Employee timesheets: how to fill them in and keep them error-free

Why employers need a timesheet

The Labour Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan requires employers to record the time each employee actually works (Art. 79). Both worked and non-worked time are recorded, with overtime, night hours, days off, public holidays and business trips tracked separately: these hours must be paid at no less than time and a half, or compensated with time off.

A timesheet does three practical jobs:

• Payroll. Accounting calculates base pay, night and overtime premiums, holiday pay and sick pay from the timesheet. A mistake in the timesheet is a mistake on the payslip.
• Evidence in a dispute. If an employee claims unpaid overtime, or the company dismisses someone for unauthorised absence, the timesheet — together with orders and applications — is the key document for the labour inspectorate and the courts.
• Workload management. The timesheet shows who consistently works extra hours, which shifts are short-staffed and how many hours a department’s work really takes.

No records at all, or a timesheet kept “just for show”, usually comes to light at the worst possible moment: during an inspection, when dismissing a difficult employee, or in an overtime dispute.

What goes into a timesheet: the codes

For each employee and each day of the month, the timesheet shows a code (what kind of day it was) and the number of hours. The company sets its own list of letter codes — what matters is that everyone keeping timesheets uses the same ones. Below is a set that covers most situations.

The “U” code is there so you don’t mark someone as absent without leave straight away. The employee may have fallen ill and bring in a sick note three days later. Until the reason is clear, the day is marked as an absence and later corrected to “S” or “UA”.

If a day is mixed — say, 8 hours of regular work plus 2 hours of overtime — enter two codes and two hour values. On a paper timesheet that’s two rows for the employee; in an electronic one, a single cell with a breakdown.

How to fill in a timesheet: the monthly routine

There are two ways to keep a timesheet: record every attendance and absence, or record only deviations from the schedule (leave, sick days, lateness, overtime). The second is simpler, but it only works if the monthly schedule is approved in advance and contains no “roughly”.

1. Appoint an owner. Issue an order naming who keeps the timesheet in each unit: the manager, the shift supervisor or HR. A store’s timesheet in Almaty should be kept by someone who can see the store, not by an accountant at head office.
2. Enter the monthly schedule. Workdays, days off, shifts and planned leave — before the month starts.
3. Record actual attendance daily. Arrivals, lateness, absences, early departures. Reconstructing a whole month from memory on the 30th is the main source of errors.
4. Tie every absence to a document. Leave to an order, sick days to a certificate of temporary incapacity, a business trip to the travel order. No document, no code.
5. Reconcile before closing. 2–3 days before payroll, each manager checks and signs off their department’s timesheet.
6. Send it to accounting in one format. One file or one export for the whole company, not twelve spreadsheets with different layouts.

2/2 shifts and summarised working time: an example

On a 2/2 pattern with 12-hour shifts, one month has 15 shifts, another 16 or 14. Comparing hours against each month’s standard makes no sense: the employee will look like they’re “working extra” one month and “falling short” the next. That’s why shift patterns use summarised working time: actual hours are compared with the standard over a reference period — a quarter, for example. The period itself and the procedure for switching to summarised working time are set out in the company’s internal documents.

Example: a warehouse with 12-hour shifts

Say a storekeeper works a 2/2 pattern, shifts run 8:00–20:00, and the reference period is a quarter. The standard hours below are illustrative: take the real figures from this year’s official working-time calendar.

Overtime for the quarter is 40 hours. It’s paid at the higher rate at the end of the period, not month by month. If the employee had taken a week of leave in December, the standard for the period would shrink by those days and the calculation would have to be redone.

What else to watch on shifts

• Night hours. If a shift runs from 20:00 to 8:00, part of it falls in night time. Those hours get a separate “N” code because they carry a premium.
• Public holidays. A shift that falls on a public holiday counts as holiday work, even if it’s a regular workday on the 2/2 pattern. Mark it separately.
• Shift swaps. When employees swap shifts, the timesheet must show who actually turned up, not who was on the schedule.
• Limits. Overtime: no more than 2 hours a day, 12 a month and 120 a year. Track these in the timesheet throughout the period, not just at the end.

Common mistakes and disputes

• A timesheet “per the schedule”, not actual hours. Eight hours every workday, even though the cashier stays until closing twice a week. That’s a straight road to an unpaid-overtime dispute in which the employee has messages and witnesses, and the company has a timesheet full of neat eights.
• Overtime with no paperwork. A manager asked someone to “stay a couple of hours”, but there’s no order or written consent. And those hours aren’t in the timesheet either.
• Unauthorised absence without checking. An employee didn’t show up and was immediately marked absent without leave. A week later a sick note arrives, and everything has to be corrected retroactively.
• Leave without an order. A manager let someone go “as a favour”, the timesheet says “AL”, but there are no documents. The numbers don’t add up in accounting, and in an inspection it’s a violation.
• Different codes in different branches. In Almaty a business trip is “BT”, in Shymkent “TRV”, in Astana just a comment in the cell. The consolidated timesheet is assembled by hand — with errors.
• Edits with no audit trail. Several people edit the Excel timesheet, and a month later nobody can say who changed the hours or why. In a dispute, a document like that does little to protect the company.
• Lateness rounded in someone’s favour. Worked 7 hours 20 minutes — the timesheet says 8, or 7. Agree on a rounding rule and write it into the policy.

Almost every disputed situation is resolved by pairing the timesheet with a document. A leave application, consent to overtime, a business-trip order — all of these should exist before a code appears in the timesheet.

How to move off manual Excel

Excel works while you have one office of 15 people on a five-day week. As soon as shifts, branches or 50+ employees appear, the timesheet turns into a monthly fire drill: collect files from managers, bring them into one format, reconcile with leave and sick days, find where a formula broke.

Time tracking software takes away most of the manual work. When choosing one, check:

• How attendance is recorded. Mobile check-in with geolocation works for stores, warehouses and field staff without buying terminals.
• Whether it supports shift patterns. 2/2, 3/3, 24 hours on / 72 off, night shifts, summarised working time.
• Whether absences are linked to documents. An approved leave request should flow into the timesheet on its own.
• Whether edit history is visible. Who changed what, and when.
• Whether there’s an export for accounting. Excel and 1C at a minimum.
• Where the data is stored. For employees’ personal data, storage on servers in Kazakhstan matters.

It’s best to start the switch with a single unit: run records in the old spreadsheet and the system in parallel for a month, compare the totals, and only then retire Excel. Leave applications, orders and overtime consents are easy to move to electronic form with digital signature (EDS) — that’s what e-HR document management is for. We cover where to start digitising HR documents in our article on the electronic employment contract.

Checklist for the coming month