Which one to use
Match the template to how you actually get paid, not to how you prefer to record time. If the sheet's periods do not line up with the payroll run, someone has to reconcile the difference by hand every cycle.
| If you are paid | Times a year | Use |
|---|---|---|
| Every week | 52 | Weekly |
| Every two weeks, same weekday | 26 | Biweekly |
| Twice a month on fixed dates | 24 | Semi-monthly |
| Once a month | 12 | Monthly |
Biweekly and semi-monthly are the two people mix up, and it matters here because the sheets are laid out differently. Biweekly is every 14 days and always contains exactly two whole workweeks. Semi-monthly is pinned to calendar dates, so its periods are 13 to 16 days long and cut through the middle of a week. The pay periods calculator works out which one you are on and lists every date.
Why the weeks are kept separate
The biweekly sheet totals each week on its own rather than giving you one 80-hour figure, and that is deliberate.
Overtime follows the workweek, not the pay period
Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, overtime is owed for hours over 40 in each individual workweek — a fixed, recurring 168-hour period. The pay period has nothing to do with it.
Someone works 50 hours one week and 30 the next. Eighty hours across the period, so no overtime? No. That is ten overtime hours in the first week, and the short second week does not offset it. A sheet that only shows the combined total makes that mistake easy to miss.
The same problem is worse on semi-monthly, where a pay period genuinely splits a workweek in half. If you are tracking hourly staff on a semi-monthly cycle, the hours in the split week have to be totalled across both sheets before overtime can be worked out.
Filling one in by hand
- Write times in whichever format your workplace uses, but be consistent. If people mix 5:30 and 17:30 on the same sheet, someone will misread one.
- Record the unpaid break in minutes, not as a time range. "30" is unambiguous; "12:00–12:30" invites double-counting.
- Convert minutes to decimals only at the end. Total the minutes first, then divide by 60 once. Converting each day and adding the rounded figures compounds the error.
- Never write minutes after the decimal point. Eight hours thirty minutes is 8.50, not 8.30 — 0.30 of an hour is 18 minutes, so that slip costs twelve minutes every time it happens.
The reminder line at the foot of every sheet covers the three values people look up most. The hours and minutes calculator has the full chart for all 59 minutes, in both directions.
Keeping the records
Employers are required to keep payroll records, and the retention periods are worth knowing before anyone throws out a stack of paper sheets. Under the FLSA, payroll records must be kept for at least three years. The records used to work out wages — including timesheets, work schedules, and records of additions to or deductions from wages — must be kept for at least two years.
The Act does not require any particular form for those records, and no specific timekeeping method is mandated. Paper sheets are entirely acceptable, provided the information they hold is complete and accurate.
What a record has to contain
For each non-exempt worker, the required information includes the hours worked each day and the total hours each workweek, along with the basis on which wages are paid, the regular hourly rate, straight-time and overtime earnings, and the dates the pay period covers.
Every template here has fields for all of it except the rate, which most employers hold separately rather than writing on each sheet.
Using these templates
They are free for any use, personal or commercial. Print them, photocopy them, hand them to staff, keep them in a binder. No attribution is required for using a sheet, and no sign-up is needed to download one.
If you want to host the files yourself or put a calculator on your own site, the embed page covers that — the only condition there is keeping the attribution link.
Sources
- U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division — Fact Sheet #21: Recordkeeping Requirements under the Fair Labor Standards Act. Required records, the three-year and two-year retention periods, and the absence of any required form or timekeeping method.
- U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division — Handy Reference Guide to the Fair Labor Standards Act. The workweek definition and the 40-hour overtime threshold.
- 29 C.F.R. Part 516 — records to be kept by employers.