How to fill out a timesheet
Skip the arithmetic: the Timesheet Calculator does the how to fill out a timesheet sums on this page for you, with the same tested formulas used in the worked examples below.
A timesheet needs six things per line: the date, the time you clocked in, the time you clocked out, the unpaid break in minutes, a job or cost code if your employer uses them, and the day's total. Work out each day in minutes — (out − in) − break — add the seven days together, then convert the weekly total to decimal hours for payroll. A 42:15 week is 42.25 decimal hours, not 42.15.
Most timesheet disputes are not arguments about honesty. They are arithmetic failures: a Thursday that never got totalled, a 45-minute break written in the hours column, an overnight shift logged as negative time. Fill the sheet in the same order every week and those failures mostly disappear.
This guide walks through what belongs on each line, how to handle the awkward cases (split shifts, travel between job sites, on-call, holidays, nights), and how to total a week by hand so you can check whatever the payroll system tells you. If you would rather let software do the adding, the timesheet calculator totals a full week and converts it for you, and the time card calculator does the same thing in a punch-card layout.
What belongs on a timesheet line
Whether your employer hands you paper, a spreadsheet, or a web portal, a defensible line carries the same fields.
| Field | Example | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Date | Tue 10 Mar | Anchors the entry to a workweek and a pay period. |
| Time in | 7:02 AM | The moment you began work, not the moment your shift was scheduled. |
| Time out | 3:48 PM | When you stopped. Includes work done after the official end. |
| Unpaid break | 30 min | The only thing subtracted from elapsed time. |
| Job or cost code | SITE-114 | Tells accounting which job, client or department absorbs the cost. |
| Daily total | 8:16 | The number you will be paid on; check it yourself. |
Two fields people skip and later regret. The first is the break. If the box is blank, a reviewer cannot tell whether you took no break or forgot to write one down, and an auditor will usually assume the deduction applies. Write 0 when you genuinely had no unpaid break. The second is the signature or electronic approval. An unsigned sheet is a draft; a signed sheet is a record both sides agreed on.
Record what actually happened, not what the schedule said. If you were rostered 9:00 to 5:00 but stayed until 5:40 finishing a handover, the line reads 5:40 PM. Shaving your own time to look tidy is how unpaid work becomes routine.
To the minute or to the quarter hour?
Some employers want exact punches. Others round every in and out punch to the nearest quarter hour, so 7:07 becomes 7:00 and 7:09 becomes 7:15. Rounding is a long-standing payroll practice, but the version that holds up is neutral: it has to round both directions and cannot consistently favour the employer. A system that rounds your arrival forward and your departure backward every single day is not neutral, and over a year it is real money.
Work the arithmetic through once and the stakes become obvious.
Exact punches for one day: in at 7:07 AM, out at 3:52 PM, 30-minute unpaid lunch.
7:07 AM → 3:52 PM = 525 min − 30 min = 495 min = 8:15 = 8.25 h
Rounded to the nearest quarter hour: 7:00 AM to 4:00 PM.
540 min − 30 min = 510 min = 8:30 = 8.50 h
Rounding gained 15 minutes that day. Rounded the other way — 7:15 to 3:45 — it would have cost 30 minutes.
Whichever convention applies to you, apply it consistently across the week and write the policy somewhere you can point to. The arithmetic behind the two approaches, and the three common rounding schemes, is laid out in rounding time cards explained.
Split shifts: one day, several lines
A split shift is a day broken by a long unpaid gap — the classic restaurant pattern of a lunch service and a dinner service with four hours off in between. Do not treat that gap as a break. Give each segment its own in and out pair, then total the day.
Saturday in a restaurant: 10:30 AM–2:15 PM, then 5:00 PM–10:00 PM. No unpaid break inside either segment.
Segment 1: 10:30 AM → 2:15 PM = 225 min = 3:45
Segment 2: 5:00 PM → 10:00 PM = 300 min = 5:00
Day total = 225 + 300 = 525 min = 8:45 = 8.75 h
Writing it as a single 10:30 AM–10:00 PM line with a 165-minute break produces the same total, but it hides the shape of the day. If a split-shift premium or a daily overtime threshold applies where you work, the reviewer needs to see the two blocks. Some states require extra pay when a shift is split across a long unpaid gap — that is a state-level question, so check with your state labor agency or your employer's handbook rather than assuming either way.
Travel between sites, on-call, and training
Three categories cause more confusion than anything else on a multi-site timesheet.
Travel
Ordinary home-to-work commuting is generally not hours worked. Travel between job sites during the working day generally is — a technician who finishes at a customer at 11:00 AM and arrives at the next one at 11:40 AM has worked those 40 minutes. Give site-to-site travel its own line with a travel code if one exists, so the time shows up as productive rather than appearing as a mysterious gap.
On-call
Whether on-call time counts as hours worked depends on how restricted you are. Sitting at home free to go to the cinema, carrying a phone, is different from being required to stay on the employer's premises and respond within minutes. The dividing line is fact-specific and is one of the most litigated areas in wage and hour practice, so do not guess. Record on-call hours on a separate line, flag any call-outs with their actual start and end times, and ask your employer which of those lines they treat as paid. If a page wakes you at 2:10 AM and you work until 3:05 AM, that is a 55-minute line with a date and times, not "about an hour."
Training and mandatory meetings
A meeting you are required to attend during working hours is normally worked time. Log it with the real start and end, including the 8:00 AM safety briefing that happens before your shift officially begins. Those fifteen-minute pre-shift blocks add up to more than a day of pay over a year.
Paid leave is not worked time
Holiday, vacation, sick pay and bereavement pay belong on the timesheet because payroll needs them, but they are not hours worked. Keep them on their own lines with a benefit code, and keep them out of the column you use to test the 40-hour overtime threshold. Under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, overtime is owed to non-exempt employees for hours actually worked over 40 in a workweek, and paid leave generally does not count toward that 40.
A week with a paid holiday: Monday 8 hours holiday pay, Tuesday–Friday 9 hours worked each day.
Hours worked = 4 × 9 = 36:00
Hours paid = 36 + 8 = 44:00
Overtime at 1.5× under the federal rule = 0:00, because worked hours did not exceed 40
You get paid for 44 hours, all at straight time, unless your employer's policy or a collective agreement is more generous — many are, and counting holiday hours toward overtime is a common contractual benefit. The federal floor and your actual entitlement are not the same thing. Overtime rules explained goes deeper into the regular rate and the states with daily thresholds.
Overnight shifts on a weekly sheet
When a shift starts at 10:00 PM Tuesday and ends at 6:00 AM Wednesday, subtracting the clock times gives you 6:00 minus 22:00, which is negative 16 hours. The fix is to add 24 hours — 1440 minutes — to the end time before subtracting.
Tuesday night: in 10:00 PM, out 6:00 AM, 30-minute unpaid meal.
6:00 AM + 24 h = 30:00 → 30:00 − 22:00 = 480 min
480 min − 30 min = 450 min = 7:30 = 7.50 h
Then decide which calendar day owns the shift. Most employers assign the whole shift to the day it started, which keeps one shift on one line and makes the weekly total easy to audit. Whatever convention your workplace uses, use it every week — switching mid-period is how hours get counted twice or vanish at a workweek boundary. The full treatment, including daylight-saving nights, is in calculating hours for overnight shifts.
A full week, worked out
Here is a complete week for a maintenance technician who works days, covers one night, travels between two sites, and has a paid sick day. Breaks are unpaid meal periods. The workweek runs Monday through Sunday.
| Day | In | Out | Break | Code | h:mm | Decimal |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mon 9 Mar | 7:00 AM | 3:30 PM | 30 | SITE-114 | 8:00 | 8.00 |
| Tue 10 Mar | 7:02 AM | 3:48 PM | 30 | SITE-114 | 8:16 | 8.27 |
| Wed 11 Mar | 6:45 AM | 12:00 PM | 0 | SITE-114 | 5:15 | 5.25 |
| Wed 11 Mar | 12:00 PM | 12:40 PM | 0 | TRAVEL | 0:40 | 0.67 |
| Wed 11 Mar | 12:40 PM | 4:10 PM | 30 | SITE-207 | 3:00 | 3.00 |
| Thu 12 Mar | — | — | — | SICK (paid) | 0:00 | 0.00 |
| Fri 13 Mar | 7:00 AM | 4:00 PM | 45 | SITE-207 | 8:15 | 8.25 |
| Sat 14 Mar | 10:00 PM | 6:00 AM | 30 | NIGHT-CALL | 7:30 | 7.50 |
| Sun 15 Mar | — | — | — | — | 0:00 | 0.00 |
| Hours worked | — | — | — | — | 40:56 | 40.93 |
| Plus paid sick | — | — | — | SICK | 8:00 | 8.00 |
| Hours paid | — | — | — | — | 48:56 | 48.93 |
Note what that table decides for you. Wednesday is three lines because the day covered two sites and the drive between them. Saturday night is assigned to Saturday, the day it started. The sick day sits below the worked-hours subtotal so nobody mistakes it for time on the clock. And the overtime test runs against 40:56, not 48:56 — so 56 minutes, or 0.93 decimal hours, qualifies for the premium rate under the federal rule.
Totalling the week and converting to decimal
Add minutes, not clock faces. The reliable sequence is three steps.
- Convert every daily total to whole minutes: 8:16 is 496, 5:15 is 315, 0:40 is 40, 3:00 is 180, 8:15 is 495, 7:30 is 450, 8:00 is 480.
- Sum them: 480 + 496 + 315 + 40 + 180 + 495 + 450 = 2456 minutes.
- Convert back: 2456 ÷ 60 = 40 remainder 56, so 40:56, and 2456 ÷ 60 = 40.933… → 40.93 decimal hours.
Decimal hours are what payroll multiplies by your rate, and the conversion is minutes divided by 60 — never a decimal point slid in sideways. 7:45 is 7.75 hours; writing 7.45 costs you 18 minutes. The hours to decimal converter handles both directions, and convert minutes to decimal hours has a full minute-by-minute table.
Every calculator on this site works the same way internally: times are parsed into whole minutes and all the arithmetic is integer minute arithmetic, so there is no floating-point drift. Decimal hours appear only at the very end, rounded to two decimals. The formulas are covered by 50 automated unit tests, everything runs in your browser with no network request and no account, and a weekly time card is kept in your own browser via localStorage rather than being uploaded anywhere. You can read more on the how it works page.
Getting it approved without the back-and-forth
Submit early enough that corrections can happen before the payroll cutoff, and keep your own copy. Three habits save most of the grief:
- Check the daily totals yourself before you sign. A spreadsheet that computes
=(E2-D2)*24-F2/60will happily return nonsense if the break cell is blank or the out time is before the in time. - Explain anything unusual in a note on the line itself: "worked through lunch, kitchen short-staffed" is far more useful than an unexplained zero in the break column three weeks later.
- Keep a personal log. A phone note with in and out times takes ten seconds a day and is the only thing that helps if the official record is wrong. Employers are generally required to keep accurate records of hours worked for non-exempt employees, but your own notes are what let you challenge a figure.
If a supervisor asks you to change a line to something that did not happen — drop the extra 40 minutes, show the lunch you never took — do not quietly comply. Put the actual times on the sheet, submit it, and raise it with HR or your state labor agency.
Common mistakes, ranked by how much they cost
| Mistake | Typical cost | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Writing 7.45 for 7:45 | 18 minutes per occurrence | Divide minutes by 60: 45 ÷ 60 = 0.75. |
| Break left blank | 30–60 min per day if auto-deducted | Always enter a number, including 0. |
| Overnight shift subtracted directly | Whole shift lost or negative | Add 1440 minutes to the end time first. |
| Site-to-site travel not logged | 20–60 min per trip | Separate line with a travel code. |
| Holiday hours in the worked column | Phantom overtime, then a clawback | Benefit codes on their own lines. |
| Pre-shift briefings omitted | 10–15 min per day | Log the real start time. |
Work through the week once with the work time calculator or the overtime calculator before you submit, and a discrepancy becomes a question you ask on Friday rather than a deduction you discover on payday. If breaks are the sticking point in your workplace, lunch breaks: paid or unpaid? deals with that specifically, and how to calculate hours worked covers the underlying arithmetic from scratch.
This guide is general information about timesheet arithmetic and recordkeeping practice, not legal or payroll advice. Wage rules differ by state and by country, and your employer's policy or collective agreement may be more generous than the federal floor — confirm specifics with your employer or your state labor agency.
Frequently asked questions
Common questions
How do I fill out a weekly timesheet?
Work down the sheet one day at a time. For each day write the date, the time you started, the time you stopped, the unpaid break in minutes, and a job or cost code if your employer uses them. Then compute the daily total as elapsed time minus the break.
When all seven days are done, convert each daily total to whole minutes, add the minutes together, and turn the sum back into hours and minutes. Divide that minute total by 60 for the decimal hours payroll needs. Keep paid leave on separate lines so it never lands in the worked-hours column, then sign or approve the sheet.
What information has to be on a timesheet?
At a minimum: the date, the clock-in time, the clock-out time, the unpaid break, the daily total, and your signature or electronic approval. Employers who bill clients or track jobs also want a cost code or project number on each line.
If you worked more than one block in a day, such as a split shift or a trip between sites, give each block its own line with its own in and out times. That keeps the day auditable and makes it obvious why the total is what it is, rather than leaving a reviewer to guess at a long unexplained gap.
Should I record my hours to the minute or round to the quarter hour?
Follow whatever your employer's written policy says, and apply it the same way every day. Exact punches are the simplest to defend because there is nothing to argue about. Quarter-hour rounding is a long-standing payroll practice, but it has to be neutral: it must round both up and down, and it cannot consistently favour the employer.
A day punched 7:07 AM to 3:52 PM with a 30-minute lunch is 8:15 exactly. Rounded to 7:00 and 4:00 it becomes 8:30; rounded to 7:15 and 3:45 it becomes 7:45. If the rounding only ever goes one direction, raise it.
Do vacation and sick hours count toward my 40 hours for overtime?
Under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, overtime for non-exempt employees is based on hours actually worked over 40 in a workweek, and paid leave generally does not count toward that 40. So a week with 36 worked hours plus an 8-hour paid holiday pays 44 hours at straight time under the federal floor.
Your employer's policy or a union contract may be more generous and count holiday hours toward the threshold — many do. Check your handbook. Either way, keep leave on its own timesheet line with a benefit code so the worked-hours subtotal stays clean.
How do I write an overnight shift on a timesheet?
Put the shift on a single line dated the day it started, and compute the hours by adding 24 hours (1440 minutes) to the end time before subtracting. A 10:00 PM to 6:00 AM shift becomes 30:00 minus 22:00, which is 480 minutes; take off a 30-minute meal and you have 450 minutes, or 7:30.
Whichever calendar day your employer assigns the shift to, use the same convention every week. Switching mid-pay-period is how hours get double-counted at a workweek boundary or disappear entirely.
How do I handle a split shift on my timesheet?
Enter each segment separately rather than treating the gap as a break. A 10:30 AM to 2:15 PM lunch service is 225 minutes; a 5:00 PM to 10:00 PM dinner service is 300 minutes; the day totals 525 minutes, or 8:45.
Logging it as one 10:30 AM to 10:00 PM line with a 165-minute break gives the same total but hides the structure. Some states require extra pay when a shift is split by a long unpaid gap, so the reviewer needs to see the two blocks. Ask your employer or state labor agency whether a split-shift premium applies to you.
Does travel time between job sites go on my timesheet?
Ordinary commuting from home to your first worksite is generally not hours worked. Travel between job sites during the working day generally is — if you leave one customer at 11:00 AM and arrive at the next at 11:40 AM, those 40 minutes are working time.
Give that travel its own line with a travel code so it reads as productive time rather than an unexplained gap between two site entries. Overnight travel, out-of-town trips and driving outside normal hours are more complicated and depend on the facts, so ask your employer how they classify them.
What does my employer have to keep records of?
Employers are generally required to keep accurate records of hours worked and wages paid for non-exempt employees. In practice that means daily and weekly hours, the regular rate, straight-time and overtime earnings, deductions, and the dates of the pay period.
Nothing stops you keeping your own parallel record, and you should. A short phone note with each day's in and out times takes seconds and is the only evidence that helps if the official record is wrong. Retention periods and the exact required fields vary, so check with your state labor agency for specifics.
How do I convert my weekly timesheet total to decimal hours?
Add every daily total as whole minutes, then divide the sum by 60. A week of 480 + 496 + 315 + 40 + 180 + 495 + 450 minutes is 2456 minutes, which is 40:56 in hours and minutes and 40.93 in decimal hours rounded to two places.
Never slide the decimal point across: 7:45 is 7.75 hours, not 7.45, and that mistake costs 18 minutes every time it happens. Minutes divided by 60 is the whole rule. The hours to decimal converter on this site does it instantly and keeps all intermediate arithmetic in whole minutes.
What should I do if my supervisor asks me to change my hours?
Record the times you actually worked. If you are asked to drop extra minutes, show a lunch you never took, or move hours into a different week, do not quietly adjust the sheet. Submit the accurate version and keep a copy of what you submitted.
Then raise it — with HR, with a more senior manager, or with your state labor agency if internal channels do not work. Falsified records hurt you twice: you lose the pay now, and you lose the ability to prove what happened later. This is general information, not legal advice; rules and remedies vary by state.
Last reviewed 1 November 2026. Corrections welcome at our contact page.