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Free Timesheet Templates (Excel & Google Sheets)
Four free timesheet templates you can download right now: a weekly version covering one Monday-through-Sunday workweek, a biweekly version covering two, a monthly version covering a full month, and a blank editable version you can set up any way you like or print and fill in by hand. All four are Excel workbooks (.xlsx) that also open in Google Sheets. Fill in the yellow cells — date, time in, time out, unpaid break minutes and an hourly rate — and the sheet totals each day in decimal hours, adds up the period, splits regular from overtime at 40 hours per workweek, and works out gross pay with overtime at 1.5x. Overnight shifts are handled, and a worked example sits on the first row so you can see the format.
Download a Timesheet Template
Pick the file that matches your pay period. All four carry the same columns and the same formulas — what changes is the period they cover and how they work out overtime inside it. Prefer not to download anything? The free time card calculator does the same weekly math in your browser.
| Template | Period it covers | How overtime works | Best for | Download |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Weekly | One workweek (Mon–Sun) | Over 40 hours in the week at 1.5x | Weekly payroll, one crew, one site | .xlsx |
| Biweekly | Two workweeks (26 pay periods) | Each week split on its own — never averaged | Biweekly payroll, hours that swing week to week | .xlsx |
| Monthly | A whole month, 31 day rows | Per workweek via a Week # column, boundary weeks included | Monthly payroll, monthly records and retention | .xlsx |
| Editable / fillable | Any period you define | Your own threshold — 40 by default | Custom pay periods, printing blank, changing the rules | .xlsx |
| Printable PDF | Any period — blank rows, you fill in by hand | No formulas — total by hand or use the calculator | Crews without Excel; anyone who prefers paper | |
| Google Sheets | Any of the four | Formulas carry over unchanged | Teams working in Google Workspace | Import steps |
Weekly Timesheet Template (Excel)
One Monday-through-Sunday workweek on a single sheet. This is the file most people want, and it is the one that matches how federal overtime is actually measured — one workweek at a time — so the regular/overtime split it shows is the split payroll owes, with no further arithmetic.
What is in the file
- Employee name and job / site fields at the top
- Seven rows, Monday through Sunday, with Date, Time In, Time Out and Unpaid Break (minutes)
- An Hours (decimal) column that calculates itself from those entries, plus a weekly total
- An automatic split into regular hours (up to 40) and overtime hours (over 40)
- An hourly rate cell and a gross pay formula that pays overtime at 1.5x
- A short “how to use this template” legend at the bottom of the sheet
Who it suits
- Businesses that run payroll weekly
- A crew working one job or site for the week, so one job/site field is enough
- Anyone who wants one printable page per employee per week for the file
- Anyone who just needs the week totalled correctly — the time card calculator does the same math in the browser if you would rather not download anything
How it handles overtime
Hours up to 40 in the week are regular; anything past 40 is overtime, paid at 1.5 times the rate in the gross pay formula. That is the federal Fair Labor Standards Act workweek rule. There is no daily threshold in this file, because federal law has none — a 12-hour Tuesday inside a 38-hour week creates no federal overtime. States can be stricter: California pays 1.5x past 8 hours in a day and 2x past 12, covered on our California compliance page.
Worked example: a 46-hour week
Five 8:00 AM to 4:30 PM days with a 30-minute unpaid lunch, plus a six-hour Saturday, at an hourly rate of $24.00:
| Day | Time in | Time out | Unpaid break | Hours (decimal) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monday–Friday (5 days) | 8:00 AM | 4:30 PM | 30 min | 8.00 each = 40.00 |
| Saturday | 6:00 AM | 12:00 PM | — | 6.00 |
| Weekly total | 46.00 | |||
| Regular (up to 40) | 40.00 | |||
| Overtime (over 40) | 6.00 |
Gross pay at $24.00: 40.00 × $24.00 = $960.00 regular, plus 6.00 × $36.00 = $216.00 overtime — $1,176.00. The sheet fills all of that in the moment you type the rate.
Biweekly Timesheet Template (Excel)
Two separate workweeks on one sheet, each with its own total and its own overtime split. The distinction matters more than it sounds: a biweekly pay period is a payment schedule, not an overtime period. Overtime is still owed per workweek, so a two-week sheet that totals 80 hours and reports zero overtime can be wrong — and it is the single most common mistake on a biweekly timesheet. This file cannot make it, because the two weeks never touch each other.
What is in the file
- Employee name and job / site fields at the top
- Two blocks — Week 1 and Week 2 — each with Monday-through-Sunday rows for Date, Time In, Time Out and Unpaid Break (minutes)
- A self-calculating Hours (decimal) column and a separate weekly total for each of the two weeks
- A regular/overtime split computed per week — hours are never averaged across the two weeks of the pay period
- An hourly rate cell and a gross pay formula covering both weeks, with overtime at 1.5x
- The same “how to use this template” legend at the bottom of the sheet
Who it suits
- Businesses paying every two weeks — 26 pay periods a year
- Crews whose hours swing: a heavy week followed by a light one is exactly the pattern that gets underpaid when a period is averaged
- Anyone who has been stapling two weekly sheets together and adding them up
- Payroll staff who want one sheet per employee per pay period, matching what they key in
How it handles overtime
Each week gets its own weekly total, its own regular hours (up to 40) and its own overtime hours (over 40). The gross pay formula then adds the two weeks together. Nothing in the sheet compares the 80-hour period against an 80-hour threshold, because no such threshold exists in the Fair Labor Standards Act: the workweek is the unit, and averaging two weeks is one of the quieter ways overtime gets underpaid. If you run crews in California, daily overtime applies on top of this — see California break and overtime compliance.
Worked example: 80 hours with 6 hours of overtime in it
A busy first week and a quiet second week, at an hourly rate of $24.00. The two weeks total exactly 80 hours — and still owe overtime:
| Hours worked | Regular hours | Overtime hours | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Week 1 | 46.00 | 40.00 | 6.00 |
| Week 2 | 34.00 | 34.00 | 0.00 |
| Pay period | 80.00 | 74.00 | 6.00 |
Gross pay at $24.00: 74.00 × $24.00 = $1,776.00 plus 6.00 × $36.00 = $216.00 — $1,992.00. A sheet that measured the 80-hour period against a single 40-hour line would report no overtime at all and pay $1,920.00, shorting the employee $72.00 for the period. Do that every pay period and it is roughly $1,870 a year for one employee.
Monthly Timesheet Template (Excel)
A full month on one sheet: 31 rows, one per day, plus an overtime table underneath. A month has the same problem a biweekly period has, only larger — it is a reporting period, not an overtime period, and there is no such thing as a 160-hour overtime threshold. So each day row carries a Week # you fill in, and the sheet totals and splits each of those workweeks separately before it works out pay.
What is in the file
- Employee name, job / site and month fields at the top
- 31 day rows with Date, Time In, Time Out, Unpaid Break (minutes), a self-calculating Hours (decimal) column, and a Week # cell you fill in with 1 to 6
- A month total, and below it an overtime-by-workweek table: hours on this sheet, hours carried in from or out to the neighbouring month, the workweek total, regular (up to 40) and overtime (over 40) — one row for each of the six workweeks a month can touch. Most months only reach five, so the last row is often empty
- A “hours with no week number” check that must read 0.00 — if it does not, a day row is missing its Week # and would drop out of the overtime math silently
- An hourly rate cell and a gross pay formula built on the per-week regular and overtime totals, overtime at 1.5x
- The same “how to use this template” legend at the bottom of the sheet
Who it suits
- Businesses that run payroll monthly, or bill a client monthly for labor
- Anyone keeping one sheet per employee per month for their records — the Fair Labor Standards Act requires accurate hours records to be kept, and a month per page is a tidy filing unit
- Subcontractors and part-time staff who submit their hours once a month
- Semi-monthly payroll (the 1st and the 15th), where the month is the natural sheet and the week numbers keep overtime honest across the split
How it handles overtime
The Week # you put on each day row is what drives the overtime table: it totals every row carrying that number, then splits it at 40 hours. A workweek is any fixed, recurring seven-day period your business defines — pick one and use the same one every month. The table has six week rows rather than five, because a 31-day month that begins on a Saturday touches six workweeks — its 1st and its 31st each sit alone in one. Most months use five and leave the last row empty.
Weeks that straddle the month boundary. Months rarely start on a Monday, so the first and last workweeks of a month usually run into the neighbouring month, and no single sheet has all seven days. That is what the From other month (+ in / − out) column is for. The rule: a straddling workweek is paid once, on the sheet for the month that workweek ends in. On that sheet, type the hours worked in the other month into the column as a positive number, and the week is completed and split at 40 properly. On the sheet where those days were actually worked, type the same figure into that week’s row as a negative number so they are not paid twice. The day rows never move — hours stay recorded in the month they happened, and the column only moves where they get paid. Because the “hours with no week number” check compares the month total against the hours on this sheet column, boundary moves never disturb it. The check is there for a different failure: an unnumbered row still counts toward the month total but not toward any week — the one way this file can quietly under-report overtime.
Worked example: a six-workweek month, including both boundaries
A 31-day month that starts on a Saturday, at an hourly rate of $24.00. Week 1 holds only the 1st and 2nd; that workweek started in the previous month but ends here, so the 26.00 hours worked before the 1st are carried in and the week is completed. Week 6 holds only the 31st; that workweek ends next month, so its 9.00 hours are carried out and paid there. Everything in between is a whole week:
| Week # | Hours on this sheet | From other month | Workweek total | Regular | Overtime |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 (1st–2nd) | 16.00 | +26.00 | 42.00 | 40.00 | 2.00 |
| 2 | 44.00 | — | 44.00 | 40.00 | 4.00 |
| 3 | 40.00 | — | 40.00 | 40.00 | 0.00 |
| 4 | 38.50 | — | 38.50 | 38.50 | 0.00 |
| 5 | 45.25 | — | 45.25 | 40.00 | 5.25 |
| 6 (31st only) | 9.00 | −9.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Total | 192.75 | +17.00 | 209.75 | 198.50 | 11.25 |
The month total is 192.75 hours and the check reads 0.00, because every day row on the sheet is numbered. Pay is worked out on 209.75 hours: 198.50 × $24.00 = $4,764.00 plus 11.25 × $36.00 = $405.00 — $5,169.00. Without the carried-in 26.00 hours, week 1 would look like a 16-hour week and its 2.00 overtime hours would never appear on any sheet; without the carried-out 9.00, the 31st would be paid twice.
Editable & Fillable Timesheet Template
The blank one. No fixed dates, no fixed day names, and an overtime threshold you set yourself in a cell at the top. Type into it on screen, or print it empty and fill it in with a pen — the rows are blank and the columns are sized for handwriting. This is the file to take if none of the fixed pay periods match how you actually pay people, or if you want to add your own columns.
What is in the file
- Employee name, job / site and a free-text pay period label — write “Aug 1–15”, “Week of 8/3” or anything else
- An “Overtime after (hours)” cell, pre-filled with 40. Change it and every calculation below follows
- 16 blank rows with Date, Day, Time In, Time Out, Unpaid Break (minutes) and the same self-calculating Hours (decimal) column
- A period total, then regular and overtime hours measured against your threshold
- An hourly rate cell and a gross pay formula, with overtime at 1.5x
- A legend that spells out what is safe to change — and the one thing that is not
Who it suits
- Pay periods that start on a Thursday, a Sunday, or the 16th
- Anyone whose overtime rule is not 40: a 44-hour threshold, a union agreement, or a contract that pays a premium sooner
- Crews who fill in paper on site and hand it to the office — print it blank, one page per person
- Anyone who wants to add columns (a second job site, a mileage figure, a signature line) without unpicking a fixed layout
How it handles overtime
Whatever number sits in the Overtime after (hours) cell is applied once, to the period total. That is exactly right for a single workweek, and it is what lets you encode a stricter rule of your own. It is not right for a period covering more than one workweek: federal overtime is owed per workweek, so a two-week or monthly period run through a single threshold will under-report. Use the biweekly or monthly file for those — both split each workweek on its own. The workbook’s legend says the same thing, so the warning travels with the file after it has been emailed around.
Worked example: the same week under two thresholds
One 45-hour week, at $24.00 an hour, with the threshold cell left at 40 and then changed to 44:
| Overtime after | Period total | Regular hours | Overtime hours | Gross pay |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 40 hours (default) | 45.00 | 40.00 | 5.00 | $1,140.00 |
| 44 hours | 45.00 | 44.00 | 1.00 | $1,092.00 |
Nothing else in the sheet changes — one cell moves the line. Note that 40 is the federal floor for nonexempt employees: you can pay a premium sooner than the law requires, never later.
Printable PDF Timesheet (Blank, Fill In by Hand)
A blank form, not a spreadsheet. No Excel, no Google Sheets, no formulas — print it, hand it to your crew, and collect it at the end of the shift or the week. Seven blank day rows sized for handwriting, a totals section, a notes area, and signature lines for employee and supervisor. The columns are the same ones the Excel workbooks use, so a crew that mixes paper and spreadsheets works from an identical layout.
What is on the sheet
- Header fields for Employee Name, Job / Site, Pay Period and Date Submitted
- Seven blank day rows — Date, Day, Time In, Time Out, Break (min), Hours (decimal) — columns wide enough to write in legibly
- Write-in boxes for Total Hours, Regular Hours (up to 40) and Overtime Hours (over 40)
- A Notes / Comments area
- Signature lines for Employee and Supervisor, each with a Date field
Who it suits
- Crews on a job site with no laptop or phone — hand out a stack at the start of the week and collect them Friday
- Anyone without Microsoft Office or Google Workspace who just needs something to print and fill in
- Businesses that keep paper originals for records — a signed sheet is a signed sheet; the Fair Labor Standards Act requires accurate hours records, not a particular file format
- Supervisors who want a sign-off field the Excel workbooks do not have
Totalling hours without formulas
Convert each shift to decimal hours first: subtract clock-in from clock-out, divide the minutes portion by 60, and subtract any unpaid break the same way. Common values — 15 min = .25, 30 min = .50, 45 min = .75. Add the Hours column down the page to get the period total, then split it at 40: everything up to 40 is regular, everything past is overtime. The free time card calculator does the same arithmetic in the browser if you want a cross-check before entering the total into payroll.
Timesheet Template for Google Sheets
There is no separate Sheets file to download, and there does not need to be: Google Sheets opens .xlsx workbooks natively, and every formula in these templates — IF, OR, ROUND, MOD, MIN, MAX, SUM and SUMIF — exists in Sheets with identical behaviour. Download whichever period you need above, then use one of these three routes.
1. Upload it to Google Drive and open it
Go to drive.google.com, choose New › File upload, pick the downloaded .xlsx, then double-click it. It opens in Sheets straight away and stays an Excel file (Sheets calls this Office editing), so you can hand it back to someone on Excel later without converting anything.
2. Convert it to a native Google Sheet
With the file open, choose File › Save as Google Sheets. You get a real Sheets document with version history, comments and offline editing, and the original .xlsx stays in your Drive untouched. This is the route to take if the sheet is going to live in Google Workspace from now on.
3. Import it into a spreadsheet you already have
In an existing Sheet, choose File › Import › Upload, drop the .xlsx in, and pick Insert new sheet(s). Your existing tabs are left alone and the timesheet arrives as a new tab — useful when you keep one workbook per employee or per job.
What to check once it is in Sheets
Type times with a colon
Enter 8:00 AM and 4:30 PM, not 800 or 8. If a time lands in a cell as plain text, the hours column will stay blank; select the column and use Format › Number › Time. Sheets parses dates and times according to the spreadsheet’s locale, set under File › Settings — worth checking first if you are outside the US, because a US-format date can otherwise read as text.
Give each employee their own copy
Use File › Make a copy per person rather than sharing one tab with the whole crew. Two people typing into the same rows overwrite each other, and there is no per-row permission in Sheets. If you do share one file, share it view-only and keep editing to the office.
The yellow cells mean the same thing
The fill colours and the blue input text survive the import, so the convention carries over: yellow cell with blue text means you type here, everything else is a formula. The “how to use this template” legend at the bottom of the sheet comes across too.
Building your own instead?
The three formulas that do all the work paste straight into Sheets. Daily hours, overnight-safe:
=IF(OR(C2="",D2=""),"",ROUND(MOD(D2-C2,1)*24-IF(E2="",0,E2)/60,2)). Regular hours from a weekly total in F20:=MIN(F20,40). Overtime hours:=MAX(F20-40,0). Gross pay at time and a half:=regular*rate + overtime*rate*1.5.
Start from the weekly template if you are not sure which period you need — it is the smallest file and the easiest to adapt once it is in Sheets.
What’s Inside the Templates
Every column across the four workbooks, in the order it appears on the sheet, and whether you type it or the spreadsheet works it out.
| Field | What it is for | Filled in by |
|---|---|---|
| Employee name | Who the timesheet belongs to. | You fill it in |
| Job / site | Which job or location the hours belong to — the field that makes the sheet usable for job costing and not just payroll. | You fill it in |
| Day | Monday through Sunday. Pre-filled in the weekly and biweekly files; blank in the editable file so your week can start on any day. The monthly file has no day column — the date carries it. | Pre-filled (editable file: yours) |
| Date | The date of that shift. | You fill it in |
| Time In | Clock-in time, entered like 8:00 AM. | You fill it in |
| Time Out | Clock-out time. A time earlier than the clock-in is read as a shift that crossed midnight. | You fill it in |
| Unpaid Break (min) | Unpaid break for that day, in whole minutes. Leave it blank for none. | You fill it in |
| Hours (decimal) | Time out minus time in, less the unpaid break, rounded to two decimal places. Rows with no times stay blank instead of showing a zero. | Calculates itself |
| Week # | Monthly file only. Which workweek that day belongs to, 1 through 6 — the key the overtime table groups by. | You fill it in |
| Overtime after (hours) | Editable file only. The threshold the period total is measured against, pre-filled with 40. | You fill it in |
| Weekly / period / month total | The day rows added up. The biweekly file has one total per week, the monthly file one per month plus a per-week table. | Calculates itself |
| Regular hours (up to 40) | The part of that week’s total at or below 40 hours. | Calculates itself |
| Overtime hours (over 40) | Whatever that week’s total runs past 40 hours. | Calculates itself |
| Hourly rate ($) | The employee’s straight-time rate. Leave it blank to skip pay entirely. | You fill it in |
| Gross pay | Regular hours at the rate plus overtime hours at 1.5 times the rate. Blank until a rate is entered. | Calculates itself |
The yellow cells with blue text mark everything you are meant to fill in. Each file also ends with a “how to use this template” legend repeating these rules, so the sheet still explains itself once it has been emailed around or printed.
What the Template Calculates For You
1. Daily hours in decimal
Each row subtracts the clock-in from the clock-out, subtracts the unpaid break minutes, and rounds to two decimal places — so a 30-minute break shows up as .50 of an hour, not .30. The weekly, biweekly and monthly files ship with example values on the first row (8:00 AM to 4:30 PM with a 30-minute break, which comes to 8.00 hours) so you can see the expected format before you type over it. The editable file ships empty on purpose, so it can be printed blank.
2. Overnight shifts
A clock-out earlier than the clock-in is treated as a shift that crossed midnight, so a 10:00 PM to 6:00 AM shift totals 8 hours instead of a negative number. No second row and no workaround, in any of the four files.
3. Regular and overtime, per workweek
Hours up to 40 in a week land in regular; anything past 40 lands in overtime. That is the federal Fair Labor Standards Act workweek rule, which is also why the biweekly file totals and splits each week separately and the monthly file groups its day rows by Week # before splitting anything — a 50-hour week followed by a 30-hour week is 10 hours of overtime, not zero. The editable file lets you move that threshold for a single period. State rules and union agreements can differ; see California break and overtime compliance if you run crews there.
4. Gross pay
Enter an hourly rate and the sheet multiplies regular hours by that rate and overtime hours by 1.5 times that rate. Everything you are meant to type is a yellow cell with blue text; everything else is a formula you can leave alone.
When a Timesheet Template Stops Being Enough
A template fixes the math, not the numbers going into it. Spreadsheets are perfectly legal and perfectly fine for a small crew, a single site, or a business that just needs a clean record for payroll. The limits show up as the headcount and the number of job sites grow — and they are worth naming honestly before you build a payroll process on top of one.
A timesheet records what someone remembers, not what happened
A paper or spreadsheet timesheet asks the employee to write down their own start and stop times, which is exactly why self-reported records so often look suspiciously round. When every day reads 8:00 to 5:00 with a perfect 30-minute lunch, that is a pattern rather than precision — real start times vary. A template can do the arithmetic perfectly and still be adding up numbers nobody witnessed.
Self-reported hours cannot be verified
With handwritten or typed-in timesheets you are running on the honor system: one employee can write down hours for another, a few minutes get added at the end of a shift, a 30-minute lunch stretches, or a crew leaves before the recorded end time. None of that shows up in the spreadsheet, because the spreadsheet only sees what was entered.
Somebody still has to chase it and re-key it
Every pay period starts with collecting the sheets — supervisors tracking down the missing ones, payroll calling the field to ask whether that is a 5 or a 6 — and ends with someone typing the hours into payroll, where each entry is another chance for an error. That collect-and-re-key cycle is the part a template cannot remove.
Unclear or late timesheets slow down invoicing
If you bill labor back to clients, the timesheet is your billing source data. Late or ambiguous entries delay invoices, and inaccurate ones turn into billing disputes. A single job/site field on a spreadsheet is only as good as what gets written into it — an employee splitting a shift across two locations has to remember to record each one.
The records have to hold up later
The Fair Labor Standards Act requires employers to keep accurate records of the hours employees work, and in a wage dispute the burden of proof falls on the employer. Smudged sheets with crossed-out corrections are not much of a defense. A digital time card is timestamped when it happens instead of reconstructed afterwards — a live record rather than a recollection.
More on both sides of this: what a time card or timesheet is covers what belongs on one and how paper compares to a digital time card, and our employee absence tracker Excel template is a second free spreadsheet for logging vacation, sick, personal days and no-call/no-shows. When you are ready for hours that are captured instead of written down, see how Chronotek Pro timekeeping works.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I use the timesheet template?
Download the file that matches your pay period — weekly, biweekly, monthly or the blank editable one — open it in Excel (or import it into Google Sheets), and fill in the yellow cells with blue text: employee name, job or site, and then each day’s date, time in, time out, unpaid break minutes, plus the hourly rate if you want pay calculated. The weekly, biweekly and monthly files start with example values on the first row — 8:00 AM to 4:30 PM with a 30-minute break, totalling 8.00 hours — so you can see the format; type over them with your own. Everything else — daily decimal hours, the period total, the regular/overtime split and gross pay — is a formula, and there is a short how-to legend at the bottom of every sheet.
Does the template calculate overtime?
Yes. Each week’s total is split automatically into regular hours up to 40 and overtime hours over 40, and the gross pay formula pays those overtime hours at 1.5 times the hourly rate — the federal Fair Labor Standards Act rule for a workweek. The biweekly file applies it to Week 1 and Week 2 separately and the monthly file groups its day rows by week number first, so overtime is never averaged away across a longer pay period. The editable file lets you set the threshold yourself if your rule is not 40 hours. State rules and union agreements can be stricter than the federal minimum; California, for example, also has daily overtime rules, covered on our California compliance page.
Does the template work in Google Sheets?
Yes. The files are standard Excel workbooks (.xlsx) and Google Sheets opens them natively — upload the file to Google Drive and double-click it, choose File › Save as Google Sheets to convert it, or use File › Import › Upload inside an existing spreadsheet to add it as a new tab. Every function these templates use (IF, OR, ROUND, MOD, MIN, MAX, SUM and SUMIF) behaves identically in Sheets, so hours, totals, the overtime split and gross pay all carry over, along with the yellow input cells. Step-by-step instructions and the two things worth checking afterwards are in the Google Sheets section above.
How do employees fill it in?
One row per day: the date, the time they clocked in, the time they clocked out, and any unpaid break in minutes. Days off stay blank — blank rows contribute nothing to the weekly total. Overnight shifts need no special handling; entering a clock-out earlier than the clock-in is read as crossing midnight. Because each file has a single job/site field at the top, use a separate copy for each job when an employee’s hours are split across locations, so the labor cost stays attached to the right site. More on what a time card should contain is in what is a time card or timesheet.
Are these templates really free?
Yes — no sign-up, no email address, no trial required. Every download link on this page points straight at the file. Use them, copy them, rename them, and adapt them to your own pay policy as much as you like.
What is the difference between the weekly and biweekly template?
The weekly file covers a single Monday-through-Sunday workweek with one weekly total and one regular/overtime split. The biweekly file stacks two of those blocks — Week 1 and Week 2 — each with its own weekly total and its own overtime calculation, then sums both weeks into one gross pay figure for the pay period. Pick the one that matches how often you run payroll; if you pay biweekly, use the biweekly file rather than adding two weekly sheets together, because overtime has to be worked out one workweek at a time. The monthly file extends the same idea to a whole month, and the editable file leaves the period up to you.
How do you calculate overtime on a biweekly timesheet?
One workweek at a time — never across the pay period. A biweekly period is a payment schedule, not an overtime period: the Fair Labor Standards Act measures overtime against a single fixed workweek, so 46 hours in Week 1 and 34 hours in Week 2 is 6 hours of overtime, even though the period totals exactly 80 hours. Averaging the two weeks would report none and underpay by 6 hours of premium (at $24 an hour, $72 for that period alone). The biweekly template cannot make that mistake because Week 1 and Week 2 each carry their own total and their own regular/overtime split, and only the gross pay line adds them together.
Is there a monthly timesheet template, and how does it handle overtime?
Yes — the monthly file gives you 31 day rows on one sheet, with an overtime table underneath. Because there is no such thing as a monthly overtime threshold, each day row carries a Week # you fill in with 1 to 6, and the sheet totals the hours belonging to each of those workweeks and splits each one at 40 hours before working out pay. Months rarely start on a Monday, so the first and last workweeks usually spill into the neighbouring month; number those rows anyway and use the same numbering on both sheets. The table has six rows because a 31-day month beginning on a Saturday touches six workweeks, with its 1st and its 31st each alone in one; most months use five and leave the last row empty. Because the first and last workweeks of a month usually run into the neighbouring month, each week row also has a “From other month” cell: a straddling workweek is paid once, on the sheet for the month it ends in, where you enter the other month’s hours as a positive number — and you enter the same figure as a negative on the sheet those days were worked so they are not paid twice. The day rows stay where they happened; only the pay moves. A “hours with no week number” check sits under the table and must read 0.00 — an unnumbered row still counts toward the month total but not toward any week, which is the one way the file could quietly under-report overtime.
Can I edit the timesheet template or change the overtime rule?
Yes. Nothing is locked or password protected — add columns, rename headings, insert rows, change the colours. The editable template is built for it: the dates, day names and pay-period label are all blank, and an “Overtime after (hours)” cell at the top is pre-filled with 40 so you can move the threshold to 44, or to whatever a union agreement or contract requires. That threshold is applied once to the period total, which is correct for a single workweek; for a period spanning several workweeks use the biweekly or monthly file, which split each week separately. To add more day rows to any of the files, copy the last row — the hours formula copies with it — and extend the total’s range.
Which template should I use for a semi-monthly pay period?
Semi-monthly pay periods (the 1st to the 15th and the 16th to the end of the month) do not line up with workweeks, so the two files that work are the monthly one and the editable one. The monthly template is usually the better choice: it covers the whole month in one sheet and its Week # column keeps overtime attached to the workweek it was earned in, even when a workweek straddles the middle of the month. For the workweeks that straddle the start or end of the month, its “From other month” column completes the week on the sheet for the month it ends in, so a week split across two sheets is still split at 40 exactly once. Use the editable template instead if you want one sheet per half-month — write the range in the pay-period label — but remember its single threshold is only correct for one workweek, so check any week that crosses the split by hand.
How many employees can you run on a timesheet spreadsheet?
There is no hard limit, but the practical ceiling is about the point where you stop being able to check the sheets. With a handful of people on one site, a spreadsheet is fine and perfectly legal. What breaks first is not the math — the formulas are exact — but everything around it: chasing missing sheets each pay period, re-keying hours into payroll (a fresh chance for a typo per employee), and the fact that self-reported times cannot be verified, so a shift that ended early still reads as a full day. Add multiple job sites and the single job/site field starts losing the detail you need for job costing. When the collecting and re-keying takes longer than the payroll run itself, a spreadsheet is no longer the cheap option; see how Chronotek Pro timekeeping captures the same hours at the source.
How do you add up hours on a paper timesheet without a spreadsheet?
Convert each shift to decimal hours first, then add the column. Subtract clock-in from clock-out and convert the minutes to hundredths of an hour: 15 minutes is .25, 30 is .50, 45 is .75 — divide any other minute count by 60 and round to two places. Then subtract unpaid break minutes the same way. Once every row is a decimal, the daily total is a straight addition. The column at the right of the printable PDF is sized to write those decimal values in; add them at the bottom to get the period total. To find regular and overtime hours, measure the period total against 40: anything up to 40 is regular, anything past 40 is overtime. Our free time card calculator does the same arithmetic in the browser if you want a cross-check before handing the sheet to payroll.
Let the time clock fill in the timesheet
Chronotek Pro records GPS-verified clock-ins from the job site and turns them into payroll-ready hours, overtime totals and job costs — no sheets to collect, no entries to re-key, no rounding by memory. Start a 30-day free trial, no credit card required.
Also free: Time card calculator · Employee absence tracker template · Chronotek Pro pricing