How To Use Notion Formulas | Ep.3: Formatting And Build A Timesheet

Notion formulas can turn raw date/time fields into practical outputs—like readable timestamps, “in season” product filters, and an automatically calculated Monday–Friday timesheet with pay. The core workflow is consistent: pull a date/time value (often with the now() function), format it into the exact text or number shape needed, then combine date arithmetic (dateAdd/dateSubtract/dateBetween) with conditional logic (if, mod) to derive hours, minutes, and money.

For formatting, the transcript walks through Notion’s formatDate syntax. Using formatDate(now(), …), it’s possible to extract the weekday, month, day suffixes (like st/nd), year (two-digit or four-digit), and time in either 12-hour (with a/p) or 24-hour (military) styles. The key detail is that formatDate can output both text and numeric values depending on the tokens used—so a weekday can become a number (e.g., Sunday starting at 0), while a full month name can be returned as text. Time formatting uses tokens like h and m for hour and minutes, plus a for am/pm; timezone output can be added with z (e.g., EDT vs a more detailed form). For quarters, q plus an optional o token yields values like “4th quarter.”

The episode then addresses timestamps and their limits. Notion’s timestampNow() only reaches minutes, not seconds or milliseconds, so a longer-form timestamp can be generated via formatDate(now(), x) (and a shorter variant with X). For numeric conversions, the transcript notes using t (lowercase) and enclosing it in a number wrapper so the formula returns a number rather than text.

Two practical use cases show how these pieces fit together. First, an “in season produce” database uses the month() function to tick a boolean per month. A formula like “if month(now()) equals 8 (September) then true else false” is copied across months, and a database view filters to items where the relevant month’s checkbox is true—so the view automatically updates as the calendar changes.

Second, a timesheet example builds from date arithmetic. dateSubtract and dateAdd handle offsets like “two days ago,” “two weeks from now,” or “two months from now,” with careful attention to whether the source includes time. For date ranges, dateBetween calculates days between an end date and a start date, while mod is used to extract leftover hours and minutes (e.g., hours = mod(totalHours, 24) and minutes = mod(totalMinutes, 60)). Finally, the timesheet sums clock-in/clock-out durations across Monday through Friday, converts minutes to hours by dividing by 60, and multiplies by an hourly rate to compute weekly pay automatically per row.