Free Timesheet Calculator

A timesheet is the record of when each person started, stopped and took a break, day by day. Payroll is built from it, and so is overtime, and so is any time-and-materials invoice that bills the client by the hour.

The arithmetic trips people up in three places. Clock times don’t add like ordinary numbers: 7:00 to 3:30 is eight and a half hours, not 3.5 minus 7. Breaks need taking out, but only the unpaid ones. And overtime under federal law depends on the week’s total, not on any single day, so you can’t see it until the week is added up.

This calculator does all three. Enter each day’s start, end and unpaid break, and it gives each day’s hours in decimals, the week’s total, the regular hours up to 40, the overtime beyond 40, and the gross pay at time and a half for the overtime.

For each day:

1. Time on site = end time − start time. When the end is earlier than the start, the shift ran past midnight, so 24 hours are added.
2. Hours worked = time on site − unpaid break, turned into decimal hours (minutes ÷ 60).

For the week:

1. Total hours = the sum of the days.
2. Regular hours = the first 40.
3. Overtime hours = anything over 40.
4. Gross pay = regular hours × rate + overtime hours × rate × 1.5.

The 40-hour line and the 1.5 multiplier come from the Fair Labor Standards Act. The Department of Labor’s rule is that covered, non-exempt employees get at least time and a half for hours over 40 in a workweek, and that a workweek is a fixed, recurring 168 hours: seven 24-hour days. Hours can’t be averaged across two weeks.

Five long days and a Saturday morning

A carpenter works 7:00 to 3:30 Monday through Friday with a 30 minute unpaid lunch, then 7:00 to noon on Saturday with no break. Each weekday is 8.5 hours on site less 0.5, so 8 hours. Saturday is 5. The week is 45 hours: 40 regular and 5 overtime.

At $28 an hour, the regular hours pay $1,120 and the overtime pays 5 × $42 = $210. Gross pay for the week is $1,330.

Four tens

A crew works 6:00 am to 4:30 pm Monday to Thursday with a 30 minute lunch. Each day is 10 hours, and the week is 40 hours, with no federal overtime even though every day ran past eight hours. In a state that also counts overtime by the day, the answer can be different, so check your state labor department’s rules.

A night shift

A road crew starts at 10:00 pm and finishes at 6:30 am with a 30 minute meal break. The end is earlier than the start, so the shift crossed midnight: 8.5 hours on site less 0.5 is 8 hours. Enter the real clock times and the calculator handles the date change.

Payroll and invoices use decimal hours. Divide the minutes by 60.

Writing 8 hours 45 minutes as "8.45" is one of the most common payroll errors. It’s 8.75, and at $30 an hour the difference is $9 a day.

Gross pay for a week at common construction wages, with the hours over 40 at time and a half.

The Department of Labor’s guidance on hours worked draws a line between two kinds of break.

• Short rest breaks, usually 20 minutes or less, are customarily paid as work time. Leave them in the hours.
• Meal periods, typically 30 minutes or more, generally don’t count as work time, as long as the worker is completely relieved from duty. A lunch eaten while watching a pump or waiting on an inspector isn’t a relieved meal period.

That’s why the calculator asks only for unpaid breaks. Some states have their own rules on when meal and rest breaks must be given and paid, so check yours as well.

A timesheet is only as useful as the habits behind it. A few make payroll, overtime and billing far less painful.

• Record times, not totals. "7:02 to 3:34, 30 min lunch" can be checked. "8 hours" can’t.
• Fill it in every day. A week reconstructed on Friday afternoon is a guess, and guesses run short.
• Use the same workweek every week. Pick the day and hour your workweek starts and keep it. Overtime is counted inside that fixed week.
• Note the job. Hours split by job tell you which estimates were right and feed time-and-materials invoices.
• Have the worker sign off. A quick confirmation each week heads off disputes about hours long after the job is done.
• Keep them. Payroll records are worth keeping for years, not weeks; your accountant can tell you how long your state expects.

Adding clock times as decimals. 7:45 to 4:15 isn’t 4.15 − 7.45. Work in minutes, then divide by 60.

Taking out paid breaks. Short rest breaks are work time. Only a real, unpaid meal period comes off.

Averaging two weeks. Fifty hours one week and thirty the next owes 10 hours of overtime, even though the two weeks average 40.

Counting overtime by the day under federal rules. Federal overtime is weekly. Daily overtime exists only where a state requires it.

Leaving out travel between sites. Driving from one job site to another during the workday is work time and counts toward the week. Ordinary travel from home to the first job of the day isn’t.

Missing work after the clock stops. If someone stays to finish a task and you allow it, that’s work time that has to be paid, whether or not anyone asked for it.

For time-and-materials work, the timesheet is also the invoice. Bill the hours at your labor rate, not the wage: the rate has to carry payroll taxes, insurance, the truck and the hours nobody pays for directly. The labor rate calculator works it out, and the hourly to salary calculator turns a rate into weekly and yearly pay.

A time-and-materials invoice should show the hours the way the timesheet does: the dates, who worked, the hours each day and the rate. Clients who can see the hours behind the total ask fewer questions and pay sooner. If the job runs past 40 hours a week for your crew, decide up front whether overtime is billed at a higher rate, and put that in the agreement before the work starts, not on the invoice after it.

On fixed-price work, timesheets are how you find out whether the estimate was right. Compare the hours the crew logged with the hours you planned, job by job, and the job profit calculator shows what the difference did to your profit.

BuildWell doesn’t track time. It plans the labor hours each line of work should take when it builds an estimate, so you have a planned number to hold your timesheets against.