Time card · Kangaroo Clock glossary

A time card is a record of a worker's hours for a single pay period, historically a paper card punched by a mechanical clock, now usually a printed report or a digital file. It's the document handed to payroll for wage calculation.

The time card is the bridge between the time-tracking activity (worker clocks in, worker clocks out) and the payroll output (worker gets paid). It's the per-pay-period summary of hours, broken out by day, that payroll uses to compute wages.

Historically, the time card was a physical paper card kept in a rack near the time clock. The worker punched in and out on the card all week; on payday, the card went to the bookkeeper. Modern time cards are usually digital, a CSV export, a PDF report, or a direct integration to a payroll provider.

A complete time card typically shows: worker name, pay period start and end dates, per-day in/out times, per-day total hours, weekly subtotal, period grand total, signature lines (worker + supervisor).

For digital systems, the time card is often skipped entirely, payroll providers accept a CSV directly. For hand-tracked or hybrid environments, a printable timesheet template fills the same role.