Build a Time Sheet Template in Notion | Full Step-by-Step Tutorial

A Notion timesheet can be built into a mostly one-click workflow by combining inline databases with button automations that stamp start and end times, then calculating billable hours from those timestamps. The setup starts with a clean Notion page titled “timesheet template,” optionally dressed with an icon and a cover image, then switches to an inline database named “timesheet.” Inside that database, each entry represents a task (example: “answering client questions”) and includes start time and end time properties.

The key productivity upgrade is automation via two button properties. A “start” button triggers an automation that edits the “start time” field to the exact moment the button is clicked. An “end” button does the same for the “end time” field. This removes manual typing and makes time tracking fast enough to use consistently. A third button—“start new time tracking”—creates a new task page in the same database and pre-fills the start time using the click timestamp, so users can begin tracking immediately without creating entries by hand. To keep the most recent work visible, the database view is sorted by start time in descending order.

Once timestamps are captured, the hours calculation is handled with a formula property called “hours.” The method uses Notion’s date-between logic to measure the time between end time and start time, then converts minutes into fractional hours by dividing by 60. The transcript highlights a practical reason for this approach: relying on date-between alone can round in ways that distort results, while the minutes-to-hours conversion preserves accuracy (for example, 4:30 p.m. to a 3:00 p.m. start yields 1.5 hours). To support totals across multiple tasks, a “calculate” aggregation is added using a sum, producing a running total of tracked hours for the current view.

The template also scales beyond a single daily log. Entries can be grouped by a “select” tag (such as “building” vs. “admin work”) and then aggregated with summed hours, making it easy to compare time allocation by category. For longer-term reporting, tasks can be duplicated into separate databases (e.g., “monthly report”) and grouped by month using the start date, producing a month-by-month breakdown.

For teams or billing workflows, the transcript points to a pre-made Notion timesheet template available on the store, featuring in-progress task views, monthly overviews, and a “view all” of entries. That version also includes built-in billable hour logic based on billable vs. non-billable tagging, plus reporting by person—showing who spent how much time on each task and category. Overall, the core takeaway is that Notion’s database + automation + formula tools can turn time tracking into a structured system with accurate hour math and flexible reporting dimensions (by task, category, month, and person).