A timesheet looks simple until you try to fill one in. You worked from nine to half past five, took half an hour for lunch, and did that five days in a row, but what is the weekly total, and how much of it counts as overtime? Guessing costs money in both directions: undercounting short-changes you, and overcounting creates an awkward correction later. This calculator turns a start time, an end time, a break, and your days per week into daily hours, a weekly total, overtime hours, and weekly pay, with no spreadsheet needed.
Enter your times in 24-hour form, such as 09:00 and 17:30, your unpaid break in minutes, how many days a week follow the same pattern, your hourly rate, and your overtime multiplier. The tool subtracts the break first, because unpaid breaks are not working time, then multiplies the daily figure by your days. Overtime is counted above 40 hours a week, which is the common threshold in many contracts, and paid at your multiplier, usually time and a half, or 1.5 times your normal rate.
Here is a worked example. You work 09:00 to 17:30 with a 30-minute break, five days a week, at 20 per hour with a 1.5 overtime multiplier. The span from nine to half past five is 8.5 hours, minus half an hour for the break, which is 8 hours a day. Five days gives 40 hours a week, exactly at the threshold, so overtime is zero and weekly pay is 800. Change the pattern to six days and the week becomes 48 hours, with 8 overtime hours paid at 30 per hour, giving 800 for the first 40 hours plus 240, or 1040 in total.
Breaks are where most timesheet errors hide. A paid break counts as working time, while an unpaid break does not, so enter only the unpaid minutes here. If your break is paid, enter zero. Also watch the small daily habits: starting ten minutes late and leaving ten minutes early costs over an hour and a half a week, which is easy to miss on a daily sheet but obvious in a weekly total. Recording honestly, even when the number is smaller than you hoped, protects you far better than a rounded-up guess that payroll later questions.
Night shifts need one extra rule, and this tool includes it. If your end time is earlier than your start time, for example starting at 22:00 and ending at 06:00, the tool reads the end as the next day, so the shift correctly counts as 8 hours before the break. Without that rule, a night shift would calculate as a negative number and confuse everything. If your shift pattern varies by day, run the tool once per pattern and add the daily totals yourself, since one form can only describe one repeating day.
Overtime rules are not universal, and this tool is honest about that limit. Some contracts count overtime per day, not per week, so a single 10-hour day may earn overtime even in a 40-hour week. Some countries set different weekly thresholds, and some pay double time after a higher limit. The 40-hour weekly threshold and single multiplier here are a common starting model, not a legal rule for your situation. Check your contract and local law before disputing pay, and use this result as a clear, checkable estimate to discuss with payroll.
A good timesheet habit takes less than a minute a day. Write down start, end, and break on the day itself, not on Friday from memory, because memory rounds in your favour and then gets challenged. At the end of the week, run this calculator and compare its total with your payslip. If they match, you have peace of mind; if they differ, you have exact numbers to ask about. That small routine turns timesheets from a chore into proof of the hours you actually worked.