Timesheets shows the paid hours the time clock has recorded for each employee, day by day, and puts any punch that needs fixing at the top. Open it during the week to fix a forgotten clock-out while the person who was there still remembers, rather than on payday. The same review appears inside a pay run when you choose to take hours from the clock.
Timesheets only matter for employees whose hours come from the time clock. Staff whose hours you type into the pay run, and salaried staff, do not appear here.
Open it
- Employees ▸ Timesheets
- Home Page ▸ Employees band ▸ Enter Time
Turn it on first
The clock does not feed payroll until you decide it should. A clock kept for door access or shift planning is not a timesheet until somebody says so. Two switches are needed:
- On the Timesheets screen, press Clock rules and turn on Pay from the time clock. Press Save.
- For each employee whose hours should come from the clock, open them in the Employee Centre, press Change, turn on Hours come from the time clock, and press Save. See Add or edit an employee.
Until the first is on, the screen shows SeroBooks' message that payroll from the time clock is not turned on, with a Clock rules button to fix it. Until the second is on for at least one person, the table says nobody takes their hours from the clock.
The screen
The screen is titled Timesheets, with the period as its subtitle (for example 2026-09-12 to 2026-09-25). Its note explains that punch-to-punch is not paid hours: the meal break comes off, and the day a night shift belongs to is the day it started. Nothing on this screen pays anybody; the hours are handed to the pay run.
Buttons
| Button | What it does |
|---|---|
| Period | Opens Which days to add up, where you choose a different start and end date. The screen opens on the 14 days ending today, the fortnight you are standing in; the subtitle always shows the dates being added up. |
| Everybody (frequency) | Filters by pay frequency: Everybody, Weekly, Every two weeks, Twice a month or Monthly. Use it when you pay weekly and biweekly staff off one clock, because their periods differ. The button shows the current choice. |
| Clock rules | Opens the rules that turn punches into paid hours (below). |
| Refresh | Reloads the hours. |
Punches that need fixing
If any punch is incomplete or implausible, a card at the top reads, for example, 2 punches need fixing. Each line shows the date, the employee and what is wrong (for example a clock-in with no clock-out, or a shift longer than the longest believable shift).
An employee with an unresolved punch is blocked: left out of the timesheet entirely rather than given short hours, because short hours look like a quiet week while a blocked employee looks like a question. The card names who is blocked, and their row in the table reads Blocked until the punch is fixed.
Fix the punch in the time clock's attendance records, then press Refresh.
When every punch is accounted for, a green line reads, for example, Every punch accounted for — 6 employees, 212 paid hours after breaks.
The table
| Column | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Employee | The employee's name. |
| Days | The number of days worked in the period. |
| Paid hours | Total paid hours after breaks and rounding. |
| By day | Each day's paid hours, shown as the day of the month and the hours, for example 15:8 16:10.5. |
The day-by-day figures matter because Alberta and British Columbia measure overtime per day: ten hours on Monday and six on Tuesday is an hour of overtime there, while a sixteen-hour period total is none.
Using the hours in a pay run
When you calculate a pay run that includes hourly employees, SeroBooks asks Where are the hours coming from?
- From the clock opens this same review for the pay run's own period and frequency, titled Hours from the clock. Press Use these hours to calculate with them. The button stays unavailable while anybody is blocked or when there are no hours, so nobody is quietly left out of pay.
- Type them lets you enter a period total for each hourly employee instead.
See Pay Employees.
Clock rules
Clock rules opens a page titled Clock rules — How a pair of punches becomes paid hours. Every setting on it is a decision about somebody's wages, and the defaults are chosen so that not deciding cannot cost an employee money. Press Save to keep your changes or Back to leave.
Pay from the time clock
| Setting | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Pay from the time clock | On: hours come off the clock, and a pay run still shows them to somebody before anybody is paid. Off (the default): the clock keeps recording, and hours are typed into the pay run by hand. |
Rounding
Nothing is rounded unless you choose to. A clock records to the minute, and paying to the minute is always defensible.
| Setting | Choices |
|---|---|
| Round to | To the minute (default), 5 min, 6 min, 10 min, 15 min, 30 min |
| Which way (only when rounding) | To the nearest, Up, in the employee's favour, Down |
If you choose Down, SeroBooks warns in red that rounding down takes up to a few minutes off each punch, every day, from everybody, and that in most of Canada an employee is owed for time actually worked.
The meal break
Most staff clock in once and out once and take their break in between, so the break comes off the shift rather than being punched. An employee who does punch out for their break is not charged twice: the deduction only applies to a single unbroken shift.
| Setting | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Minutes | Length of the break. Default 30. |
| After this many hours | The shift length that earns a break. Default 5, the threshold in most provinces; the employment standard decides it, not this screen. |
| Again on a long shift | On (default): a ten-hour shift gets two breaks rather than one. |
| The break is paid | Off (default): the break comes off paid hours, the usual arrangement for an unpaid meal break. On: nothing comes off. |
Shifts that go wrong
| Setting | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Longest believable shift, in hours | Default 16. Anything longer is treated as a missing clock-out and raised as a punch to fix, not paid. |
| A shift that crosses midnight | Counts on the day it started (default) or Split across both days. This decides which day the hours land on, which is what Alberta's and British Columbia's daily overtime thresholds are measured against. |
Permissions
Opening Clock rules needs the Edit Payroll Setup and Clock Rules permission under Payroll ▸ Setup. Without it, SeroBooks asks someone whose role has it to approve. Viewing the timesheet itself needs access to the Timesheets screen.
Common problems
- The table is empty. Either Pay from the time clock is off in Clock rules, or no employee has Hours come from the time clock switched on.
- Somebody is blocked. They have a clock-in with no clock-out, or a shift longer than the longest believable shift. Correct the punch and press Refresh.
- The hours are less than punch-to-punch. The meal break came off, or rounding applied. Check Clock rules.
- A night shift's hours are on the wrong day. Change A shift that crosses midnight.