The time desk
Free Online Timesheet Calculator
Add up a weekly timesheet without a spreadsheet. Enter each day's hours, deduct unpaid breaks, and get payroll-ready totals in h:mm and decimal hours.
BEFORE YOU SUBMIT
A timesheet is a claim, not a note to yourself
Once a manager approves a timesheet it becomes the basis for a payment, and in the US it also becomes part of the record an employer is required to keep. That changes what "good enough" means. A figure that is roughly right in your head is fine for planning your week; a figure going into an approval queue needs to be reproducible by someone who was not there.
So fill the grid with the times you actually worked, in the format your employer's system uses, and keep the output. The decimal total is the number payroll will key in. The h:mm total is the number you can argue from if the decimal one is questioned. Both are shown, and both come from the same minute count.
What the Fair Labor Standards Act expects on record
For non-exempt employees, employers must keep records including hours worked each day and total hours each workweek, along with the basis of pay and the wages paid. The law does not mandate a particular form, a time clock, or a specific layout — a handwritten card is acceptable if it is accurate. What is not acceptable is a reconstruction invented after the fact.
Keep your own copy of every submitted period. Export the CSV or print the page before approval, not after. If a dispute arises six months later, a contemporaneous record of your own carries far more weight than a recollection.
PAY PERIODS
Weekly grids versus semi-monthly pay
This grid covers seven days because overtime is a weekly concept. Pay periods, however, are often not weekly. Semi-monthly pay runs on the 1st to the 15th and the 16th to the end of the month, which means a pay period almost always cuts a workweek in half. Biweekly pay covers exactly two workweeks and is much easier to reconcile.
| Pay frequency | Periods a year | Workweeks per period | Splits a week? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Weekly | 52 | 1 | No |
| Biweekly | 26 | 2 | No |
| Semi-monthly | 24 | About 2.2 | Usually |
| Monthly | 12 | About 4.3 | Usually |
For a semi-monthly period, run each affected workweek separately in the grid and then add the day totals that fall inside the pay dates. Do not sum a split week and test it against 40 hours: overtime belongs to the workweek, which continues past the pay-period boundary. A Thursday-to-Friday stub at the end of a period can still generate overtime once the rest of that week is counted.
Semi-monthly period ending the 15th, where the workweek runs Monday to Sunday and the 15th falls on a Thursday.
Submit: the complete weeks inside the period, plus Mon–Thu of the week containing the 15th
Overtime on that final week is settled in the next period, when Fri–Sun are known
THE HAND-OFF
Giving payroll the number it can use
Payroll software holds hours as decimals to two places. If you hand over 37:20 in hours-and-minutes, somebody has to convert it, and that conversion is where disputes are born. Supply 37.33 and the conversation is over. The grid shows both forms precisely so you can submit the decimal figure and still demonstrate where it came from.
A second habit worth adopting: quote the period total and the per-day totals together. Managers approve faster when they can see that Wednesday was the long day, and an auditor reading the record later can tie a single day back to a single shift. If your employer's template only has a weekly box, attach the exported CSV alongside it.
Three periods, submitted
Period A — part-time administrator, Monday to Friday, 60-minute unpaid lunch each day.
9:15 AM–3:45 PM = 6:30 − 1:00 = 5:30 per day × 5 = 27:30 = 27.50 hours submitted
Period B — field technician with one long Thursday and a half-day Friday.
Mon–Wed 7.75 + 7.75 + 8.25, Thu 11.50, Fri 4.00 = 39.25 hours; no overtime, submitted as 39.25
Period C — the same technician's following week, with Saturday call-out.
Mon–Fri 41.50 + Sat 5.25 = 46.75; 40.00 regular and 6.75 at the overtime rate, split on the submission
In Period C, splitting the hours yourself is the difference between a submission a payroll clerk can process and one that bounces back. Enter your overtime multiplier in the grid and the split is produced for you; if you would rather see a whole week broken out line by line first, the overtime calculator does only that job.
NOT ALL HOURS ARE WORKED
PTO, holidays and travel on a timesheet
Hours you were paid for but did not work are not hours worked. That distinction decides whether they count toward overtime. Under the FLSA, paid vacation, a company holiday and paid sick leave are generally excluded from the 40-hour overtime calculation, because the premium attaches to time actually worked. A week of 32 worked hours plus 8 hours of holiday pay is 40 paid hours with no overtime due.
Record those categories in whatever separate field your employer's template provides, and enter only genuine worked time in the In/Out rows here. If you lump 8 hours of PTO into Monday's punches, the grid will treat it as worked time and may show overtime that payroll will correctly refuse to pay.
Travel time, on-call time and training are harder cases whose treatment depends on the circumstances — whether you were free to use the time for your own purposes, whether the travel was within the normal workday, whether attendance was voluntary. Ask before you guess, and note the hours separately so the question is visible rather than buried in a total.
WHY IT BOUNCES
What makes a manager send a timesheet back
Totals that do not reconcile to the days
If the weekly box says 41.5 and the rows add to 40.75, the whole submission is in doubt. Let the grid produce the total rather than typing one in from memory; it sums the raw minutes and converts once, so the rows and the total can never disagree.
Round numbers on every single day
Five consecutive days of exactly 8.00 hours is plausible for a salaried schedule and implausible for anyone punching a clock. Reviewers notice, and a pattern of suspiciously tidy figures invites scrutiny of the whole period. Submit the actual minutes.
Submitting late
A timesheet filed after the payroll cut-off usually moves to the next cycle, and corrections to an already-processed period are slower and more visible than getting it right the first time. Fill the grid as the week goes rather than reconstructing Thursday on the following Tuesday.
Changing a figure without saying why
If you correct a punch after the fact, say so in the notes: a missed clock-out, a shift swap, a meal break that was interrupted. An explained amendment is routine. An unexplained one looks like an edit, and break time questions in particular are much easier to settle while the week is fresh.
METHOD
Precision, privacy and testing
All times are parsed to whole minutes and held as integers through every step, so a period total is exact to the minute regardless of how many days it covers. Rounding to two decimal places happens once, at the point the decimal figure is displayed. The underlying formulas are covered by 50 automated unit tests that run on every change, and the method is documented end to end on how this calculator works.
Your period stays in your own browser's local storage. No punches, pay rates or totals are uploaded, which matters when the thing you are typing is effectively your wage claim. Converting a stray h:mm value by hand is the job of the hours to decimal converter, and if you only need to check one shift before adding it to the sheet, start with the hours calculator.
One limit worth stating plainly: this is arithmetic. It does not know your employer's rounding policy, your state's rules, your exemption status or your contract. Use the totals as your evidence, and take the interpretation to your payroll department.
Frequently asked questions
Common questions
How do I add up a timesheet for payroll?
Enter each day's start and finish times with the unpaid break in minutes, let the grid total the week, and submit the decimal figure rather than the hours-and-minutes one. Payroll software stores hours as decimals to two places, so handing over 37.33 instead of 37:20 removes the step where a conversion error can creep in.
Keep the per-day totals alongside the weekly figure. Approvers move faster when they can see which day ran long, and the day-level detail is what you would need if the period were ever queried.
How do I calculate a semi-monthly timesheet?
Run each affected workweek through the grid separately, then add only the day totals that fall between the pay dates. Semi-monthly periods run the 1st to the 15th and the 16th to month end, so they almost always cut a workweek in half.
Do not test a split week against 40 hours. Overtime belongs to the full workweek, which carries on past the pay-period boundary, so the premium on a week straddling the 15th is normally settled in the following period.
Does paid time off count toward overtime?
Under the federal FLSA, hours paid but not worked — vacation, company holidays, paid sick leave — are generally excluded from the 40-hour overtime calculation, because the premium attaches to time actually worked. A week of 32 worked hours plus 8 hours of holiday pay is 40 paid hours with no overtime owed.
Record leave in whatever separate category your employer's template provides and put only genuine worked time in the In and Out rows, or the grid will treat it as hours worked.
What records does an employer have to keep of my hours?
For non-exempt employees, the FLSA requires employers to keep records that include hours worked each day and total hours each workweek, together with the basis of pay and wages paid. No particular format or time clock is mandated — a handwritten record is acceptable if it is accurate.
Keeping your own contemporaneous copy of each submitted period is still worth the effort. Export the CSV or print the page before approval so you have a dated record of what you claimed.
Why does my timesheet total differ from what payroll paid?
Compare day by day rather than week by week. The usual causes are a punch rounding policy, an automatic meal deduction applied on a day you worked through, leave hours counted as worked time, or hours from a split week landing in a different pay period than you expected.
Once you can point to the specific day and the specific minutes, raise it with payroll in writing while the period is recent. Vague disputes about a weekly total rarely get resolved.
Should I submit hours as 37:20 or 37.33?
Submit 37.33 unless your employer's form specifically asks for hours and minutes. Decimal hours are what the payroll system holds, and supplying them means nobody else has to convert your figure. The grid shows both forms, so you can quote the decimal total and still demonstrate the h:mm total it came from.
The conversion is minutes divided by 60, not minutes written after a decimal point: 20 minutes is 0.33 of an hour, never 0.20.
Is my timesheet data uploaded anywhere?
No. Every calculation runs in your own browser with no network request, and the period you are working on is held in that browser's local storage on your device. There is no account, no server-side copy and nothing for us to lose.
That is deliberate: a timesheet is effectively a wage claim with your pay rate attached. Clearing the period removes it, and it will not follow you to another computer or a private window.
How do I handle travel time or on-call hours on a timesheet?
Record them separately and ask before assuming. Whether travel, on-call or training time is compensable depends on the circumstances — whether you were free to use the time for your own purposes, whether the travel fell inside your normal working hours, whether attendance was genuinely voluntary.
Putting those hours in their own line keeps the question visible instead of burying it in a total that may later be reduced. These are judgement calls for your payroll or HR department, not arithmetic.
Can I export the timesheet for my manager to approve?
Yes. Export CSV produces a file with one row per day including the times, the break, and the hours in both h:mm and decimal form, which opens straight into Excel or Google Sheets. Copy table puts the same grid on your clipboard for pasting into an email.
Print gives a clean single page with the site navigation and advertising removed, which is the version to attach if your approval process still runs on paper or PDF.
Can I use this timesheet calculator for an invoice as a contractor?
It works for any situation where you need defensible hour totals, including billing a client. Enter your start and finish times per day, set your billing rate in the rate field, and the amount follows from the decimal hours.
Leave the overtime thresholds switched off unless your contract actually provides a premium rate. Overtime law generally governs employees rather than independent contractors, so applying a 1.5 multiplier to a client invoice would usually be wrong.
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Last reviewed 1 November 2026 by the Hours Calculator Online team. Spotted a problem? Tell us and we will fix it.