Timesheet Calculator

How do you calculate hours worked from a timesheet?

For each day, subtract the start time from the end time and then subtract any unpaid break. A 9:00 start, a 17:30 finish and a 30 minute lunch is 8 hours. Add the days together for the weekly total, then convert to decimal hours for payroll by dividing the minutes by 60.

Overnight shifts trip most people up. If the end time is earlier than the start time, add 24 hours before subtracting. The calculator handles that automatically, so a 22:00 to 06:00 shift comes out as 8 hours rather than a negative number.

Should breaks be paid or unpaid on a timesheet?

That depends on your contract and local employment rules, which this page is not advice on. What the calculator does is let you enter the unpaid minutes per day so they are removed before the total. If a short rest break is paid where you are, leave it out of the break field.

For freelancers and consultants the question is simpler: bill the time you worked for the client. A break is not client time. TimerMVP has a dedicated break button on the timer for exactly this reason, so the session total excludes breaks without you doing any arithmetic.

Why do timesheets go wrong, and what fixes them?

They go wrong because they are filled in afterwards. Friday afternoon memory of Tuesday morning is a guess, and guesses drift in whichever direction is more comfortable. The fix is to record time as it happens, with a note about what the time was for, so the timesheet is a report rather than a reconstruction.

If you are tracking for your own business rather than an employer, a timesheet also leaves out the most useful information: which client, which project, and what that hour was worth. Those are the questions TimerMVP is built to answer, and the weekly report it produces is a timesheet with the money already attached.

• Enter times as you go, or at least at the end of each day
• Record breaks separately instead of estimating them
• Convert to decimal hours once at the end, not per entry
• Keep a note per block of time so a line can be explained later