Getting timesheets into payroll: what your export needs

What payroll needs from a timesheet

Your payroll software works out pay from hours, rates and rules. A timesheet's job is to supply the hours, cleanly enough that nobody has to guess. For each person, in each pay period, that means:

• Who and when. The person, matched to their payroll record, and each date worked.
• Ordinary hours and overtime. Your agreements decide what counts as overtime and its rate. Employment New Zealand notes that the hours worked each day can be split into usual hours and overtime hours.
• Public holiday hours. Working any part of a public holiday means at least time and a half, and if the day would otherwise have been a working day, an alternative holiday as well (Holidays Act 2003, sections 50 and 56). Payroll needs the hours and an answer to whether it was an otherwise working day.
• Breaks. Which time was an unpaid meal break and which a paid rest break.
• Leave taken. Annual, sick, bereavement and the rest, with dates.
• Allowances. Anything paid per shift or per day under the agreement, such as a meal or tool allowance.

The law sets the floor for the record. Section 130 of the Employment Relations Act 2000 requires the hours worked each day in a pay period and the pay for those hours, and the wages paid each pay period with how they were calculated. Section 81 of the Holidays Act adds the hours worked on each public holiday and the payment for it.

The otherwise working day question is the one most often left to payroll to guess. Where it is not clear, section 12 of the Holidays Act asks you and the employee to look at the agreement, their work pattern, the roster and what you both reasonably expected, and to try to agree. If they would have worked any time at all that day, it counts.

The columns that matter

An export that payroll can trust has one row per entry, with each fact in its own column:

Most payroll software imports a CSV, but each wants its own column names, order and formats. Expect to map your columns to its import once, save that mapping, and keep the export's layout the same from then on. A column that moves breaks the import, or worse, imports the wrong number into the right place.

Decimal hours, breaks and rounding

Payroll multiplies hours by a rate, so it wants decimals, not hours and minutes. Divide the minutes by 60: 7 hours 45 minutes is 7.75 hours, 7 hours 30 minutes is 7.5, and 7 hours 20 minutes is about 7.33. The classic mistake is typing 7:45 as 7.45, which payroll reads as 7 hours 27 minutes, 18 minutes short. Calculate.co.nz has an hours to decimal calculator for the conversion and a timesheet calculator that adds up a week with breaks and overtime.

Rounding a day's total to two decimal places moves it by at most 0.005 of an hour, 18 seconds, which is harmless. Rounding start and finish times is different. Rounding that only ever goes against staff is unpaid work, as our article on whether an employer can round hours explains, so record times to the minute and convert only the total.

Breaks need the same care. Paid rest breaks are part of the hours worked, so they stay in; only unpaid meal breaks come off. If someone worked through a meal break, those minutes were work, and the timesheet should say so. Our article on rest and meal breaks sets out the minimums.

A cut-off and a check before each pay run

Payroll goes wrong at the last minute when timesheets arrive late, change after they are sent, or never arrive. A short routine fixes most of it:

1. Set a cut-off. For example, timesheets for the week are in by 10am Monday, and everyone knows it.
2. Check who has not submitted. Chase them before the run, not after.
3. Look for changes after submission. Ask about anything edited after it was sent, and keep both versions.
4. Compare with the roster. Shifts rostered but not logged, and hours logged but not rostered, are where the errors hide.
5. Mark public holidays and leave. Note any public holiday in the period, and whether it was an otherwise working day for each person who worked.

A late or wrong timesheet does not delay pay. Employment New Zealand says that if an employee forgets a timesheet, or it is wrong, they must still be paid, so pay what you can confirm, talk it through, and correct the difference in the next pay. If an agreement or policy requires timesheets, that requirement cannot change without agreement.

Team timesheets from jobtracker.co.nz shows who has not logged anything this week, marks every entry changed after a week was sent, and gives you a CSV for any period with these columns: Person, Email, Date, Start, Finish, Break (min), Hours (as a decimal, two places), Project, Task, Whose project, Note (only from people who share notes), Week sent, Changed after sending and Kept copy. It is ready for your payroll in the sense that it holds the dates, hours, breaks and projects payroll needs; you may still need to map or rearrange columns for your payroll software's import. It has no approval step, does not send hours to payroll directly, does not separate overtime or public holiday rates, and does not calculate pay.

Keeping the record after the export

Exporting the hours does not end the duty to keep them. An employee can ask for any part of their wages and time record from the preceding six years, holiday and leave entries are kept for at least six years, and Employment New Zealand advises keeping both for six years, even after someone leaves. Its record-keeping page adds that even with payroll software, you still need to check that it records changes to hours and pay accurately.

In practice, keep three things for each pay run: the timesheet as it stood at the cut-off, the export file you imported, and a note of any correction made afterwards with the pay adjustment that followed. Then if a question comes up in three years, you can show what was worked, what was paid and why they differ. Our article on wage and time records covers the full list, and the penalties for gaps.

From 6 August 2028, the Employment Leave Act 2026 rewrites section 130 so each entry is kept for at least six years after it is made, itemises pay by category in the record, and requires a pay statement for every pay period. Hours that arrive split cleanly by kind will make that much easier. Staff who keep their own hours, as our guide to keeping your own timesheet suggests, will compare them with what you paid, so a record you can both check is worth the effort.

Hours that arrive ready for your payroll