Many employers, for payroll purposes, will have to track employees’ working hours per week.
To do so, and make the management of such information much easier, they typically resort to something known as a weekly timesheet template.
A timesheet may also be used by businesses to cut costs, improve their organizational management and planning, as well as by freelancers and/or contractors, who decide to charge on an hourly basis. Through the course of this guide, we’ll take you through writing a timesheet with the help of Microsoft Excel!
Before getting started with creating a weekly timesheet template, your organization, business, company, or group will have to decide what information they would like to compile. Typically, payroll includes things like Name, Date, Shift, Time-in, and Time-out. To make the organization easier, other companies choose to add additional categories, such as department, rate of pay, overtime, and a days/week section. As a result, you should decide what information you would like to put down on the weekly timesheet template before getting started.
What do I need to compile a weekly timesheet?
Much like if you were making a timesheet for individual days, you’d require some basic information that will allow Excel to compute weekly hours – Employees will need to fill their Time-in and Time-Out for each day, their names, and the dates on which they worked. Some companies prefer adding additional tabs, such as the department, hours/day, hours/week, overtime, and an hourly rate section as well, to make things easier for them to manage and oversee.
10 Benefits of Using a Weekly Timesheet Template
Weekly timesheet templates can be used at many places, and they fulfill different purposes. Anyone can use the templates for the weekly timesheet. These are helpful for the business owners as well as the can seek help through it in:
- Maintaining the company’s budget.
- Achieving success.
- Effectively using their time.
In this way, a business can grow progressively if there record is present in the form of templates of the weekly timesheet. The productivity and effectiveness of all the employees can be tracked through it, especially in businesses with a larger setup. For this purpose, the employers will have to fill the weekly timesheet templates daily. As a result, a lot of problems can be avoided to occur.
Following are the ten benefits of using the weekly timesheet templates for your business company:
Transparency
Everything will be transparent for the employers and also for all the employees. For example, you will not have to deal with employees’ questions about their remaining holidays as they can easily track them from their weekly timesheet template. On the other hand, you can also see how a particular employee has taken many holiday leaves to know about their working performance and task completion within the time.
Fewer unplanned absences
When the employees can view all the details, they will know the workload and important projects whose deadlines are coming soon then they will make other commitments and plans according to their working schedule. The only possible reason for them to get the holiday leaves even in the days of workload can be due to their mild sickness or any significant illness.
Automated time off
The duration of working hours of each employee can be traced with the help of a weekly timesheet template in which they already mention the entry and exit time of the employees daily. It will help the employer not to track this time manually as it will require a lot of time and is impossible to do every day. The employees will also know if they are following the office timings appropriately or not.
Company becomes more attractive
Your job description attracts the people who are looking for a job. When they read about the facilities such as automated weekly timesheet templates for keeping the record, they will preferably apply for getting the job in your company. In this way, potential and hardworking persons can be made a part of your organization, and they will help you grow your business by utilizing their skills while working for your company.
Highly customizable
The weekly timesheet templates are available in various ranges of different designs, which can be freely downloaded from the internet. All the details can then be easily edited according to your business company’s requirements and make it easy to use by your employees as well. Furthermore, you can add any section you want to update your system. On the other hand, any irrelevant section can also be removed if it seems less important for your company’s setup.
Saves cabinet space
Using the weekly timesheet templates will help you maintain records in the form of several files. Maintaining the records manually and keeping them in different files has been an outdated system. Still, the world has become advanced in technology, so this system also needs to become efficient enough. Different software has different capacities for storing the data, so you can choose to use one per your needs and the number of employees working there.
The templates for the weekly timesheet will allow you to get rid of the unnecessary stuff that gets piled up in the office cabinets with time. Your employees’ work can be traced out with the help of it, and you will not have to keep the piles of records in the cabinets.
Bills more accurately
The weekly timesheet templates will also help you assure the clients that their projects are in progress and their money is being used effectively. The employees will be paid according to their weekly timesheets, so the billing process will also be accurate. The clients will also not find any lacking area when they will have a complete record. All the costs spent will be justifiable as the clients will also be tracking the work being done by your employees with the help of software. At the end of a project, your company’s net profit or loss can also be visualized.
Increases efficiency based on powerful insights
The employees’ time consumed can be better observed with the help of weekly timesheet templates, and then you can analyze the areas where the time is being wasted and where it is being used productively. The steps which are utilizing more time will be tracked down, and then you can train your employees in those specific steps so that the time can be utilized efficiently. This process will require having complete information regarding all the activities going on in the organization.
Improves project management
A proper timeline can be developed for fulfilling each task of a particular project with the help of weekly timesheet templates which will improve the project management. By observing the time taken by each employee, a specific employee can be selected for handling future projects based on the skills that are required for completing that task. On the other hand, those employees will also get identified who take more time to accomplish their task, so the training sessions can be arranged for them to inform them how to manage all the tasks appropriately.
In this way, future projects will be assigned to those employees who are efficient with their work and can manage the workload effectively. The period in which a particular project is expected to get completed will also help ultimately decide the cost.
Saves company’s money
When the performance of each employee is being recorded in the form of weekly timesheet templates, you will make the decisions accordingly, and it will greatly help in spending too much money. For example, you will prefer employees who require less time for completing a particular project than those who waste your time by not showing the performance up to the mark. In this way, you will not have to hire more staff members to handle the workload because you have already tracked the areas that need improvement. So the company will be much more productive, and the money will also not get wasted.
How do I Compile a Weekly Timesheet in Excel?
Compiling a weekly timesheet is very easy – First, you’ll need to create these 4 tabs;
- Name
- Day
- Time-in
- Time-out
- Total
Once that’s done, computing the hours is very easy. Under the ‘Total’ Tab, you can choose to add the following function;
(Time out – Time in)
This will automatically compute the number of hours for each working day under the ‘Total’ tab. If you wish to add a weekly total, all you need to do is select the columns and cells under Total, and use the SUM command. The default shortcut for this command is Alt + ‘=’ so you can simply select the cells under the ‘Total’ tab and press Alt + = to generate Total, weekly hours.
Free Templates
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I make a weekly timesheet?
Refer to our article above for a step-by-step guide on how to make a weekly timesheet using Microsoft Excel! You can also download our free weekly timesheet templates for Excel and Word.
How often should you complete your timesheet?
Typically, the intervals in which timesheets are completed should match the intervals in which payroll is allocated, i.e., employees are paid. If, for instance, you follow a bi-weekly pay schedule, you should collect timesheets on a bi-weekly basis.
Is my timesheet confidential?
Technically speaking, no. Your timesheets are not confidential and are considered to be publicly available information. This is because it only contains information on hours worked, and the amount paid, making them financial records, rather than personal or confidential records.