time sheet template creation

Time sheet template creation

Enter label

The first step to actually building the time sheet is to enter the appropriate labels. That includes the following headings:

•      All applicable employee information, such as name, social security number, employee identification number, department, and manager. Include only data that's truly required.
• ·    A time period. This could be the first day of the work week, the start and end date of a bimonthly time period, or even the first day of a fiscal month.
•      Generating dates is necessary. Including the names of the workdays might seem unnecessary, but your users will probably appreciate your attention to helpful details.
•      Time in and out, breaks, sick, vacation, overtime, and so on.
• ·    Subtotals and grand totals, as required.
• ·    Employee and approving manager signature lines, if required.

Enter the appropriate labels to identify your time sheet data.

3: Automate the dates

You can require users to enter the dates manually, but that leads to mistakes, even with the best trained users. If you know the exact time period, the simplest solution is to automate the required dates as follows:

1.   Have users enter the first date of the time period in cell B2.

2.   In the first cell in the Date column, A7, refer to the input date using the formula

=IF(B2<>"",B2,"")

Let the sheet generate dates based on the first date of each time period.

If the time period cell (B2) is blank, this formula returns a zero-length string. If there's a value, the formula returns it. The formula will return a date serial value until we format it (which we'll do later).

1.   In cell A8, enter the formula

 =IF(A7<>"",A7+1,"")

This formula adds 1 to the value (date) in cell A7.

1.  Copy the formula in cell A8 as needed. For instance, if you're tracking time by the week, copy the formula in cell A8 to cells A9:A13 for a total of seven rows (A7:A13). For a biweekly timesheet, you'd copy the formula to cell A20, and so on.

The next step is to enter a formula in column B that returns the name of the weekday for the dates in column A. To do so, enter the simple formula =A8 in cell B7 and copy it to cells B8:B13. (Later, we'll format B7:B13 to display the day of the week by name rather than the actual dates shown in column A.) If there's no date in cell B7, the sheet will appear empty.

4: Format Date and Day of Week columns

Right now, the General format displays serial values in the Date and Day of Week columns. First, let's format the dates in column A, as follows:

1.   Select A7:A13.

2.   Right-click the selection and choose Format Cells from the context menu.

3.   On the Numbers tab, select Date from the Category list, choose the appropriate format, such as d/m/yy, from the Type list, and click OK.

Next, format the dates in column B, as follows:

1.   Select B7:B13.

2.   Right-click the selection and choose Format Cells.

3.   On the Number tab, choose Custom from the Category list.

4.   Enter dddd in the Type field, as shown in Figure , and click OK.

The dddd format displays a date value as its day of the week.The sheet generates dates for each time period if you provide a beginning date (cell B7).

5: Enter a formula that calculates the first eight hours of each day

=IF(((D7-C7)+(F7-E7))*24>8,8,((D7-C7)+(F7-E7))*24)

If the number of hours worked in one day is greater than eight, the formula returns 8. If the number or work hours is equal to or less than 8, the formula returns that amount. For now, the formula returns 0 because there are no time values to evaluate.This formula returns the first eight hours of each work day.

6: Enter a formula that calculates overtime for each day

=IF(((D7-C7)+(F7-E7))*24>8,((D7-C7)+(F7-E7))*24-8,0)

When the number of work hours is greater than 8, this formula returns the overage.

7: Format In and Out columns

When calculating time, work with valid time values to avoid troublesome errors.

Now, you might think that a different set of formulas could handle general numbers. What would happen if you delete the *24 components in both formulas? Those formulas work up to a point, but neither handles all timelines. For instance, neither formula can handle an In value that's greater than its companion Out value (such as row 10 in Figure H).

To format the In and Out values appropriately, do the following:

1.   Select C7:F13.

2.   Right-click the selection and choose Format Cells.

3.   On the Number tab, choose Time from the Category list.

4.   Select the 00:00 format and click OK.

8: Provide In and Out default values

Enter default time values to avoid user input errors.

The default values shown here are entered using a 24-hour clock. 13:00 is 1:00 PM (check the Formula bar) and 17:00 is 5:00 PM. You can enter 1:00 and 5:00, but you must train your users to also enter the PM. Excel will assume that 1:00 is 1:00 AM and 5:00 is 5:00 AM if you don't specify that it's PM. Either way, entering time isn't intuitive for most users, so providing the default values is helpful.

In this example sheet, Saturday and Sunday aren't regular workdays, so it stores 0 values. Of course, you can customize the days normally worked to suit each employee.

9: Enter defaults for sick and vacation time

1.   Select I7:J13.

2.   Right-click the selection and choose Format Cells.

3.   On the Number tab, choose Number from the Category list and click OK.

By default, the Number format assumes two decimal places, but you might want to set that to 0. The two decimal places will allow employees to specify partial hours.

Enter default values for sick and vacation time.

10: Enter a formula that calculates daily totals

Figure K

=SUM(G7:J7)