25 Free Time Card Templates ( Word | Excel | PDF )

A time card is a digital replacement to registers used back in the day to keep track of employee hours – It allows for employees to digitally punch in and out of their shifts, allowing employers to keep track of their hours.

A time card template is essentially a document that tracks employee hours worked and makes things like payroll and scheduling that much easier for employers. Typically, it also allows for sharing with other users, and so, employees may also keep track of hours worked from the convenience of their smartphone.

It allows employees to punch in and out, and counts their hours for a specified time. Typically, this time period aligns with the payroll, which is why many businesses opt for either weekly or bi-weekly time cards. Finally, time cards also contain a record of changes made to the time card itself, so that both employees and employers benefit from transparency and efficiency in communication and payroll.

With Microsoft Excel, creating a time card is a very simple and quick process – With a few simple steps, just about anyone can create their own time card from within the convenience of their home. To get started, boot up Excel and create a new spreadsheet. Once that’s done, create labels for the categories you would like to track. This typically includes Employee Name, Time-in, and Time-out for each day of the week and a ‘Total’ tab, to calculate total hours worked. After you’ve made the labels and assigned them to the appropriate cells, you can get started with inputting excel calculations. All you’ll have to do is type the following within the ‘Total’ cell parameters;

(Time out – Time in)

This will give you the total number of hours worked by the employee within a day. If you wish to add further parameters, such as a morning session and an evening session, you’ll need to type the following within the ‘Total’ cell parameters;

(Morning Time Out – Morning Time in) + (Evening Time Out – Evening Time In)

When you input these commands for all the cells you require, you’ll see that you’ll have an added list of hours under the ‘Total’ cell. If you want to compile all of those hours, you’ll need to use the ‘SUM’ command. This will allow you to add all of those hours up, giving you the employee’s total hours worked for the week.

To learn more about time card templates and timesheets, click here.

If this sounds too complicated, don’t worry – there is an even simpler alternative. To help you out, we’ve created a number of free time card templates. These templates can be used as-is, or can also be modified to better suit your own needs. These include weekly, bi-weekly, and monthly time card templates, which should cover the needs of just about any business and/or company!