How is a working time sheet prepared?
06.09.2026
The working time sheet is the primary record showing which days and how many hours each employee worked during a month. Pay calculation, overtime payment and the resolution of labour disputes all rest on this document. This guide covers the structure of a timesheet, the sequence in which it is prepared, and how an electronic timesheet differs from a manually filled table.
The structure of a timesheet
A classic timesheet is a matrix: rows are employees and columns are the days of the month. Each cell holds either the hours worked or a conventional symbol. The symbols normally used are:
- Working day - the number of hours is entered (8, 7.5 and so on).
- Rest day or public holiday - a separate symbol.
- Leave - a different symbol depending on the type.
- Sickness - based on a medical certificate.
- Business trip - counted as a working day but shown separately.
- Unexcused absence - recorded separately.
On the right-hand side sit the summary columns: days worked, hours worked, overtime and absences.
The preparation sequence
- The schedule is defined - which days of the month are working days and what the norm is.
- Actual records are collected - entry and exit times.
- Exceptions are added - leave, business trips, certificates.
- The cells are filled - hours or symbols.
- The summary is calculated - days, hours, overtime.
- Approval is obtained - department manager and HR.
The second and fourth steps consume the most time, and both consist of moving data from one place to another.
The difficulties of filling it in by hand
| Problem | Consequence |
|---|---|
| Records written afterwards | Times become approximate |
| Departments use different symbols | Consolidation becomes difficult |
| A formula breaks | The total is wrong and goes unnoticed |
| Several people hold the file | The final version gets lost |
| Corrections are made silently | The document loses evidential value |
None of these problems is technical - they all come from building the process on people.
How an electronic timesheet differs
In an electronic timesheet the table is not filled in - it emerges from existing records. The record is created at the moment of the event, the schedule is stored in the system, and exceptions are registered separately. As a result the timesheet is ready at any moment and can be reviewed mid-month.
The practical difference is that the HR role moves from filling in to checking: the system provides a completed table and the specialist only reviews the exception rows.
A practical example
At an educational institution the timesheet was ready on the third of each month. Teaching hours came from the lesson schedule while administrative hours came from a log. Merging the two sources was a permanent problem: substitute lessons were never reflected correctly.
During the move to an electronic timesheet, substitution was defined as a separate record type. It was a small change with a large result: the calculation of substitute hours became automatic and the month-end argument disappeared.
There was an additional benefit too - the distribution of teaching load across staff became visible in numbers for the first time and was used when planning the next semester.
Common timesheet mistakes
- The norm is not shown. Only actual hours appear, with no plan.
- Overtime is not separated. It disappears inside the total hours.
- Exceptions are recorded as absences. The attendance percentage becomes wrong.
- Night shifts are split across two days. Half a shift appears on each day.
The last case deserves particular attention and is covered on the night shift working time page.
Approval and retention
The timesheet is an approved document, which makes two requirements important: who approved it, and what changed afterwards. In an electronic system both are stored automatically; in a paper version this has to be handled with signatures and additional notes.
Checking the timesheet
The timesheet must be checked before it goes for approval, and a systematic check takes only a few minutes. There are five points to look at.
The first is incomplete rows: an entry with no exit. The second is abnormal hours - a sixteen-hour day is either genuine overtime or a recording error. The third is correctly marked exceptions: are leave and business trips shown properly? The fourth is consistency of the summary columns: do the day count, hours and overtime confirm each other? The fifth is the plan-versus-fact gap: a systematic deviation points to the schedule.
In a manually prepared timesheet these five checks take hours; in an electronic system abnormal rows are flagged automatically and only those need reviewing.
The approval chain
The timesheet is an approved document and its approval chain should be defined in advance. The model that works in practice has three stages.
In the first stage the department manager reviews their team's rows and approves the exceptions - they know the real situation best. In the second stage the HR specialist checks that the rules were applied consistently and produces the summary. In the third stage the timesheet is passed to payroll.
Breaking this chain is the most common problem: the department manager does not participate, the whole load falls on HR, and exceptions are discovered late.
The approval date should also be recorded - it must be possible to know later at which moment the document was finalised.
The handover to payroll
The end user of the timesheet is the payroll system, and this handover is usually done manually. In practice that gives back part of the gain expected from automation.
To simplify it, the format should be agreed once: which columns are needed, how hours are rounded, whether overtime appears on a separate line, whether night hours are separated, and which codes represent the exception types.
The agreement is a single meeting; the saving repeats monthly. A stable format also reduces errors on the payroll side, because the team works with the same structure every month.
Building the symbol system
The conventional symbols used in a timesheet usually form by accident and differ between departments, which causes problems at the consolidation stage.
To build a unified symbol system, a complete list of exception types must first be prepared: annual leave, unpaid leave, sickness, business trip, training, partial time off, unexcused absence, rest days and public holidays.
A symbol is assigned to each type and the list is distributed to every unit. Symbols must be short and unambiguous - similar characters cause mistakes.
A second important rule: adding a new symbol should only be possible through a central decision. When departments invent their own, uniformity is lost.
In an electronic system the list is defined once and presented as a selection list - because free text entry is not possible, divergence cannot appear.
In summary
A working time sheet is an approved document and its quality depends on three things: the existence of a schedule, uniform exception symbols, and a preserved correction history.
All three can be achieved in a manually prepared timesheet; it simply takes time. In an electronic timesheet they are part of the structure, and preparation moves from filling in to checking - which cuts the month-end workload from days to minutes.
The next step
There is a simple way to test the quality of your timesheet: pick a cell from last month's sheet and trace where the number came from. If it cannot be traced, the document will not work in a dispute.
QRGate builds the timesheet automatically from records and shows exceptions separately. See what QRGate can do or calculate the price.
