Summarise with AI
What a timesheet is
A timesheet records the hours an employee actually worked — start and finish times, unpaid breaks, overtime — and it is what pay should be calculated from. The roster says what was planned; the timesheet says what happened.
In Australia that distinction carries legal weight. Employers must keep records of hours worked and the pay for them, and if a shortfall is ever alleged, the timesheet is the document that answers it. Where no adequate record exists, the practical burden of disproving the employee's account falls on the employer.
What it must record
A defensible timesheet
- Employee name and the date
- Actual start and finish times — not just a daily total
- Unpaid breaks taken, and their length
- Total hours, with overtime identified
- Who approved it, and when
Recording the times rather than a lump total is the part most often skipped, and it is the part that matters: penalty rates depend on when the hours fell. "8 hours" tells you nothing about whether three of them attracted a Sunday rate.
How long to keep them
Seven years — including for people who have left
Employee records must be kept for seven years, legible, in English, and not altered except to correct an error. The obligation survives the employment, so the records you are most likely to need on the worst day belong to someone who left three years ago.
Timesheet, roster and payslip
Three different documents that get conflated:
- Roster — the plan. Who is scheduled, when. See rostering.
- Timesheet — the record of hours actually worked.
- Payslip — what was paid for those hours, issued to the employee. See payslip.
Pay is calculated from the middle one. Paying to the roster instead of the timesheet is a standard cause of underpayment, because it silently ignores every shift that ran over.
Why paper timesheets fail
Written after the fact
Hours recalled at the end of the week are an estimate. A contemporaneous record is worth far more.
Daily totals only
Without start and finish times you cannot evidence which hours attracted penalties.
No approval trail
If nobody signed it, nothing shows the hours were accepted as correct at the time.
Lost with the manager
Seven years is longer than most managers stay. Records in a drawer or a personal drive do not survive.
Key takeaways
- A timesheet records hours actually worked; the roster is only the plan.
- Record start and finish times and breaks, not just a daily total — penalties depend on when hours fell.
- Keep employee records for seven years, including after someone leaves.
- Digital records are lawful and easier to defend, because they carry timestamps and an approval trail.
- Calculate pay from the timesheet, not the roster.
Work out hours and cost with the free timesheet calculator, or see how time and attendance captures the record automatically.
A timesheet is only evidence if it was recorded when the work happened. RosterElf captures clock-ins against the roster, so the record exists before anyone needs it.
Try RosterElf free