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Free Timesheet Template

A freelancer’s timesheet is not a punch card. It is the record that turns hours into money: one row per block of work — date, client, project, what you did, how long it took — with totals at the bottom that become the invoice. This free timesheet template covers the weekly and biweekly layouts freelancers actually use, the columns every timesheet needs, and the overtime math, explained simply.

Most timesheet templates are built for employees clocking in at a job. This one is built for the person who bills by the hour: the client and the project come first, because those are what the invoice is organized by. Every section below ends at the same place — the invoice. The timesheet is the input; the PDF is the output. Billia does not make a timesheet app, and this page does not pretend otherwise: it is the template itself, laid out so you can copy it into a spreadsheet in two minutes, and the free invoice generator is where the hours become the invoice.

The freelancer’s timesheet (client/project, not punch-clock)

An employee timesheet answers one question: when were you on the clock? A freelancer timesheet answers a different one: who pays for this hour? That changes the columns. Start and end times look precise, but they make every row a small calculation, and nobody invoices from clock times. What the invoice needs is the duration, the client, and the project — so those are the columns.

Six columns are enough: date, client, project, description, hours, and rate. Add two more and the sheet is complete: a billable flag (yes or no) and the amount, which is hours times rate on every billable row. One row is one block of work: when it happened, who it was for, which project, what you did, and how long it took. Add the rate, and every row knows what it earned.

The description is where most timesheets fail. “Website work, 4 hours” is not a record a client can approve — it is a dispute waiting to happen. Write the description the way the client will read it on the invoice: “Homepage layout — hero, services, testimonials” instead of “design.” Specific enough that the client recognizes the work when they see the invoice; short enough that logging it takes ten seconds.

Log daily, not on Friday. By Friday, Tuesday’s two hours have blurred into one, and the hours you cannot remember are hours you cannot bill. A notes app entry at the end of each work block beats a perfect spreadsheet you fill in once a week.

Weekly vs biweekly

A weekly timesheet covers seven days, one sheet per week, submitted or invoiced on Friday. A biweekly timesheet covers fourteen days — but treat it as two weekly blocks on one sheet, not one long list. Keeping the weeks separate matters: if the client questions a line in week two, the dispute never holds up week one’s payment.

Weekly is the freelancer default, and it is the one to start with. Invoices go out faster, disputes surface while the work is still fresh in everyone’s memory, and a weekly rhythm makes late payment visible in days instead of months. Biweekly fits clients who pay on a two-week cycle — use it when the client’s payroll runs that way, not because the sheet looks tidier.

Do not confuse the timesheet period with the pay period. A biweekly timesheet is a record of two weeks of work; the invoice terms — net 7, net 14, due on receipt — are a separate decision, set on the invoice itself. The timesheet records the hours; the invoice sets the deadline.

What goes on every timesheet

Every timesheet, weekly or biweekly, needs the same parts. The header names the people and the period: your name or business, the client, the week (or two weeks) the sheet covers, and the rate or rates in play. The body is the log — one row per block of work. The footer is the totals: total hours, billable hours, and the amount the invoice will carry. And if the client requires sign-off, a signature line at the bottom turns the sheet into an approved record instead of your word against theirs.

Column	What goes in it
Date	The calendar day the work happened
Client	Who is being billed for this row
Project	Which engagement the work belongs to
Description	What you did, specific enough for the client to recognize
Hours	Duration as a decimal — 1.5, never 1:30
Rate	Your hourly rate for this client or project
Billable	Yes or no — the client pays for this row or not
Amount	Hours × rate on billable rows; $0 on the rest

Write hours as decimals, always. 1.5 means an hour and a half; 0.25 is a quarter hour. Never write 1:30 — to a spreadsheet, 1:30 is a time of day, a fraction of 24 hours, and every sum after it comes out wrong. Decimals add up; clock times do not.

Keep the non-billable rows. A standup call, a proposal, an hour of bookkeeping — they feel like confessions, but they explain why a 40-hour week produced 25 billable hours. If you only write the billable rows, next quarter you will set a rate from a week that never happened. The non-billable rows bill $0 and still count in the total hours, so the sheet tells the truth about both numbers.

Here is what a filled-in week looks like:

Date	Client	Project	Description	Hours	Rate	Billable	Amount
Mon Nov 2	Acme Co	Website redesign	Homepage layout — hero, services, testimonials	3.50	$80	Yes	$280
Tue Nov 3	Acme Co	Website redesign	Client call + revisions, round 1	2.25	$80	Yes	$180
Wed Nov 4	Acme Co	Website redesign	Contact + pricing pages	4.00	$80	Yes	$320
Thu Nov 5	Acme Co	Website redesign	Mobile fixes, cross-browser check	1.50	$80	Yes	$120
Fri Nov 6	Acme Co	Website redesign	Final revisions + handover notes	2.75	$80	Yes	$220
Fri Nov 6	Acme Co	Admin	Proposal for phase 2 (not billed)	1.00	$80	No	$0
Total				15.00		14.00 billable	$1,120

Fourteen billable hours at $80 is $1,120 — that is the number the invoice carries. The fifteenth hour is on the sheet, visible, and billed at $0, so the client sees the full week and the freelancer keeps an honest record of it.

Overtime math, simply

Overtime is one multiplication: hours over the threshold, times the rate, times 1.5. The part people get wrong is the threshold — and, for freelancers, whether any law applies at all.

Under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, a covered employee who works more than 40 hours in a workweek must be paid at least one and a half times their regular rate for every hour past 40. A few states go further: California, Alaska, and Nevada also require overtime after 8 hours in a single day. Federal law has no daily trigger and no weekend or holiday premium — only the 40-hour week counts.

Here is the catch for freelancers: that law covers employees, not independent contractors. Nobody owes you overtime unless your contract says so. So write it into the contract before the extra hours happen, not after: hours over 40 in a week, or rush and after-hours work, bill at 1.5× your rate. Time and a half is the convention clients already understand, which is exactly why it works as a contract term — nobody has to be persuaded that 1.5 is fair.

The math, on a $80 rate and a 48-hour week: 40 regular hours at $80 is $3,200. The 8 overtime hours at $120 (1.5 × $80) add $960. The week totals $4,160, and the timesheet shows the split — 40 regular, 8 overtime — so the client can check it in one glance. Put the overtime rows on the timesheet with their own rate, not folded into the regular hours: a single blended line invites exactly the argument the split prevents.

From timesheet to invoice

The timesheet is the input; the invoice is the output. The conversion is mechanical, and it should take five minutes:

1. Total the billable hours per client, per project, for the period — the footer of the timesheet already has this number.
2. One invoice per client per period. Never mix two clients on one invoice, and never mix two periods: a client who disputes week two should not be able to hold week one hostage.
3. One line per project (or per week, if the project runs long). Each line shows the hours, the rate, and the amount — the description column from the timesheet becomes the invoice line description.
4. Attach the timesheet as backup. The invoice is the bill; the timesheet is the proof. Clients pay itemized invoices with the record attached, and argue with lump sums that have none.
5. Send it the day the period closes. An invoice sent Friday gets paid noticeably faster than one batched at month-end, because the value is still fresh. The timesheet is finished Friday; the invoice goes out Friday.

For the invoice itself, read how to write an invoice — the line items, the numbering, and the payment terms that belong on every bill. The timesheet tells you what to charge; the guide tells you how to present it.

How to use it free

1. Copy the column layout above into a spreadsheet — Excel, Google Sheets, or Numbers all work. One file per client per period, named so you can find it later (Acme-2026-11-02, for example).
2. Fill in the header: your name or business, the client, the period, and your rate. If you bill different rates to different clients, put the rate on each row, not in the header.
3. Log each block of work the day you do it, in decimal hours, with a description the client would recognize.
4. On Friday, total the sheet: total hours, billable hours, and the amount. Check the non-billable rows are still there.
5. Turn the totals into an invoice with Billia’s free invoice generator — the billable hours become the line items, the timesheet goes along as backup, and the PDF arrives in your inbox. No account, no watermark.

That is the whole system: a sheet you own, a habit that takes ten seconds a block, and an invoice that writes itself from the totals. Keep one more habit with it — save the finished timesheet with the invoice it produced, in the same folder, under the same name. Six months from now, when a client asks what that invoice was for, the answer is one search away.