A time sheet template is the sheet your crew fills in for the week: a line for each person, a row for each day, the time in and the time out, the unpaid break taken off, and the hours totalled at the bottom. Used properly it turns Friday into a reading job rather than an arithmetic job. Write the clock times exactly as they stand on the card, turn each day into decimal hours so the column adds cleanly, subtract the unpaid break from the day it was taken, then total the week and split that total at 40 hours so regular hours and overtime hours sit on their own lines. Multiply each line by the person's rate and the sheet has produced the pay owed, which is the only number anyone downstream actually wants. The free timesheet template on this site does that while you type: it takes the break off, moves the hours past 40 onto an overtime line at the multiplier you set, applies the rate to each line, and prints a sheet you can sign and file.
The columns a free time sheet template needs
Name, day, time in, time out, unpaid break, hours for the day, and then one total per week. Add a rate box per person and two totals under the week, one for the hours up to 40 and one for the hours past it. Anything beyond that belongs somewhere else and only slows the person filling it in. A sheet without a break column invites the break to be forgotten, and a sheet without a rate box leaves the last step to be done by hand on a separate sheet, which is where the mistakes get made. Leave a signature line for the employee and one for whoever approves the week, because an approved sheet settles an argument that an unapproved one only starts.
A simple timesheet template, one week worked through
Read the card in clock time first, then convert. A day shown as 8:45 is 8.75 hours, because 45 minutes is three quarters of an hour. Say the week runs 8.75, 8.5, 9, 8.25 and 9.5 hours net of the unpaid lunches, which totals 44 hours. Split it at 40. At a rate of 22 dollars an hour, the 40 regular hours come to 880 dollars. The 4 hours past 40 are paid at one and a half times the rate, so 33 dollars an hour, which is 132 dollars. Regular and overtime together make 1012 dollars gross for that person for that week. Every figure on the page came off the card and the rate box, and nothing else was needed to get there.
A free employee time sheet, a simple one, or one built for a crew
Most people searching for a template want one of three things. A free sheet to print and hand out, blank, so the crew writes times in pen and someone adds them up on Monday. A simple sheet for one or two people where the week fits on a single page and no one needs training to use it. Or an employee sheet built for a crew, where each person gets their own block, the rates differ by person, and the totals stack into one figure for the week's labor. The template on this site starts as the first and becomes the third as you add people, so nobody has to pick the wrong one at the start and rebuild it in month two.
The work time sheet template after payday
The template stops being about pay the moment pay is issued, and starts being about the record. Federal recordkeeping rules ask an employer to keep, for each non exempt employee, the hours worked each day and the total hours each workweek, along with the pay computed from them, and to keep those records for years rather than weeks. A pile of printed sheets in a drawer meets that if nothing goes missing. Saving the sheet against the employee and the pay period meets it whether or not the drawer survives, and it means the question about a week last March has an answer in seconds instead of an afternoon.
Questions people ask about time sheet template
Is the time sheet template free?
Yes. Filling in the sheet, taking the break off, totalling the week and printing it costs nothing and needs no account. Saving every sheet against the employee and the pay period is the paid product.
Should time sheets for work be filled in daily or on Friday?
Daily. A crew reconstructing Tuesday on Friday afternoon guesses, and the guess is usually rounded up. Times written the day they happened are the ones that survive a question later.
Where does the unpaid lunch go on the sheet?
In its own column on the day it was taken, subtracted before the day's total. A genuine unpaid meal break of half an hour or more is not hours worked, so it must come off before the week is split at 40.
Can one employee time sheet template hold several people at different rates?
Yes, and it should. Each person gets a block with their own rate box, and the week's labor is the sum of those blocks rather than one average rate applied to a pile of hours.
Do I need a different template for timesheet weeks that go past 40 hours?
No. The same sheet handles it, because the split is two totals under the week rather than a different form: one line for the hours up to 40 and one for the hours past it, each multiplied by its own figure. A 44 hour week at 22 dollars an hour is 880 dollars of regular pay and 4 hours at 33 dollars, so the sheet that totals 44 is also the sheet that prices it.