Timesheets for on-call staff, from schedule to payroll

For a school or studio with on-call staff, the timesheet already lives in the schedule: who taught which lesson, on which day and from what time to what time. Turn that into time entries every month, correct only what went differently and send your payroll the hours per day and the rate for each person. In the Netherlands you keep those records for seven years, like the rest of your payroll administration.

Why are the timesheets at the end of the month so often wrong?

An instructor who teaches four days a week cannot remember in July which day in June ran over. Hours arrive on a note, in a chat message or in a spreadsheet three people keep up. The office then holds them against the schedule and looks for the differences. A forgotten lesson only shows when someone calls about their payslip.

The cause: the hours sit in two places, in the schedule and on the timesheet. Every second record is a chance for a mismatch.

Which hours must you be able to show as an employer?

The hours each employee worked. In the Netherlands four rules make that necessary:

• Minimum wage per hour. Since 2024 the Dutch minimum wage only exists as an hourly amount (article 8 of the Minimum Wage Act). From 1 July 2026 it is 14.99 euros gross an hour for anyone aged 21 or over. When you pay per lesson or per day, work it back to an hourly amount. That shows whether you stay above it.
• Records for the supervisory authority. On request you show how many hours an employee worked and what pay they received (article 18b of the Minimum Wage Act). Failing to provide them, or providing them late, is an offence.
• Working and rest times. The Working Hours Act asks every employer for a proper record of working and rest times (article 4:3).
• Keeping records. The payroll administration belongs to the basic records of your business. You keep those for seven years.

Other countries have their own rules; check them with your payroll provider.

What does your payroll need from you?

A Dutch payslip shows, among other things, the period the pay covers, the agreed working hours, the minimum hourly wage for the employee’s age and whether it is an on-call contract (article 7:626 of the Civil Code). Your payroll administrator or accountant builds that payslip from your figures. So send this every month:

What	Why
Name of the staff member	every payslip is per person
Date of each working day	short shifts stand out (see the three-hour rule below)
Start and end time, or minutes	those are the hours worked
Rate and unit	per hour, per day or per half day gives a different pay
Total per staff member	a quick check for both sides
Who started or left	payroll knows who joins or leaves

What if an on-call worker works less than three hours?

In the Netherlands you then often pay three hours anyway. Under article 7:628a of the Civil Code this applies when you agreed fewer than 15 hours a week and did not fix the working times, or when it is an on-call contract. For every period of less than three hours worked, the staff member is then entitled to three hours’ pay.

A private lesson of an hour and a half costs you three hours’ pay. So plan short lessons back to back for the same staff member where you can. Put the hours per day in your overview, so your payroll sees those days.

Should staff enter their own hours?

A clock-in app suits work without fixed times. Lessons, workshops and activities already have a fixed time: the lesson from ten to twelve lasts two hours. Clocking in on top of that records the same hours twice.

So let the hours come from the schedule and record only the exceptions. Think of a lesson that ran over, an extra shift or an afternoon setting out equipment.

Hours from the schedule in Superota

In Superota the assignment sits on the lesson itself. Pick a period and Superota creates a time entry for every lesson day of every assignment in one go. A five-day camp gives five entries. Each entry gets the rate the staff member has at that moment, per hour, day, half day or month. Running it again later adds nothing twice. A lesson with a start time and no end time only gets an entry once you fill in the end time.

Whatever went differently, you correct. You change the minutes of an entry or add a separate entry for an extra shift. A separate entry is marked orange as manual; an entry you correct, you set to manual yourself. Existing entries stay as they are when you create the hours again. When the schedule changes after you created the hours, you edit the entry yourself or delete it and create it again.

Then you approve the entries, a whole page at a time. The monthly overview in Excel has a sheet with every lesson day and a sheet with, per staff member, the lesson days, the total hours and the rate. When you prefer to send a CSV, filter on period and status and you get per entry, among other things, the date, start and end time, minutes, hours and rate. Every lesson day has its own row, so a short shift shows at once. Both files go to your payroll administrator or accountant.

Staff see their lessons in the staff app. Their hours and rate are kept by the office. Hours and payroll export is an extra you switch on and off per month.

How do you close the month?

1. Check that every lesson of the month has a staff member and an end time.
2. Create the hours of the month from the schedule.
3. Record the exceptions: overruns, an extra shift, a lesson that was shorter.
4. Approve the hours and look out for days under three hours and rates under the minimum wage.
5. Send the file to your payroll and keep it with your records.

Put those five steps in your calendar as a fixed appointment, on the first working day of every month.