Tracking hours, overtime and breaks against your pay statements

To check hours, overtime and breaks against your pay, keep a short daily log of when you started and stopped work, when each break began and ended, and any work done before clocking in or after clocking out. At the end of each pay period, compare your totals with the hours shown on your pay statement, the posted schedule and any clock-in records you can see.

When the numbers differ, write the difference down as a question rather than an accusation, and ask payroll or your manager in writing. Overtime and break rules depend on your province, territory or state and on your job, so the official employment standards office for your area, or a qualified reviewer, is where to check what applies.

Your employer's timekeeping system is usually the official record, and employment standards rules in many places require employers to keep records of hours worked. The details differ by province, territory and state. Official records can still miss things: a clock that rounds to the quarter hour, a meal break the system deducts automatically whether or not you took it, or ten minutes spent opening the store before the terminal was switched on.

The US Department of Labor has offered a free timesheet app since 2011 for exactly this reason: so workers can keep their own record of hours alongside the employer's. A personal log made at the time is more precise than a memory reconstructed months later, and it turns a vague sense that pay seems low into specific dates and minutes.

• The time you actually started working, and the time you clocked in if it was different.
• The time you actually stopped, and the time you clocked out.
• Each break: start, end, and whether it was interrupted by a customer, a call or a request from a supervisor.
• Breaks you did not get, with a few words on why, such as 'no coverage at the counter'.
• Work outside the clock: setting up, closing, logging into systems, answering messages, travel between sites, on-call time.
• Who asked you to stay late, start early or skip a break, described by role, and how they asked.
• Your location and the posted schedule for that day, so you can compare later.

Write it the same day, on your own phone or in a personal notebook, not in an employer system. If you fill in a day later from memory, mark it as reconstructed so the log stays honest.

Plain text works fine. Here is one week, written the way a reviewer can read it without explanation.

• Mon May 4 | Scheduled 9:00 to 5:30 | Started 8:45 opening tills, clocked in 9:00 | Lunch 12:30 to 1:00, full | Clocked out 5:30 | Worked 8 h 15 min
• Tue May 5 | Scheduled 9:00 to 5:30 | Clocked in 9:00 | Lunch 1:00 to 1:10, called back by shift lead | Clocked out 6:15 at shift lead's request | Worked 9 h 5 min
• Wed May 6 | Scheduled 9:00 to 5:30 | Clocked in 9:00 | No lunch, short-staffed | Clocked out 5:30 | Worked 8 h 30 min
• Thu May 7 | Day off | Answered two scheduling messages from manager, about 15 min total
• Fri May 8 | Scheduled 9:00 to 5:30 | Clocked in 9:00 | Lunch 12:00 to 12:30 | Clocked out 7:00, inventory count | Worked 9 h 30 min
• Week total from my log: 35 h 20 min, plus about 15 min of messages on Thursday. Pay statement for this week: to compare when received.

Notice that the log records what happened, including the cut-short Tuesday lunch, without saying whether anything was owed. That judgment depends on rules that differ by place and job, and it is not something your log needs to settle.

• Pay statements: the pay period dates, hours paid at each rate, any overtime line, and deductions labelled as meal or break time.
• Posted or app-based schedules, including the version in effect on the day, since schedules are often edited after the fact.
• Clock-in and clock-out records or timesheets that you can view or that were given to you.
• Messages approving or asking for extra time, shift swaps or early starts.
• Your offer letter or written terms showing your pay rate and expected hours.

Only use records you are entitled to see. If the clock system shows your own punches, a screenshot of your own entries is normally fine; payroll reports covering the whole team are not yours to copy.

1. Find the exact start and end dates of the pay period on the statement; they may not match calendar weeks.
2. Total the hours from your log for those same dates, keeping work outside the clock as a separate subtotal.
3. Write down the hours the statement shows at each rate, and any lines for overtime, premiums or break deductions.
4. Compare clock records for the same days, if you can see them, and note any rounding or automatic deductions.
5. List each day where your log, the clock record and the statement differ, with the size of the difference in minutes.
6. Check whether the difference could come from a pay period boundary, a correction paid on a later statement, or a day you marked as reconstructed.
7. Turn what remains into written questions and keep a copy of what you send.

Payroll errors happen for ordinary reasons, and a calm question tends to get a faster, clearer answer than an accusation. It also reads better later if anyone reviews the exchange. Keep each question to one pay period and one issue.

For example: 'For the pay period May 3 to May 16, my notes show I clocked out at 6:15 p.m. on May 5 and 7:00 p.m. on May 8. The statement shows 75 regular hours and no other hours. Could you help me understand how those two days were counted?' Then log the date you sent it, who you sent it to by role, and the answer when it arrives.

In the United States, the Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division offers a free timesheet app that tracks regular hours, break time and overtime, and its resources for workers include a printable work hours calendar for people who prefer paper. It also publishes general fact sheets on what counts as hours worked and on employer recordkeeping. State labor departments publish their own information, and state rules can differ from federal ones.

In Canada, most employees are covered by their provincial or territorial employment standards office, each of which publishes its own information on hours, overtime and breaks. Employees of federally regulated employers, such as banks, airlines and many telecommunications companies, are covered by the federal Labour Program, which has a general page on hours of work in federally regulated workplaces. Check the source that applies to you rather than a rule you heard from a coworker in another province or state.

Is my own log taken seriously if the employer has a time clock? A log written at the time, with consistent detail, gives a reviewer something concrete to compare with the employer's records. How much weight any record carries is a question for a qualified employment lawyer or your employment standards office.

I only started logging recently. Can I fill in earlier weeks? Yes, as long as you label those entries as reconstructed and note what you based them on, such as old schedules, messages or bank deposits.

Do messages answered from home count? Whether that time counts as work depends on the rules where you work and on your role. Log it anyway, with the time and a short description, so the question can be answered by someone qualified.

What if I am salaried? Some salaried roles are treated differently for overtime and some are not, and the line differs between jurisdictions. Keep the same log; it costs little and keeps your options open.

Your daily hours log can live anywhere, including the free government app. SteadyFile is for what sits around it: the dated entries about the evening you were asked to stay for inventory, the pay statements and schedules in a records index with an ID each, and the questions you sent payroll on the gaps and questions list until they are answered. You can start a private work file at app.steadyfile.com on your phone with no account needed, and your employer has no access. With an account, entry creation times and edit history stay visible. When you want someone to look at it, export a chronological PDF that shows each discrepancy next to the records it relies on.