What this monthly timesheet is for
A timesheet records what an employee worked on and for how long; an attendance sheet records whether they were there. The distinction matters when hours are billed to a client, allocated to a project, or paid by the hour. This template is a monthly timesheet for one employee: agencies, consultancies, IT services teams, contract engineers, chartered accountancy firms and staffing companies that place people with clients all use this shape, and the timesheet versus attendance article explains why they should not be merged.
It is designed to be filled by the employee and approved by the manager, then handed to accounts for billing and to HR for payroll. One file per employee per month is the norm, which is why the template has the employee and manager names and the month in the header rather than in columns.
It suits any team where a manager can realistically review 20 to 26 rows per person per month. For staffing companies with hundreds of deployed staff, the sign-off step becomes the bottleneck; see the manpower supply attendance guide for that scale.
What is inside: the Timesheet sheet explained
The header has three fields: Employee (name and ID), Manager and Month. Below it, one row per date of the month: Day (date, pre-filled from the Month cell with =DATE(year,month,ROW()-5) so weekends can be shaded automatically), Project or Client, Task, Start, End, Break (minutes), Hours, Billable (Y or N) and Notes. If an employee works on two projects in one day, insert a second row for the same date; the totals still work because they sum the Hours column rather than counting rows.
Hours is calculated: =IF(OR(D6="",E6=""),"",MOD(E6-D6,1)*24-F6/60), returning decimal hours net of the break and handling a day that runs past midnight. A Regular Hours column shows =MIN(H6,9) and an Overtime column shows =MAX(0,H6-9), treating anything beyond 9 hours in a day as overtime in line with the Factories Act and most state Shops and Establishments Acts; change the 9 in the header cell if your standard day is 8.
The totals block at the foot has Total Hours (=SUM(H6:H36)), Billable Hours (=SUMIF(I6:I36,"Y",H6:H36)), Non-Billable Hours, Regular Hours (sum of the Regular column) and Overtime Hours (sum of the Overtime column), plus Utilisation (=Billable/Total). Under that is the sign-off block: Employee Signature and Date, Manager Signature and Date, and a Remarks line for the manager to note disputed entries.
- Dates are real Excel dates, so you can sort and filter and the weekend shading is automatic
- Break is in minutes because 30 or 45 is faster to type and less error-prone than 00:30
- Billable is Y/N with Data Validation so SUMIF is reliable
How to use it: daily entry, month-end approval
Fill the timesheet daily. Employees who fill it on the last day of the month reconstruct their time from memory and calendar invites, and both under-record billable hours and over-record round numbers. A five-minute habit at the end of each day produces a sheet a client will accept. Start and End should be the actual times worked on that project, not the office arrival and departure; if the day was split across two clients, use two rows.
At month end, the employee signs, the manager reviews the Notes and any Overtime, signs, and the file goes two ways: Billable Hours by project to accounts for invoicing, and Total Hours and Overtime Hours to HR for payroll. If pay is hourly, multiply Total Hours by the rate; if salaried, only Overtime Hours affects pay. The timesheet to payroll guide covers the conversion, and the timesheet calculator is useful for checking a single week.
Store the signed PDF with the invoice for the client's project. Clients dispute hours months later, and a signed timesheet with task descriptions is the evidence that settles it. The Excel file stays with HR as the working copy.
- Save as Timesheet-EmpID-2026-09.xlsx so files sort by person and month
- Use the filter on Project or Client to give each client only their rows if they ask for detail
- Do not delete rows for leave days; write Leave in Task and leave Start and End blank so the month is complete
How to customise projects, rates and approval
Add a Rate column and an Amount column (=Hours x Rate) if you bill different clients at different hourly rates; use a small lookup table of client rates and VLOOKUP on Project or Client so the rate fills itself. Add a Project Code column if your accounting software needs codes rather than names for import.
For a team, create a Summary sheet in a separate workbook that pulls Total Hours, Billable Hours and Overtime from each employee's file, or keep one workbook with a sheet per employee and a summary that references each. Beyond about 15 employees the linked-workbook approach becomes fragile and a shared system is worth considering.
If your standard day is 8 hours, change the threshold cell so Overtime starts beyond 8. If your policy also treats any work on a weekly off as overtime regardless of hours, add a Weekend flag column with =IF(WEEKDAY(A6,2)>5,"WO","") and adjust the Overtime formula to count all hours on WO days. The how to create employee timesheets guide covers these variants.
- Add a Location column (Office, Client Site, WFH) for hybrid teams and reimbursement
- Protect the Hours, Regular and Overtime columns so employees can only edit inputs
- Add a Status column (Submitted, Approved, Rejected) if timesheets move between people by email
Rules and compliance context
A timesheet is often the only record of daily hours for office and professional staff, so it doubles as the evidence for working-hours compliance. Under most state Shops and Establishments Acts, employees in offices are limited to 9 hours a day and 48 a week, with overtime at double rate for excess hours; the Labour Codes keep the 48-hour week. The Regular and Overtime split in this template is built on the 9-hour day for that reason. Whether a particular professional employee is legally entitled to overtime depends on your state Act's coverage and any exemptions for managerial staff; check before assuming.
For staffing and contract-staffing companies, the timesheet signed by the client's manager is also the basis for the principal employer's liability check under the Contract Labour Act: it shows the hours the deployed employee actually worked at the client's premises. Keep signed timesheets for at least three years alongside the muster roll and wage register.
Timesheet data can reveal an individual's working patterns and, with a Location column, their whereabouts. Under the DPDP Act 2023 it is personal data: tell employees how it is used, restrict access to managers and accounts, and do not share full timesheets with clients beyond the rows that concern them.
When the Excel timesheet stops working
One employee, one manager, one client: the Excel timesheet is fine. Thirty employees across six clients with two levels of approval is thirty files a month, emailed back and forth, with version confusion, late submissions and a billing cycle that waits on the slowest person. The timesheet also has no connection to attendance, so a day marked 9 hours on the timesheet can coincide with a leave request approved elsewhere.
Attend Mitra brings attendance and hours together. Punches by face, selfie or GPS create the day's in and out times, shift rules give regular and overtime hours, leave approved in the app appears against the date, and the time data exports to Excel or through the API to your project or billing system. For staffing companies the site-wise man-hour export per client replaces the signed timesheet chase. The timesheet glossary entry defines the terms used here, and the staffing agency attendance and payroll page covers the deployed-staff case.