Every business needs a spreadsheet for registering employee hours through a daily timesheet template or other documents. This will help track employee hours and tell the company's financial sector how much they need to pay each staff member based on their billable hours.

For this mission, the most common document used is the timesheet template. A time tracking spreadsheet that allows employees and supervisors to better visualize the total hours of work.

In this article, we will show you how to build the perfect timesheet templates for your business. Be sure to follow each step carefully to guarantee a document that fits all your expectations and accurately reflects the timesheet data that you need.

The timesheet template is a document companies use to track their employees' regular and overtime hours, analyzing what tasks they performed and how much time they spent on each one. The finance department will then analyze these work hours to see how much they have to pay the employee.

Creating a timesheet template may seem time-consuming, but the time-tracking document can easily be created with just a few clicks. Even simple timesheet templates can make a huge impact and avoid mistakes in the pay period.

There are tons of reasons that make the timesheet template a crucial tool for any business owner. The first one is to better control and understand how long your employees take to perform each type of task.

Not only that, but the timesheet template also helps avoid mistakes during the pay period, guaranteeing that you are giving your employees the right amount. This document can be automatically calculated through specialized software or automation tools, but you also have the option to create a simple Excel spreadsheet, for example. Both cases will work perfectly regardless of your company size.

The timesheet template is a document used by almost every member of an organization. As for the results and analysis of these documents, the two parties that usually have access to them are the business owner and the financial sector of the company.

Since they are responsible for calculating how much each employee will receive based on their total hours, the document must be well structured for optimized time tracking.

The other parties usually have access only to their personal document, where they fill in the information regarding overtime hours, multiple projects worked on, etc. All information must be precisely correct for the work hours register to reflect the real numbers.

There are different types of timesheet templates that you can use for your business. You can analyze their differences and decide which works better for you.

Here are the main types of timesheet documents:

Monthly Timesheet Template

As the name suggests, monthly timesheet templates considers all the tasks done by an employee during the entire month. The final payment will be calculated based on the total hours worked in the month, regardless of the number of tasks completed.

It is one of the most common timesheet template types available. You can calculate hours worked on and monthly basis.

Weekly Timesheet Template

This type of timesheet template works almost identically as the monthly document. The only difference is that it will be sent weekly to the financial sector.

Just like in the monthly timesheet, the tasks are entered on hourly basis. It is an excellent format for businesses with larger numbers of employees. You can also find this type of document in the structure of a biweekly timesheet template.

Daily Timesheet Template

For the daily timesheet, the employee will fill in all tasks completed and how much time is spent on each one. It is prevalent in businesses that make daily payments for tasks done.

The time tracking in this type of timesheet is identical to the previous ones. Remember to include only regular hours and overtime. Other activities, like lunch breaks, may or may not be considered. It will depend on your business policy.

Now that you know what timesheet templates are and their main types, it is time to create your own document. Make sure to follow each step correctly.

This way, you can have a spreadsheet that precisely reflects the work hours of your team and the time spent on each activity. Here are the main steps for creating an Excel timesheet template:

Employee Name

The first item of your document should be the identification data. The two most common fields in this category are the employee's name and the current job title.

You can include that information at the top of your spreadsheet to be easily identified. This will make your document look more organized and save tons of time, especially if you are dealing with a large volume of employees.

Date

Next, you need to add the date. If it is a monthly template, you must also include the month that the document regards at the top, right next to the identification information.

Fill the columns with the date of each day. The employee will fill the respective days with the tasks done and how much time they spent doing them.

Time In and Time Out

Now comes the heart of your template. You must add two columns: One for the time in and another for the time out.

The employee will use the time in the first column to fill in the time when they arrived at work or started working on a project. The time out part of the template is the opposite.

The time out part of the template is the opposite. Your employee should fill it in when they stop working. This information will be the base for calculating how much you need to pay each employee, so double-check it.

Break

Some templates include columns dedicated to taking note of breaks. If your business contains the breaks for salaried employees, then you can also add them to your project timesheet.

On the other hand, if your policy doesn’t allow breaks during work time, you can simply not add them to the paper timesheets. It is an entirely optional category.

Total Hours

Another key item for your timesheet template is the total hours column. In this part of the spreadsheet, your employee will write down the sum of all hours worked, including breaks, if they appear in the timesheet.

You must write down the exact value in this step. The more precise you get, the more effective your document will be.

Total Productive Hours

In businesses that have break times, it is also common to include a category regarding only the productive hours of your work. This field will be used to sum up only the working hours of your month, week, etc.

Any other activity must not be considered when filling in this information. Otherwise, your final result might not reflect how much you should receive.

When it comes to creating your own timesheet template, there are tons of options for doing it. From known software to specialized programs, each one has its tools and features.

Among all the options available, we highly recommend using Microsoft Excel. MS Excel not only has one of the best tool sets available, but it is also an industry standard, meaning that you won't need different software for each task.

If you don’t have a Microsoft Office activation key, you can find one at RoyalCDKeys. This way, you still have access to all features and save money.

If you don’t want to create your timesheet template from scratch, there is no problem. Here are some free examples you can download and use:

Template #1

Weekly template for overtime hours. Template indicated for employees signing up for overtime activities on business.

Get this template

Template #2

Free monthly timesheet template. Document indicated for keeping track of multiple employees at the same time.

Get this template

Template #3

Daily timesheet template. It is indicated for businesses looking for a template for daily payrolls.

Get this template

The timesheet template becomes indispensable when dealing with multiple employees and having to make frequent payments. Every part of the document has a purpose and, if correctly used, can make this task way more manageable.

Be sure to follow each step carefully to avoid mistakes that can go from paying the wrong amount all the way to transferring the salary to another employee. The timesheet template is simple and can be assembled by any team member from any job title.

Now that you know everything you need about timesheet templates, it is time to start creating your own template for this task. This way, you will have a tool capable of optimizing the process and making these operations safer.