Pay period types and paychecks per year
Weekly pays 52 times a year, biweekly 26, semimonthly 24, and monthly 12. Biweekly (every two weeks) and semimonthly (twice a month) are not the same thing.
Updated June 2026
A pay period is the recurring stretch of time you pay people for. How often it repeats sets how many paychecks land in a year and how you total hours for each run.
| Schedule | Paychecks per year | How it works |
|---|---|---|
| Weekly | 52 | Paid every week, often Fridays. Most paychecks, simplest for hourly crews. |
| Biweekly | 26 | Paid every two weeks. The most common US schedule. Two months a year have three paydays. |
| Semimonthly | 24 | Paid twice a month, usually the 15th and the last day. Steady dates, but periods are uneven lengths. |
| Monthly | 12 | Paid once a month. Fewest runs to process, longest wait between checks. |
| Quarterly | 4 | Rare for wages. Sometimes used for stipends or bonuses. |
| Annually | 1 | One payment a year. Used for some honoraria and board stipends. |
Biweekly vs semimonthly: the one people mix up
Biweekly means every two weeks, so 26 paychecks a year, and two months each year contain three paydays. Semimonthly means twice a month on fixed dates (often the 15th and the last day), so exactly 24 paychecks, always two per month. Biweekly lands on the same weekday; semimonthly lands on the same dates. They are close but never identical.
Pulling hours for any schedule
Whatever your cycle, the job at payroll time is the same: total each person's hours for the exact period. In Kangaroo Clock, set the report date range to match the pay period and export the CSV. The decimal-hours column is already computed for you.
Track the real hours, skip the math
Volunteers and staff clock in with a tap. You pull a clean, decimal-hours total for any range.
Related reference