Timesheet Calculator | Calculate Work Hours

The grid above totals one week at a time. This section deals with the layer payroll actually runs on: pay periods, 24-hour entries, and moving a finished time sheet out of the browser without re-keying anything. Our team closes these numbers every other Friday, and each rule below traces back to a mistake we once had to correct.

Does a biweekly pay period change the overtime math?

No — and assuming it does is the most expensive misunderstanding in biweekly payroll. Federal law measures overtime against each workweek separately; 29 CFR 778.104, published on DOL.gov, states that each workweek stands alone. Averaging the two weeks of a pay period is not permitted, even if the employee agrees to it.

A verified example: an employee logs 44 hours worked in week one and 36 in week two, at a $16.00 rate per hour. Week one pays 40 × $16.00 plus four overtime hours at $24.00, so $736.00. Week two pays 36 × $16.00 = $576.00. The period totals $1,312.00 gross pay. Averaging the 80 hours into two flat 40s would produce $1,280.00 — a $32.00 underpayment that remains legally owed no matter what the schedule looked like.

Should you enter times in military time?

If shifts ever cross noon or midnight, yes. The 24-hour format removes the single largest entry error we see: a PM typed as AM, which silently turns a normal day into a negative number or a sixteen-hour monster. Military time keeps the arithmetic honest — a swing shift from 13:45 to 22:15 reads as 8 hours 30 minutes on its face, and lands at 8.0 decimal hours once a 30-minute break deduction is applied.

Whichever format you pick, keep it for the whole period. Mixed entries are where phantom hours creep into employee time records.

What does payroll actually need from a finished timesheet?

Four things, in this order:

• Identification — the person's name and the exact period dates, so the record stands on its own a year from now.
• The regular and overtime split, stated in decimal hours rather than clock notation, because pay systems multiply decimals by rates.
• Break time already resolved — every break deduction applied and visible, not implied.
• An approval mark from whoever reviewed the week before it went to payroll.

When we compared exports from a dozen popular tools, the ones payroll clerks praised all shared that structure. Hit Save PDF to freeze an approved copy, and keep the daily time cards behind it — the card is the raw source document, while the timesheet is the summary someone signs off on.

One more habit worth stealing: preview the gross pay before submitting. Multiply the decimal total hours by the rate yourself; if the figure looks wrong at that stage, the mistake is cheap to trace. After a paycheck prints, the same error costs a correction run, an awkward conversation, and sometimes interest. Five seconds of arithmetic against the work hours you already trust is the cheapest control in payroll.

Frequently asked questions

Is a timesheet the same as a time card?

They answer different questions. A time card captures one person's raw in-and-out entries day by day; a timesheet aggregates those entries into period totals ready for wage calculation. Auditors typically ask for both, which is why keeping the underlying detail matters.

Can salaried employees still earn overtime?

Often, yes. Exemption under the FLSA depends on duties and salary tests described in DOL.gov Fact Sheet #17A, not on being called "salaried." A salaried employee who fails those tests is non-exempt and earns 1.5× for hours past 40, calculated from an hourly equivalent of the salary.

Should a timesheet be approved before payroll runs?

Always. A thirty-second supervisor review catches missing punches, duplicated days, and unapplied breaks while they are still cheap to fix. Once wages are paid, every correction becomes an off-cycle adjustment that annoys everyone involved.