The columns that earn their place
Date, in, out, break, total, and one attribution column for the client, project or activity. That is the whole functional set. The US Department of Labor publishes a sample timekeeping format in its recordkeeping fact sheet with exactly five columns, day, date, in, out and total hours, and is clear that employers are not required to use it. The reason to add an attribution column is that a timesheet with a total and no subject answers how long but never what for, which is the question you will actually have in three months. Everything else people add, task descriptions, approval boxes, notes, belongs to a process wrapped around the timesheet rather than to the timesheet.
What a US employer's records must contain
The Fair Labor Standards Act prescribes content rather than format. Fact Sheet 21 lists what must be kept for each non-exempt worker, including the time and day of the week when the employee's workweek begins, the hours worked each day, and the total hours worked each workweek, alongside the pay basis, regular hourly rate, straight-time and overtime earnings, additions and deductions, and the pay date and period. Employers may use any timekeeping method they choose, a clock, a timekeeper or workers writing their own times, as long as it is complete and accurate. Payroll records are preserved at least three years; time cards and the records wage computations rest on, two. Rules differ elsewhere.
Rounding, totals and where sheets drift
Convert once, at the end. A timesheet that rounds every entry to the nearest quarter hour and then adds the rounded numbers can gain or lose a meaningful amount over a month, which is why the raw in and out times belong on the sheet and the decimal conversion belongs in the total. In the US, 29 CFR 785.48 accepts recording start and stop times to the nearest 5 minutes, tenth or quarter of an hour, on the express condition that the practice does not over time fail to compensate people for what they actually worked. A weekly total line matters more than a daily one, because the workweek is the unit the rule is written around.
Paper, spreadsheet or app
The format is genuinely free, which is why this is a question about failure modes rather than features. Paper survives anything and gets filled in from memory on Friday. A spreadsheet totals correctly and invites the same Friday reconstruction, plus the classic error of typing 7.45 for seven hours forty-five minutes. A running timer removes the recall problem entirely and introduces a new one, the session you forget to stop. Whichever you pick, the two properties that decide whether it works are that recording costs nothing at the moment the work starts, and that you can export the history into a plain file you still own when the tool changes.
In short
- Six columns do the whole job: date, in, out, unpaid break, total, and what the time was for.
- The DOL's own sample timekeeping format has five columns and is explicitly optional.
- US employers must record the workweek start, hours each day and total hours each week; any method is acceptable if complete and accurate. Rules differ elsewhere.
- US retention is at least three years for payroll records and two for time cards and supporting records.
- Keep raw in and out times on the sheet and convert to decimal once, in the total.
Related guides
- Decimal Hours, Explained: Decimal hours express a duration as a single base-10 number, because 7:45 cannot be multiplied by a rate but 7.75 can.
- How to Calculate Work Hours: Subtract the start time from the end time, subtract any unpaid break, convert what is left to decimal hours, and total the days.
- Time Tracking for Freelancers: Freelancers track time for three separate reasons: to bill accurately, to support the records their tax authority expects, and to find out where the unpaid half of the week goes.