01
Record each shift window
List the start and end time for every workday in the week you want to review.
Guide
Timesheet Guide for Weekly Hours, Breaks, and Overtime
A timesheet is only useful when the totals are easy to verify. This guide explains how to move from daily shift records to weekly hour totals, lunch deductions, overtime review, and payroll-ready decimal values without guesswork.
Page Goal
Use this page to understand the review logic, then move back into the calculator once you are ready to validate a real schedule.
Foundation
What a timesheet should actually show
A practical weekly timesheet should show when work started, when it ended, which breaks were unpaid, and how many net hours belong to each day. Without those fields, weekly totals are harder to validate and payroll errors are easier to miss.
Start time
End time
Unpaid break
Net hours
Weekly Workflow
Step-by-step weekly hours calculation
Use the same order each week so totals stay easy to review and payroll handoff stays consistent.
02
Subtract unpaid break time
Remove lunch or unpaid meal periods from each day before adding the totals together.
03
Add daily net hours
Check that each row reflects real worked time rather than scheduled time alone.
04
Review the weekly sum
Use the final total to compare against payroll records, invoices, or scheduling expectations.
Lunch Deductions
How lunch breaks change your weekly total
Lunch deductions matter because they directly reduce net paid time. A half-hour break across five days changes the weekly total by 2.5 hours, which is material for payroll, overtime review, and client billing.
Without lunch deduction
40.00 hours
Five eight-hour days counted at full elapsed time before unpaid meal deductions.
With 30-minute lunch, five days
37.50 hours
The same schedule after deducting a half-hour unpaid lunch from each weekday.
Classification
Regular hours vs overtime hours
Weekly payroll review is not only about total hours. It is also about how those hours are classified. Regular hours and overtime hours may be treated differently by employers, contracts, or local rules, so the review process should surface both the total and the threshold crossing points.
Daily threshold review
Some payroll policies care about unusually long individual shifts, not just the weekly total.
Weekly threshold review
A balanced week can still cross the larger overtime threshold once every day is added together.
Policy differences by employer or location
The calculator shows the totals; classification still depends on your employer rules or jurisdiction.
Decimal Hours
Why decimal hours matter
Many payroll and billing systems prefer decimal hours instead of hour-and-minute formatting. Converting 7 hours 30 minutes into 7.50 helps teams enter totals consistently and avoids manual format errors.
7h 15m
7.25
Useful when a payroll field only accepts decimal hours.
7h 30m
7.50
A common midpoint example for lunch-adjusted daily totals.
7h 45m
7.75
Helps teams avoid manual conversion mistakes during payroll entry.
Manual Cross-Check Checklist
- Confirm every workday has a start and end time.
- Confirm unpaid breaks are deducted only where needed.
- Confirm missing or unusual shifts are explained before approval.
- Confirm overtime-sensitive days are reviewed separately.
- Confirm the final weekly total matches what will be sent to payroll.
Common Timesheet Mistakes
- Treating scheduled hours as worked hours
- Forgetting unpaid lunch deductions
- Mixing decimal and clock formats
- Ignoring overnight or split-shift edge cases
- Approving totals without checking overtime thresholds
Related Links
Keep the review path tight
Use these pages to move between the live calculator, workflow explainers, use cases, and site support pages without losing context.
Next Step
Validate a real timesheet in seconds
Open the calculator, update the sample week, and see how lunch deductions and overtime patterns change the final total.