Volunteer hours log template

Which version to use

Personal hours log if one person is collecting their own hours over weeks or months: a student working toward a service-hours requirement, a volunteer who needs proof for a scholarship or employer, or anyone who helps at more than one place. Columns: date, event or activity, time in, time out, hours, supervisor initials.

Event sign-in sheet if you are the coordinator and many people show up to one thing: a food drive, a park cleanup, a Saturday shift. Leave it on a clipboard by the door. Columns: name, time in, time out, hours, signature.

How to fill it in

Write the actual clock times, not a rounded guess. To get the hours, subtract time in from time out and divide any leftover minutes by 60: 9:15 AM to 12:45 PM is 3 hours 30 minutes, or 3.5 hours. The spreadsheet version does this for you. Type times like 9:15 AM in the time columns and the Hours column and the total fill in. A shift that runs past midnight still counts correctly.

If the hours are going to a school, a court, or a scholarship committee, ask them what they accept before you start. Most want a supervisor's signature or initials on each line, which is why that column is there.

When paper stops working

A paper log is fine for one volunteer or one event. It gets hard when you have dozens of volunteers across several programs and a funder asks for total hours and how many different people gave them. Someone ends up retyping sign-in sheets into a spreadsheet.

That is the job Kangaroo Clock was built for. Volunteers clock in by scanning a QR code or tapping their name on a shared tablet, with no account and no app. You get a report with total hours and the count of distinct volunteers, and a CSV export. It is free for your first 500 recorded hours, then $10 a month flat, however many volunteers you have.

Frequently asked questions

What should a volunteer hours log include?

One row per shift with the date, the activity or event, the time in, the time out, the hours, and a supervisor's initials or signature. At the top, the volunteer's name, the organization, and a contact who can confirm the hours.

How do I calculate volunteer hours from time in and time out?

Subtract the time in from the time out, then turn the leftover minutes into a fraction of an hour by dividing by 60. 1:00 PM to 4:20 PM is 3 hours 20 minutes, which is 3.33 hours. The spreadsheet version of this log does the math for every row and adds up the total.

Can I use this volunteer log in Google Sheets?

Yes. Download the spreadsheet, then in Google Sheets choose File, Import, and upload it. It also opens directly in Excel. The Hours column fills in once you type times like 9:00 AM.

Is the template really free?

Yes. No signup, no email, no watermark. The printout has one small line at the bottom saying where it came from.