This is a timesheet. Change any number and watch the four figures on the right. They are the reason a practice asks you to fill one in, and none of them can be worked out from a payslip.
| Day | Hours worked |
|---|---|
Utilisation here is chargeable hours as a share of the hours actually recorded, not of contracted hours. Both definitions are in use and they give different answers, so check which one your practice means.
Three questions people ask next. Pick one.
UK law prescribes no format at all, which surprises people. What it requires is that the records are adequate. The second group below is not a legal matter: it is what turns a payroll record into something that can cost and invoice a job.
The period is mostly a trade between accuracy and effort. The shorter it is, the better the data and the more often somebody has to chase it.
All three are lawful. They differ in what they cost you, and the cost is mostly not in the entering. The decisive row is the last one: six year retention plus the single document duty is what makes a drawer of paper expensive, usually at the worst moment.
A real week for a part qualified architect. Pick a numbered point to see why that column is there.
Four points on this screen.
No. No UK law requires an employer to use a timesheet, and none prescribes a format for working time records. What the law requires is records. A timesheet is one convenient way to produce them.
Two duties do most of the work, and they are easy to mix up because they have different retention periods. Open each for the wording.
Regulation 9 of the Working Time Regulations 1998 requires an employer to keep "records which are adequate to show whether the employer has complied with" the working time limits, and to "retain such records for two years from the date on which they were made". The limits are the 48 hour average week, the young worker limits and the night work rules.
Regulation 9 was amended by S.I. 2023/1426. The records "may be created, maintained and kept in such manner and format as the employer reasonably thinks fit", and an employer "need not record each worker's daily working hours" in order to comply "if the employer is able to demonstrate compliance without doing so".
That is a genuine relaxation and it is the paragraph most commentary still gets wrong. It does not remove the duty to keep records. It removes any argument that the record must take a particular shape.
Regulation 59 of the National Minimum Wage Regulations 2015 requires "records sufficient to establish that the employer is remunerating the worker at a rate at least equal to the national minimum wage". Those must be kept for six years, raised from three on 1 April 2021, running from the day the pay reference period following the one they relate to ends.
There is one requirement as to form, and it is the one that quietly defeats a pile of paper. The records must be "in a form which enables the information kept about a worker in respect of a pay reference period to be produced in a single document". If HMRC asks: one worker, one pay period, one document.
A new regulation 16B was inserted into the Working Time Regulations by the Employment Rights Act 2025. It requires records adequate to show compliance with the annual leave entitlements, retained for six years, again in whatever manner and format the employer reasonably thinks fit.
The practical upshot. Two years for working time, six for pay and for annual leave. Most employers keep everything for six years rather than run two clocks. Nothing above says you need a timesheet. It says you need to be able to produce the records, quickly, for any worker and any pay period you are asked about.
This page is a general guide and is not legal advice. The wording quoted was taken from the current consolidated text on legislation.gov.uk on 23 October 2026. Sector specific rules apply in some industries, notably road transport. Take advice on your own circumstances.
Timesheet and time sheet are the same word, and both spellings are correct. The other three are genuinely different things.
A time card can evidence working time. It cannot cost a project.
Three roles. The worker records, because only they know what they did. An approver checks, usually a line manager or project lead. The employer keeps the record, and carries the legal duty to do so.
Salaried staff are commonly asked to complete them, and it catches people out. A salary settles what someone is paid. It says nothing about what their time costs a particular job, so the requirement usually has nothing to do with payroll at all.
Your entries are reviewed by an approver, then used in two places at once. Payroll uses them to calculate or evidence your pay. Finance uses them to work out what each job cost and what can be invoiced. That is why you are asked for a project code and not just a total.
If an approver changes an entry you are entitled to ask why, and a well run system records who changed what. Raise it before the period closes: once the hours have been invoiced, correcting them stops being internal.
Most timesheets record decimal hours, so 7 hours 30 minutes is written 7.50 and not 7.30. To convert, divide the minutes by 60.
So 10 minutes is 0.17 of an hour, since 10 divided by 60 is 0.1666. On a system that rounds to the nearest tenth of an hour it becomes 0.2, and on one that rounds to the nearest quarter hour it becomes 0.25. All three can be correct. Which applies depends on the rounding rule your employer has written down, and it must be written down: a six minute grid cannot express a quarter of an hour, so 15 minutes is either 0.2 or 0.3 on it, never 0.25.
Use the hours worked calculator, or see the full minutes to decimal table.
You have just filled in one week for one person. Quantim does it for everybody, against the job, and carries the hours through to cost and fee without anyone rekeying them.
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