A free timesheet template for hourly staff (and why it won't last)
Grab a simple weekly timesheet you can use today — plus an honest look at where paper and spreadsheets start to cost you real money.
If you pay people by the hour, you need a record of the hours. A timesheet doesn't have to be clever — it has to be accurate, and it has to be there when you're running payroll. Here's a template you can use this week.
The template
For each person, per week, capture six columns:
| Day | Start | End | Break (mins) | Total hours | Notes |
|---|
Total each row, total the week at the bottom, and have the employee confirm it. That's the whole job. Copy it into a spreadsheet, print one per person, or keep a shared sheet — whatever your team will actually fill in.
Where it starts to hurt
A template is fine at five people. The cracks show as you grow:
- Times get rounded in someone's favour. "About 9-ish" becomes 9:00 becomes an argument.
- Breaks get forgotten, so paid hours creep up without anyone deciding they should.
- The maths is manual, which means overtime is a guess and mistakes are invisible until payroll.
- Approval is a paper trail no one keeps, so when a total is queried you've nothing to point to.
None of these are laziness — they're what happens when the record depends on everyone remembering to do admin at the end of a shift.
The honest upgrade path
The moment timesheets take you more than a few minutes a week, or you've had one payroll dispute you couldn't settle from the paperwork, the template has done its job and it's time to let the clock-in do the recording for you.
How miaHQ helps: staff clock in and out on a shared tablet or their phone, breaks are captured automatically, hours and overtime total themselves, and every week has a clear approve step with a full history. See what's inside →