Employee timesheets: setting up a simple way to record hours worked
The team has grown past the point where everyone remembers who worked when. Payroll needs a number every week, a client wants to know where the hours on their project went, and the current record is a mix of chat messages, calendar entries and a spreadsheet that one person updates on Friday afternoon. Nobody trusts it fully, and fixing it keeps getting pushed to next month.
A timesheet for employees does not need to be clever. It needs to capture the right facts, at the right moment, in a form that someone can check. This article walks through what those facts are, where timesheet setups usually break, and how to pick a setup that a small team will actually keep using.
What a timesheet for employees has to capture
Start with the minimum, because most failed timesheet projects start with the maximum.
For employees in the United States who are not exempt from overtime, the Department of Labor's Fact Sheet #21 on recordkeeping under the Fair Labor Standards Act lists what employers must keep. On the time side, that includes the time and day of week when the employee's workweek begins, the hours worked each day, and the total hours worked each workweek. The same fact sheet says the Act requires no particular form for the records, and that any timekeeping plan is acceptable as long as it is complete and accurate. A paper sheet, a spreadsheet or an app all qualify. Accuracy is the requirement, not the tool.
Retention matters too. The fact sheet says payroll records should be kept for at least three years, and records on which wage computations are based, such as time cards and work schedules, for two years. If the timesheet lives in a spreadsheet that someone overwrites every week, that requirement is quietly being missed. Other countries and some states have their own rules, so check the ones that apply to the team.
Beyond the legal floor, most small teams need three more things:
- Which work the hours went to. A project, a client or a type of work. Without this, the timesheet tells payroll what to pay but tells nobody what the time produced.
- Who confirmed it. A timesheet the employee submits and a manager approves is a different document from one anyone can edit at any time.
- When it was locked. Once hours have been paid or billed, changing them should leave a trace.
Everything else, such as notes, tags, overtime categories and break types, can wait until the basic record is reliable.
Exempt employees still benefit from a light record
Salaried staff who are exempt from overtime do not trigger the same recordkeeping duty for hours. Many teams still ask them to log time against projects, because the question "where did the time go" applies to everyone. If that is the goal, say so plainly. People fill in a timesheet more honestly when they know it is for planning and not for surveillance.
The workweek comes before the template
Before choosing a template or a tool, decide when the week starts. This sounds trivial and causes more confusion than anything else.
The Department of Labor's Fact Sheet #23 on overtime describes the workweek as a fixed and regularly recurring period of 168 hours, seven consecutive 24-hour periods. It need not match the calendar week and may begin on any day and at any hour. It also states that averaging hours over two or more weeks is not permitted. In practice, that means a week where someone works 46 hours and a week where they work 34 hours are two separate calculations, even if the pay period covers both.
This has direct consequences for the timesheet:
- The sheet should show the workweek boundary clearly, even if pay is biweekly or semimonthly.
- Totals need to be calculated per workweek, not only per pay period.
- If different groups have different workweeks, for example a night shift that starts its week on Sunday evening, the template has to allow for that or the totals will be wrong.
Write the workweek start into the template header. It takes one line and saves arguments later.
Where employee timesheets usually break
Timesheet setups rarely fail because the template was badly designed. They fail in the gaps around it.
Hours are entered from memory at the end of the week
When people fill in five days on Friday, the numbers drift toward the schedule rather than what happened. Short tasks disappear, long meetings get rounded, and a day with two projects becomes a day with one. The fix is not a stricter policy. It is making daily entry cheap: a sheet that opens in one step, remembers the rows from last week, and saves as the person types.
The timesheet and the task list live in different places
If the work is planned on a board and the hours are recorded in a spreadsheet, someone has to translate project names between them. The names drift. "Website redesign" in the plan becomes "Web", "Site" and "Client A web" in the timesheet, and the project totals stop matching. Keeping the list of projects in one place, and having the timesheet read from it, removes a whole class of reconciliation work.
Approval happens in chat
A manager replying "looks fine" in a message is not an approval anyone can find six months later. A clear submit step, an approve step and a way to send a sheet back with a comment turn the timesheet into a record rather than a conversation.
Edits after payroll are invisible
When a sheet can be changed after it has been paid, the figures in payroll and the figures in the timesheet drift apart without anyone noticing. Locking approved weeks, and requiring a sheet to be sent back before it can change, keeps the two in step.
Nobody owns the chase
Someone has to notice that three people have not submitted. If that is nobody's job, it becomes the payroll person's job on the morning payroll is due. A reminder, or a simple count of unsubmitted sheets, moves that work earlier in the week.
Paper, spreadsheet or software: an honest comparison
Each option works for some teams. The table below compares them on the points that tend to decide it.
| Consideration | Paper sheet | Shared spreadsheet | Time tracking or project tool |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost to start | Printing only | Usually already paid for | Free tiers exist, paid tiers charge per user |
| Daily entry | Needs the sheet at hand | Easy if the file is open | Easy on desktop and phone |
| Weekly totals | Calculated by hand | Formulas, which can break | Calculated automatically |
| Approval | Signature | Comment or separate column | Built-in submit and approve in many tools |
| Locking after approval | Physical storage | Hard to enforce | Supported in many tools |
| Hours by project | Possible but slow to total | Pivot tables | Reports by project and person |
| Retention | Filing cabinet | Version history, if kept | Stored with export options |
Paper works for a team of two or three people who sit together and bill nothing by project. A spreadsheet works longer than people expect, as long as one person owns the formulas and the file is copied, not overwritten, each week. Software earns its cost when approval, project totals and locking start taking real time every week.
The deciding question is not "which is best". It is "which step takes the longest each week right now". If it is adding up hours, formulas or software help. If it is chasing people, reminders help. If it is matching hours to projects, the timesheet needs to share its project list with wherever the work is planned.
A simple setup a small team can keep up
For a team of five to twenty people, the following setup covers the legal minimum, gives managers useful numbers, and does not ask much of anyone.
One sheet per person per workweek
One row per project or type of work, one column per day, and a total for the week. Rows carry over from last week, so a person working on the same three projects does not retype them. Include a row for work that is not tied to a project, such as internal meetings or support, so that time has somewhere honest to go.
Entry in half hour or quarter hour steps
Pick one increment and apply it to everyone. Finer steps sound more accurate, but people stop entering precise times when the grid is too fine and start guessing. For project reporting, half hours are usually enough. For payroll, follow whatever rounding practice applies in the relevant jurisdiction, and apply it consistently.
Submit by a fixed time, approve by a fixed time
For example, sheets are submitted by end of day Monday for the previous workweek and approved by Tuesday noon. Write the times down. Once a week is approved, it is locked. Changes require sending it back.
Let a lead enter hours for someone else
Some people will never enjoy a screen, especially field staff or people who work mostly away from a desk. Allowing a lead to enter hours on their behalf, with a record of who typed the entry, keeps the data complete without pretending everyone is equally comfortable with the tool.
Report two things every month
Hours by person, for payroll and workload, and hours by project, for planning and billing. If these two reports are easy to produce, the timesheet is doing its job. If they take an afternoon of spreadsheet work, something in the setup needs to change.
Connecting timesheets to the work itself
The most useful change for many teams is not a better timesheet. It is putting the timesheet next to the place where work is planned.
When a project exists on a kanban board or a Gantt chart, the list of projects is already maintained there. A timesheet that uses the same projects avoids the naming drift described earlier. A manager who sees that a project has used 60 hours against a plan of 40 can look at the board in the same place and see which tasks grew. Without that connection, the two numbers sit in different tools and nobody puts them side by side.
This is also where the choice of tool starts to matter. Some teams use a dedicated time tracking product alongside a separate project board. Others prefer a single project management tool that includes timesheets. The comparison pages for Trello and Asana are useful for seeing which features come with which plan across common options. Neither approach is wrong. The deciding factor is how many tools people are willing to open every day, and for most small teams that number is lower than the tool list suggests.
If the team is contractors rather than employees, the shape changes slightly. Contractors on an hourly rate need hours per project for invoicing, and contractors on a fixed fee may only need to report progress. A timesheet that can handle both, without forcing fixed fee contractors to invent hours, avoids a lot of friction. The features overview lays out how one such setup handles hourly, per project and fixed monthly contracts.
Rolling it out without resistance
A new timesheet is a small change to a lot of people's week. How it is introduced decides whether it sticks.
- Explain what the data is for. Payroll accuracy, project planning, client billing. Say which applies. Say what it is not for.
- Start with one team for two weeks. Fix the template and the deadlines before rolling out to everyone.
- Keep the old record for one cycle. Run both for one pay period and compare totals. Differences show where the new setup is unclear.
- Remove a step for employees, not only add one. If the new timesheet replaces a weekly status message or a separate hours email, say so. People accept a new task more easily when an old one goes away.
- Review after a month. Look at how many sheets were late, how many were sent back, and how long approval took. Adjust one thing at a time.
What to change first
Write down the workweek start, decide who approves and by when, and make sure approved weeks cannot be edited silently. Then connect the list of projects in the timesheet to wherever the work is planned. If a single place for boards and weekly timesheets would help, Pinateca is free for up to 5 people and offers timesheets as an add-on.
Q1. Do employees have to use a specific timesheet form?
In the United States, the Department of Labor's recordkeeping fact sheet says the Fair Labor Standards Act requires no particular form. The records must include hours worked each day and each workweek, and they must be accurate. Paper, spreadsheets and software are all acceptable if they meet that standard.
Q2. How long should employee timesheets be kept?
The same fact sheet says records on which wage computations are based, such as time cards and work schedules, should be kept for two years, and payroll records for at least three years. State and national rules outside the federal law can be different, so check the ones that apply.
Q3. Can hours be averaged across two weeks if the pay period is biweekly?
Not for overtime under the federal law. The Department of Labor's overtime fact sheet says the Act applies on a workweek basis and averaging hours over two or more weeks is not permitted. A biweekly timesheet still needs a total for each workweek.
Q4. Should salaried employees fill in timesheets?
Exempt salaried staff do not trigger the same hours recordkeeping duty, but many teams still ask them to log time by project for planning and billing. It works best when the purpose is stated clearly and the entry is light, such as half hour steps against a short list of projects.
Q5. What is the easiest way to get people to submit on time?
Make daily entry quick, set one fixed submission deadline, and give someone the job of checking the count of missing sheets early in the week. Reminders that arrive before the deadline work better than messages sent after it has passed.
