punches the same day.