The timesheet template, filled in for one week
This is the Timesheet sheet of the file with a week in it: one developer, two projects, 14 rows. It is a timesheet template with tasks and a work description on every row: Task Type says what kind of work it was, and Detail says what was done. You type the white columns. The shaded ones, Person, Duration Hrs and Day Total, are formulas and fill themselves in.
| Person | Date | Time From | To | Duration Hrs | Day Total | Project | Task Type | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alex Chen | 12 Oct 2026 | 09:00 | 10:00 | 1.00 | Booking App | Meetings | Sprint planning, sprint 18 | |
| Alex Chen | 12 Oct 2026 | 10:00 | 12:30 | 2.50 | Booking App | Development | BKG-104 calendar sync: recurring events | |
| Alex Chen | 12 Oct 2026 | 13:15 | 17:15 | 4.00 | 7.50 | Booking App | Development | BKG-104 calendar sync: time zones |
| Alex Chen | 13 Oct 2026 | 09:00 | 12:15 | 3.25 | Booking App | Development | BKG-104 calendar sync: tests | |
| Alex Chen | 13 Oct 2026 | 13:00 | 14:30 | 1.50 | Booking App | Code Review | PR #212 reminder emails | |
| Alex Chen | 13 Oct 2026 | 14:30 | 17:30 | 3.00 | 7.75 | Data Pipeline | Debugging | DAT-57 nightly import fails on empty file |
| Alex Chen | 14 Oct 2026 | 09:15 | 12:00 | 2.75 | Data Pipeline | Debugging | DAT-57 fix and backfill | |
| Alex Chen | 14 Oct 2026 | 12:45 | 18:15 | 5.50 | 8.25 | Booking App | Development | BKG-109 waiting list |
| Alex Chen | 15 Oct 2026 | 09:00 | 11:30 | 2.50 | Booking App | Development | BKG-109 waiting list: notifications | |
| Alex Chen | 15 Oct 2026 | 11:30 | 12:30 | 1.00 | Booking App | Testing | BKG-104 regression pass | |
| Alex Chen | 15 Oct 2026 | 13:30 | 16:00 | 2.50 | 6.00 | Booking App | Documentation | BKG-104 API notes for partners |
| Alex Chen | 16 Oct 2026 | 09:00 | 12:00 | 3.00 | Booking App | Development | BKG-109 review fixes | |
| Alex Chen | 16 Oct 2026 | 13:00 | 14:00 | 1.00 | Booking App | Meetings | Sprint review and retrospective | |
| Alex Chen | 16 Oct 2026 | 14:00 | 15:30 | 1.50 | 5.50 | Booking App | Code Review | PR #215 cancellation rules |
Each row is one stretch of work with a start and an end. Duration Hrs is the time between them as a decimal, so 0.25 is fifteen minutes and 7.50 is seven and a half hours. Day Total adds up a date and shows on that date’s last row. The five day totals here come to 35.00 hours for the week.
Which fields a developer timesheet needs
A software development timesheet has to answer six questions about every stretch of work: who did it, on which day, from when to when, for which project, what kind of work it was, and what exactly was done. The template has a column for each, plus two totals it works out for you.
| Field | What goes in it | Why it is there |
|---|---|---|
| Person | Nothing. It appears on every row that has a date, and reads “template” until you replace that word with your name, once. | A sheet that leaves your hands should say whose it is on every row, so that rows from several people can be put together later. |
| Date | The day the work was done. | It is what Day Total groups by, and what a week or a month is cut from. |
| Time From, To | When the stretch started and ended, as times: 09:15, 12:30. | A start and an end are harder to round than a number of hours, and they show overlaps and gaps. |
| Duration Hrs | Nothing. It is To minus Time From, in decimal hours. | Decimal hours add up and multiply without converting minutes. |
| Day Total | Nothing. It appears on the last row of each date. | It is the first number a reviewer reads. Keep a day’s rows together so it lands in the right place. |
| Project | What the work was for. | It answers the question a timesheet is usually kept for: where did the time go? |
| Task Type | The kind of work: Development, Code Review, Debugging, Testing, Documentation or Meetings. | It shows the mix. Twenty hours on a project read differently when twelve of them were debugging. |
| Detail | A few words on what was done, starting with the ticket or pull request number. | It is the only field that says what actually happened, and what makes a row checkable. |
Use the same few task types across the team, or the mix cannot be compared. Where the line between one task type and the next falls is in the developer guide.
Columns to leave out
Every column is filled in a dozen times a week or more, so add one only when somebody will read it.
- A ticket column. The number fits at the start of Detail, and that is one column fewer to type.
- A status or percent-done column. That belongs on the board where the work is planned. A timesheet records hours, not progress.
- Hours without a start and an end. It is quicker to fill in and much easier to fill in wrong: every day turns into a round eight.
Daily or weekly timesheet: which to keep
The two words describe different things: how the sheet is laid out, and how often it is filled in.
Daily timesheet
A log of the day
- One row per stretch of work, with a start and an end
- Filled in as the day goes, or at the end of it
- Shows what was done, and when
- Longer: ten to twenty rows a week
Weekly timesheet
A grid of the week
- Projects down the side, Monday to Friday across the top
- One number of hours in each cell
- Often filled in on Friday, from memory
- Compact: the whole week on one screen
For development work, keep the daily log and hand it in weekly. A grid holds one number per project per day. It has no room for the ticket or the kind of work, and those are the first two things anyone reading a developer’s hours asks about. And by Friday afternoon, Tuesday is a guess pieced together from commits and the calendar.
If you came for a weekly timesheet template in Excel, this file covers the week another way: it is a daily log, and its week is the day totals added together. A weekly grid can be made from a log at any time, with a pivot table over the rows you have filled in. Going the other way, from a grid back to what was actually done, is not possible.
Manual or automatic time tracking
There are three ways for hours to reach a timesheet, and the word “automatic” gets used for two of them.
| Method | How the hours get in | What to know |
|---|---|---|
| Manual entry | You type the times into a spreadsheet, as you go or afterwards. | Free, with nothing to install. The times are the ones you remember, and somebody has to collect the sheets. |
| A start/stop timer | You pick the project and the kind of work and press Start. The clock measures, and Stop writes the row. | The times are measured, and the rows collect in one place. You still have to press the buttons. |
| Background capture | Software records the apps, windows or screens in use and builds the hours from that. | No buttons to press. It also records far more than hours, which many teams are not comfortable with. |
The template on this page is the first way. Time Tracker Software HQ is the second: a timer that records the project, the task type, your note and when you pressed Start and Stop. It is not the third, and it records nothing about your screen.
A spreadsheet stops being enough at one of three points. Someone spends Monday morning collecting sheets. Two people’s sheets have to be added together. Or the hours are questioned, and nobody can say whether 09:00 was measured or remembered.
How managers review timesheets
A review is not a signature at the bottom of a page. It is ten minutes of reading that catches mistakes while the person still remembers the week, and it is how a manager finds out where the week went. Do it once a week, on the same day, for the week just finished. Six checks cover it:
- Every working day has rows. A day with none is leave, a holiday, or a day nobody wrote down. Ask which.
- The day totals look like days. A 14.00 is usually a mistyped To. A 2.00 is usually missing rows.
- The times do not overlap. A Time From earlier than the To above it means one of the two rows is wrong.
- Long rows are real. Five hours without a break happens. It is also what an end time filled in from memory looks like.
- Project and Detail agree. A ticket from one project logged on another moves hours into the wrong total.
- Detail says what was done. “Dev work” cannot be checked. A ticket number and four words can.
The example week, read by a reviewer
- Wednesday, 12:45 to 18:15. Five and a half hours in one row is worth one question: a long run at the waiting list, or an end time typed in the next morning?
- Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning went to Data Pipeline. That is 5.75 hours of debugging nobody planned, and it is the most useful thing on the sheet: it explains why the Booking App got less of the week than expected.
- Thursday is 6.00 and Friday is 5.50. Short days are not errors. Check them against leave and the calendar, and do not ask for them to be topped up.
Send questions back to the person who did the work and let them make the change. They know what happened. The reviewer only knows what looks odd.
The same review in Time Tracker Software HQ
With a timer the times are measured, so there are no mistyped ones to find. What is left to look for is the opposite slip, a timer nobody stopped, which shows up as one very long entry.
The review itself is one screen. A team lead or an admin opens Reports, sets Date From and Date To to the week, picks the person in the User filter and presses Go. The entries are listed with the week’s total underneath, and a small icon beside each duration shows whether it was tracked on a computer or a phone. Who sees whose entries is set by roles and teams.
There is no approve or lock button. Reviewing is reading. A correction is an edit by someone whose role allows it, and each edit is written to the activity log with the old and the new values.
How to export a timesheet
From the spreadsheet
- To hand it in, send the Excel file itself, so the formulas still work for the person who checks it.
- For a fixed copy, save it as a PDF. The Timesheet sheet is set up to print in landscape, one page wide, with the header row repeated on every page.
- For another system, save the Timesheet sheet as a CSV. A CSV keeps the values and drops the formulas and the second sheet.
From Time Tracker Software HQ
Reports has an Export to Excel button. Choose a date range, add any filters, and it downloads what the filters select: one row per entry, newest first, in a file named TimeSheet with the date and time. The clicks are in the complete guide.
The export holds the same record as the template, arranged a little differently:
| In the template | In the export | The difference |
|---|---|---|
| Person | User | The name on the account. |
| Date, Time From | Start | The date and the time in one cell. |
| To | End | Also the date and the time. |
| Duration Hrs | Duration | Hours, minutes and seconds, such as 3:15:00. Multiply the cell by 24 and format it as a number for decimal hours. |
| Day Total | Total Working Hours | One row at the bottom, for the whole date range. |
| Project | Project | The same. |
| Task Type | Task Type | The same. |
| Detail | Description | The same. |
To add the export up by person or by project, see Take it into Excel in the project guide.
Download the software development timesheet template
The file is free to use and to change, for yourself or for your team. Inside it:
- A Timesheet sheet with the nine columns above and formulas ready for 500 rows.
- Three example rows that show the formats. Type over them.
- A How to use sheet that explains each column and lists the three formulas.
- Print settings for landscape pages with the header on each.
Download the timesheet template (Excel)
The timesheet template is an Excel file (.xlsx). To use it in Google Sheets, upload it to Google Drive and open it there. It opens in LibreOffice Calc as well.
Frequently asked questions
A record of the hours a developer worked, one row per stretch of work, with the date, the start and end time, the project, the type of work and a short note. Teams use it to see where the time on a project went, to plan the next one, and to report hours to a client or to finance.
Six things on every row: who did the work, the date, the start and end time, the project, the type of work, and a few words on what was done. A ticket or pull request number at the start of the note makes each row checkable. Totals should be calculated, not typed.
Yes. It is a free Excel file with no sign-up and no email address needed. You can change it and share it inside your team.
Yes. Upload the file to Google Drive and open it with Google Sheets. The formulas are ordinary IF and SUMIF formulas, one per row, so they also work in LibreOffice Calc.
Fill it in daily and hand it in weekly. Rows written on the day are accurate, while a week rebuilt on Friday is mostly a guess. A weekly hand-in keeps the review to one sitting.
Subtract the start time from the end time and multiply by 24, for example =24*(D2-C2) with the start in C2 and the end in D2, then format the cell as a number. The result is in decimal hours, so 7.5 means seven and a half hours. The template does this in its Duration Hrs column.
The template is made for one person per file, because the Person column shows the same name on every row. Give each developer a copy. Seeing several people together means pasting the sheets into one, or using a time tracker that collects the entries for you.
No. There is no submit, approve or lock step. A team lead or an admin reads the entries in Reports, and a correction is an edit by someone whose role allows it. Every edit is written to the activity log with the old and the new values.
No. There is no import. Entries are created by the timer, so the template and the app are two separate ways of keeping the same record. Reports exports to Excel whenever you need the hours in a spreadsheet.