Timesheets, breaks and paid hours guide

Written by Roster Flow. Published 26 June 2026.

The roster says who should work. The timesheet says who did, and it is the timesheet that pay is worked out from. Many payroll errors start there: a finish time guessed at the end of the week, a break taken off that was never taken, or a quarter of an hour rounded away every day. None of it is hard to get right once you know what to record and how to add it up.

What a timesheet has to show

Under the Fair Work Act and the Fair Work Regulations, employers must keep time and wages records for each employee. The Fair Work Ombudsman’s record-keeping page sets out what they include. For hours of work, the records must show the hours worked by a casual or irregular part-time employee who is paid by the hour, and for overtime, the number of overtime hours worked each day and when they started and finished. The Ombudsman’s best practice advice is to keep records of hours worked for every employee.

The same page sets rules for the records themselves. They must be kept for 7 years, be readily accessible to a Fair Work Inspector, be legible and in English, and must not be false or misleading. They can only be changed to correct an error. In practice, a timesheet that meets those rules records:

• The date, and the employee’s name
• The actual start and finish time, not the rostered one
• Each break, with its start and finish, and whether it is paid or unpaid
• The role or location, if people are paid differently for different work
• Any change made after the fact, with who made it and why
• Who approved the hours, and when

Paid hours: the basic sum

For any shift, paid time is the time from start to finish, less the unpaid breaks:

Paid time = finish time - start time - unpaid breaks

Paid breaks stay in, because they are part of the paid time. Only unpaid breaks come off. A shift from 9:00 am to 5:30 pm with a 30 minute unpaid meal break and a 10 minute paid rest break is 8 hours 30 minutes from start to finish, less 30 minutes, which is 8 hours paid.

Two cases catch people out. A shift that finishes after midnight has a finish time earlier in the day than its start, so add 24 hours to the finish before you subtract. And when daylight saving starts or ends overnight, the Fair Work Ombudsman’s hours of work page says that if the award, agreement or contract says nothing about it, employees working overnight are paid by the clock, based on the hours the clock shows rather than the time actually worked. The break calculator takes unpaid breaks off a shift for you, including one that runs past midnight.

Which breaks are paid and which are not

Awards and registered agreements set the rules for paid and unpaid breaks, and they differ a lot between awards. The table compares three awards that cover many small businesses, as consolidated to 1 July 2026. Check which applies to you with the Fair Work Ombudsman’s Find my award tool.

Each award adds its own conditions. The General Retail Industry Award requires break times and lengths to be included in the roster (clause 16.3), and an employer cannot require a break in the first or last hour of work or more than 5 hours of work without a meal break (clause 16.5). Its note to the table says the breaks of shiftworkers are paid, under clause 26. Pay rates for each award are on the Restaurant, Hospitality and Retail award pages.

Record breaks as they happen

A common timesheet shortcut is to take 30 minutes off every shift of a certain length, whether or not the break was taken. It can be an expensive one, because two of the awards above pay extra when a meal break is not allowed. Under clause 16.5 of the Restaurant Industry Award, an employee whose unpaid meal break is not allowed at its rostered time is paid 50% of their ordinary hourly rate extra from when the break was due until they get it or the shift ends. Under clause 16.6 of the Hospitality Industry (General) Award, on a shift of more than 6 hours, the same 50% extra applies from 6 hours after starting.

A timesheet that deducts a break nobody took shows fewer hours than were worked and hides the extra payment. Record the break when it starts and when it ends, and if it was cut short or not taken, record that instead. The roster vs actual hours calculator shows where the two do not line up.

Minutes to decimal hours

Timesheets are usually kept in hours and minutes, and payroll systems usually want decimal hours. To convert, divide the minutes by 60: 45 minutes is 0.75 of an hour, so 7 hours 45 minutes is 7.75.

Many of these are rounded to two places, so add up the week in hours and minutes first and convert the total once. Converting each shift and adding the rounded figures can leave the total slightly out, as the example below shows. The decimal hours converter has every minute of the hour.

A worked example: one casual’s week

A casual employee covered by the Restaurant Industry Award works five shifts in a week. Every shift of 5 hours or more has a 30 minute unpaid meal break, and the timesheet records the actual start, finish and break times.

In minutes, the week is 465 + 240 + 315 + 335 + 260 = 1,615 minutes, which is 26 hours 55 minutes, or 26.92 decimal hours. Adding the rounded decimals in the table gives 26.91, a hundredth of an hour less, which is why the total is converted once. For pay, the hours also need splitting by day, because the award pays Saturday and Sunday at different rates from weekdays: 17 hours on weekdays, 5 hours 35 minutes on Saturday and 4 hours 20 minutes on Sunday, which add back to 26 hours 55 minutes.

Thursday shows why the real finish time matters. Under clause 24.2 of the Restaurant Industry Award, ordinary hours worked between 10:00 pm and midnight Monday to Friday attract an extra amount per hour or part of an hour. A timesheet that rounded the 10:15 pm finish down to 10:00 would lose that amount as well as the 15 minutes.

Common timesheet mistakes

• Rostered times copied across. The roster is the plan. A timesheet filled in from it records what should have happened, not what did.
• Rounding in one direction. Rounding every start up and every finish down to the quarter hour takes time off every shift, and the records then show less than was worked.
• Breaks deducted automatically. A break taken off a shift where it was not taken understates the hours and can hide an extra payment under the award.
• Early starts left off. If someone is asked to come in early to set up or take a delivery, that time belongs on the timesheet.
• Missing finish times. A finish filled in days later is a guess. Chase it the same day.
• Changes without a reason. Records can only be changed to correct an error, so note what was wrong, who changed it and when.

Approve hours before payroll

Approval is where a manager confirms the hours are right, and it is best done every week, while people still remember the week. Work through it in order.

1. Find the gapsLook for shifts with no finish time, people rostered who have nothing recorded, and hours worked that were never rostered.
2. Check the breaksConfirm that every shift long enough to need a break under the award has one recorded, and that the recorded breaks were really taken.
3. Decide the differencesAccept, correct or ask about each shift that differs from the roster by enough to matter, and write down the reason for any correction.
4. Total and convertTotal each person’s week in hours and minutes, split by the days and times that are paid at different rates, then convert to decimals.
5. Approve and sendApprove the hours and send them to payroll, then check they arrived for the right people and the right week.

The roster to payroll checklist goes through these checks in more detail. At the other end, the Fair Work Ombudsman’s pay slips page says pay slips must be given within 1 working day of pay day and, for an employee paid by the hour, show the ordinary hourly rate, the number of hours worked at that rate and the total paid at that rate, with loadings and penalty rates shown separately. A timesheet that splits the hours correctly makes that easy.

Roster Flow keeps this part of the week in one place: availability and leave from staff phones, the roster published to everybody at once, clock ins that become timesheets, and approved hours sent to Xero, MYOB or a CSV file. See how timesheets work.

A checklist for every timesheet

• Actual start and finish times, not rostered ones
• Every break recorded with its times, marked paid or unpaid
• Unpaid breaks taken off, paid breaks left in
• Shifts past midnight and daylight saving changes worked out correctly
• Break entitlements checked against the award that applies
• The week totalled in hours and minutes, then converted once
• Hours split by the days and times paid at different rates
• Corrections noted with the reason, and the week approved before payroll
• Records kept for 7 years

Sources

• Fair Work Ombudsman: record-keeping
• Fair Work Ombudsman: pay slips
• Fair Work Ombudsman: breaks
• Fair Work Ombudsman: hours of work
• Fair Work Ombudsman: find my award
• Fair Work Commission: Restaurant Industry Award 2020 [MA000119]
• Fair Work Commission: Hospitality Industry (General) Award 2020 [MA000009]
• Fair Work Commission: General Retail Industry Award 2020 [MA000004]

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