Both spellings are correct: "time card" (two words) is the standard form, and "timecard" (one word) is a common, widely accepted variant. They mean exactly the same thing - a record of the hours an employee works during a shift or pay period, used to calculate pay and, for many service businesses, to bill labor costs back to specific jobs or clients. A timesheet is the same kind of record with a different lineage: time cards grew out of punch clocks that stamped shift workers' start and stop times, while timesheets began as a way to summarize hours by client, job, or task. Pick one spelling, use it consistently, and don't let anyone tell you the other is wrong.
Timecard vs. Time Card vs. Timesheet: A Quick History
Timesheets and time cards, often used interchangeably, are actually different. We can thank lawyers for timesheets who began using them in the early 1900s to track billable hours by client. This idea of tracking hours by client spread to independent contractors, freelancers, service companies, and any business with hourly workers who wanted job cost reporting. Time cards (or punch cards) were adopted in 1894 when a New York inventor, Daniel M. Cooper, created the first punch card machine to track time for hourly factory workers, hospital staff, and other shift workers.
Companies with hourly employees still track time with timesheets to calculate payroll. They also use timesheet templates to track attendance, productivity and ensure their businesses comply with labor laws.
The Details of a Company Timesheet
Timesheets record an employee's starting and quitting times and include the total hours worked each day. Some timesheet templates have the time spent on specific tasks or at a location for job cost reporting.
For example, if a security guard firm employee has work hours that include a nine-hour shift across two locations, he would likely record two entries for his workday. For location A, he would list 8:30 AM as the start time and 1:00 PM as the stop time, totaling four and a half work hours. For location B, he would list 1:30 PM as the start time and 6:00 PM as the stop time, totaling another four and a half hours. Finally, he would record a time card entry of nine hours for the total hours he worked that day.
*As a side note, if your handwritten employee timesheets are always this clean and "on the dot," you have a time theft problem.
The details needed on an employee payroll time card report depend on what the employer needs to know, from payroll and invoicing to attendance and productivity tracking. You can customize your own timesheet template in Google Sheets as long as you accurately record the time card hours for each pay period.
The Advancement of Timesheets
Companies with remote, hourly employees still use handwritten timesheets to track working hours, but the advancement in technology has made this wasteful time-tracking practice inefficient and unnecessary. Also, payroll admins must collect every employee time sheet and manually calculate hours or use a timecard calculator, converting minutes to decimal hours. This manual process done every pay period is prone to many errors.
Daily time cards are essential for managing employee hours, tracking attendance, and job cost reporting, but it's time to move on from 100+-year-old technology. Companies with a remote workforce should adopt more efficient GPS time clocks to capture accurate time-tracking records. Everyone has a mobile device. Now is the time to adopt time clock software for tracking time and getting live timesheet data! An employee time clock app also provides live time card reports for your payroll admin.
Start your free trial today and see the difference Chronotek Pro's GPS time-tracking software makes for your business!
What should a time card include?
At minimum, a time card needs the employee's name, the date, and the start and stop time for each shift, with the total hours worked that day. Many service businesses add a layer beyond that: a job or location field for each entry, so hours can be split across multiple sites the way the security guard example above splits a nine-hour shift between two locations. That extra field is what makes job costing possible instead of just payroll.
How do you calculate hours from a time card?
The basic formula is to divide the minutes worked by 60 and round to two decimal places, so 30 minutes becomes .50, not .30. That distinction is where a lot of manual payroll math goes wrong: entering "4:30" as "4.30" instead of "4.50" shorts an employee by several minutes of pay on a single time card. See our guide to converting time clock hours to decimals for a full reference chart, or let payroll software convert it automatically.
Is it legal to change an employee's time card?
Yes, an employer can legally change a time card, but the Fair Labor Standards Act governs what counts as a legitimate change versus unlawful manipulation, and getting it wrong carries real financial risk: one federal case cost an employer $3.6 million. Correcting a missed punch or a system error is legitimate. Rounding or editing entries specifically to reduce what an employee is owed is not. See time card mismanagement for the full breakdown.
Paper timesheets vs. digital time cards: what's the difference?
A paper timesheet asks an employee to write down their own start and stop times, which is exactly why handwritten records so often look suspiciously round. A digital time card, captured through a GPS time clock, timestamps the entry the moment it happens and, on Chronotek Pro, verifies the employee's location at the same time. The result is a live record instead of a reconstructed one, and payroll admins get finished time card reports instead of a stack of paper to key in by hand.
Who needs to keep time cards?
Any business with hourly employees needs time cards to run payroll and stay compliant with labor law, but the businesses that get the most value from them are the ones with employees working across multiple sites, like janitorial contractors, security guard companies, and construction crews, where the time card doubles as the source data for job costing.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is it spelled timecard or time card?
Both spellings are correct: "time card" as two words is the standard form, and "timecard" as one word is a common accepted variant - payroll systems and employers use them interchangeably. The same record may also be called a punch card or, when hours are summarized by job or client, a timesheet. The practical advice is simply to pick one spelling and use it consistently in your policies, handbooks, and payroll documents.
What's the difference between a time card and a timesheet?
Functionally they are the same record of hours worked; the difference is emphasis. A time card traditionally captures clock-in and clock-out punches for each shift, while a timesheet summarizes hours by client, job, or task. The terms are used interchangeably today, but they have different roots. Time cards trace back to 1894, when a punch card machine was created to track hours for factory and shift workers. Timesheets came slightly later, when lawyers in the early 1900s began tracking billable hours by client, a practice that spread to contractors and other hourly service businesses.
Does a time card need to show job or location detail?
It doesn't have to, but it should if you need job cost reporting. An employee working a nine-hour shift across two locations, for example, would record separate start and stop times for each site plus a total for the day, giving you the labor cost for each job instead of just a single daily number.
How do you convert time card minutes to decimal hours?
Divide the minutes by 60 and round to two decimal places. Fifteen minutes is .25, thirty minutes is .50, and forty-five minutes is .75. The most common manual mistake is entering the clock minutes directly as the decimal, like recording "4:30" as "4.30" instead of the correct "4.50."
Can an employer legally edit a time card?
Yes, for legitimate reasons like fixing a missed punch, a system error, or a miscoded job. What's not legal is editing entries to reduce hours an employee actually worked. The Fair Labor Standards Act requires accurate records of hours worked, and unlawful edits can carry significant back-pay and penalty exposure.
Are paper timesheets still legal to use?
Yes, there's no law against paper timesheets. The issue is practical, not legal: manual entries are easy to round to convenient-looking numbers, and every pay period has to be converted to decimal hours by hand, which is slow and error-prone compared to a digital time clock that timestamps and converts automatically.
Is there a free timesheet template I can use?
You can build your own timesheet template in a tool like Google Sheets, as long as you accurately record the hours for each pay period. Chronotek also has an Excel-based attendance tracker template if you want a starting point before moving to a full digital time clock.