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Free Timesheet Templates (Excel & Google Sheets)
Two free timesheet templates you can download right now: a weekly version covering one Monday-through-Sunday workweek, and a biweekly version covering two. Both are Excel workbooks (.xlsx) that also import cleanly into 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 week, 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 Monday so you can see the format.
Download a Timesheet Template
Pick the file that matches your pay period. Both templates carry the same columns and the same formulas; the biweekly version simply has a second week and calculates overtime for each week on its own. Prefer not to download anything? The free time card calculator does the same weekly math in your browser.
Weekly timesheet template
One workweek on one sheet — Monday through Sunday, with the regular/overtime split at 40 hours.
- 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
Biweekly timesheet template
Two separate workweeks on one sheet — each week totals and splits overtime on its own, the way the FLSA workweek requires.
- 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
What’s Inside the Templates
Every column in both 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, already labelled on every row. | Pre-filled |
| 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 |
| Weekly total | The seven daily rows added up. The biweekly file has one per week. | 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. Monday of Week 1 ships with example values (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.
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.
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 — a 50-hour week followed by a 30-hour week is 10 hours of overtime, not zero. 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 weekly or biweekly file, 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. Monday of Week 1 already contains example values — 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 weekly total, the regular/overtime split and gross pay — is a formula, and there is a short how-to legend at the bottom of the 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, so overtime is never averaged away across a two-week pay period. 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 import cleanly into Google Sheets — upload the file to Google Drive and open it, or use File › Import inside an existing spreadsheet. The formulas that calculate hours, weekly totals, the overtime split and gross pay carry over, so the sheet behaves the same way it does in Excel.
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. The two download links on this page point straight at the files. 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.
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