A time card answers one question — how long did this person work? — and the paycheck, the overtime calculation, and the labour-law record all depend on the answer being right. The card itself is simple: a date, a start time, an end time, breaks taken, and a total. The complications are all in the edges: a meal break that is unpaid only when the worker is fully relieved, a rounding rule that must be neutral over time, an overtime threshold that is weekly, and a manager’s edit that changes the record after the fact. This guide is about the card as a record — its rules, its arithmetic, and its legal weight — and about the difference between a time card, which records one worker’s day, and a time clock, which is the device the record is made on.

Anatomy of a time card

A time card carries, per day: the date, the start time, the end time, the meal period taken, any other unpaid time, and the resulting total hours, with the week’s days summed into a weekly total. Modern cards are electronic — a badge swipe, a PIN, a biometric scan, an app — but the record is the same, and the paper card’s columns survive in the software’s fields. The card is the worker’s record of the day, and the payroll department’s source document: gross pay is hours times rate, overtime is the weekly excess at the premium rate, and deductions follow from the gross. An error on the card is an error on the paycheck, which is why the card is the first document examined in any wage dispute, by either side.

The card also carries a second, less visible function: it is the employer’s compliance record. The FLSA requires employers to keep records of hours worked each day and each week, and the time card is the usual form that record takes, retained for at least three years under federal rules (with state rules sometimes longer). A missing card is not a missing convenience — it is a missing record the law required the employer to keep, and in a dispute the absence is held against the party who was required to keep it.

Breaks: paid rest, unpaid meals, and the relieved-of-duty test

Not all breaks are equal. Short rest breaks — typically 10 to 20 minutes — are paid time under federal rules: they are counted as hours worked and cannot be deducted, because they serve the employer’s interest in a rested worker. A bona fide meal period — typically 30 minutes or more — is unpaid, but only when the worker is fully relieved of duty for the whole period: free to leave, free to use the time as their own, and not on call. A meal eaten at the desk while answering the phone is not a meal period; it is paid time, and deducting it is a wage error. Some states add their own meal and rest rules — California requires a 30-minute meal period before the end of the fifth hour and a paid 10-minute rest period per four hours worked, with premium pay when they are missed — and the state rule governs where it is stricter than the federal one.

Automatic meal deductions are the commonest payroll error in the field: software deducts 30 minutes every shift, including shifts where the worker never took the break, and the deduction stands unless the worker reports it. The correction is procedural, not mathematical — a way to report a missed meal, an attestation at clock-out, a manager who checks the exception report daily — and a time-card system without one will produce the error systematically, shift after shift, until someone complains. The time-card calculation on this site takes the breaks as entered; whether a break was truly unpaid is a fact about the shift, not an arithmetic choice.

Overtime: weekly, at 1.5, on the regular rate

Overtime under the FLSA is 1.5 times the regular rate for hours worked past 40 in a workweek. The workweek is a fixed 168-hour period the employer defines — it need not be the calendar week — and the threshold is weekly: a 12-hour day is not overtime by itself, a 45-hour week is five hours of overtime even if no day exceeded eight, and hours cannot be averaged across two weeks to erase a 45-hour week followed by a 35-hour one. The regular rate is not always the hourly rate: it includes non-discretionary bonuses, shift differentials, commissions and most other payments, divided by the hours worked, so the overtime premium on a week with a bonus is higher than the premium on a plain week at the same hourly rate.

Two practices are unlawful and still common. Off-the-clock work — starting early, finishing late, working through the meal period, answering messages after clock-out — is hours worked and must be paid, including at overtime rates when it pushes the week past 40. Compensatory time off in place of overtime pay is available to public-sector employers under the FLSA but not to private employers, who must pay the premium in money. A time card that shows exactly 40.00 hours every week for a worker whose manager emails at 9 p.m. is a card that should be questioned, not admired.

Rounding, edits, and keeping the record honest

Rounding clock times to the nearest quarter-hour (or the nearest tenth) is lawful when it is neutral — rounding 7:53 to 8:00 and 8:07 to 8:00 with equal likelihood, so that over time the rounding neither systematically favours the employer nor the employee. Rounding that always favours the employer — rounding start times forward and end times back, or rounding a 7:52 start to 8:00 while rounding an 8:07 start to 8:00 as well — is not neutral and is not lawful, and modern timekeeping software that rounds should be audited for exactly this asymmetry. The safest practice is no rounding at all: record to the minute, and let the payroll calculation carry the exact times.

Edits to a card must preserve the audit trail: the original entry, the correction, who made it, when, and why. A manager who changes a clock-out time should leave a record that the change happened; a system that overwrites silently destroys the evidence both sides need in a dispute. Workers should review their cards each period and attest to them — a signature, electronic or otherwise, that says the record is correct — and the attestation should happen before payroll runs, not after the paycheck arrives, when the correction is a second payment rather than a correct first one.

Time card, time clock, timesheet: three names, three things

The three terms are used interchangeably and mean different things. A time clock is the device — the wall clock with a card slot, the badge reader, the biometric terminal, the app — that stamps the time. A time card is the record for one worker: the day’s punches, breaks, and totals. A timesheet is the record for a period — a week or two — often summarising the cards, and in office and project work it is the primary record itself, filled in by the worker rather than stamped by a device. The timesheet calculation on this site works at the period level; the time card works at the day level, and the two should reconcile — the timesheet’s week is the sum of the cards’ days, and a difference between them is an error in one of the two.

Frequently asked questions

What is a time card?

A record of one worker’s working day: the date, start time, end time, breaks taken, and total hours worked, summed into a weekly total. The paycheck is built from it — gross pay is hours times rate, overtime is the weekly excess at the premium rate — and it is also the employer’s compliance record of hours worked, which federal rules require to be kept for at least three years.

Are meal breaks paid or unpaid?

A bona fide meal period, typically 30 minutes or more, is unpaid only when the worker is fully relieved of duty for the whole period — free to leave and not on call. Short rest breaks of 10 to 20 minutes are paid time and cannot be deducted. A meal eaten at the desk while working is paid time, and deducting it is a wage error. Some states add stricter meal and rest rules.

How is overtime calculated from a time card?

Hours past 40 in a workweek are paid at 1.5 times the regular rate. The threshold is weekly, not daily (unless a state requires daily overtime), and hours cannot be averaged across two weeks. The regular rate includes non-discretionary bonuses and differentials, not just the hourly rate, so the premium on a bonus week is higher than on a plain week.

Can my employer round my clock times?

Rounding to the nearest quarter-hour is lawful only when it is neutral — equally likely to favour the employee and the employer over time. Rounding that systematically favours the employer, such as rounding start times forward and end times back, is unlawful. Recording to the minute with no rounding is the safest practice for both sides.

What is the difference between a time card and a timesheet?

A time card is the record for one worker for one day — punches, breaks, totals. A timesheet is the record for a period, usually a week or two, often summarising the cards, and in office and project work it is the primary record, filled in by the worker. The two should reconcile: the timesheet’s week is the sum of the cards’ days.

How long must time cards be kept?

Federal rules require payroll and hours records to be kept for at least three years, with supplementary records for two years. State rules sometimes require longer. The card should be retained in a form that preserves the audit trail — original entries, corrections, who made them and why — for the whole retention period.