What should a payroll-ready timesheet include?
A payroll-ready timesheet is one your bookkeeper or payroll software can take as-is — no chasing, no interpreting handwriting, no 'what was this 45 minutes?' It contains the worked facts, the extras, and the approval, all in one record.
The non-negotiables
- Worker name and the shift they worked against
- Actual start and finish times (from clock-in/out, not memory)
- Breaks — paid and unpaid, with durations
- Total hours, calculated consistently
- Date and location of the work
The extras that cause payroll questions
Most payroll back-and-forth is about the extras, not the hours. Capture them with the shift, not in a separate email thread:
- Kilometre claims with the trip and date
- Expenses with a photo of the receipt
- Allowances (sleepovers, on-call, higher duties) tagged to the shift
- Shift notes that explain anything unusual
Approval and audit trail
A timesheet isn't payroll-ready until someone accountable has approved it. The record should show who approved it and when, and any edits should be visible — if a finish time was corrected, the original and the correction should both exist. That audit trail is what makes the export defensible months later.
From timesheet to payroll
When every shift carries its own clean record, the end of the pay period stops being an investigation. You review exceptions, approve the rest in bulk, and export a payroll-ready summary — hours, allowances and claims — for your payroll process. Roster Hub produces exactly that record from real clock-ins, so the export is a download, not a project.
Put it into practice: Roster Hub does all of the above in one workspace — see the features or start free.