Extract data from timesheets

A timesheet is how an organization turns hours into money, and payroll cannot run, a client cannot be billed, and a project cannot be costed until the hours are captured and approved. A staffing agency processes thousands of them each week, one per contractor per assignment, while an in-house payroll team collects a timesheet from every hourly employee, such as Marcus Lee in the Field Operations team at Northgate Logistics Inc., for the pay period ending 2026-05-31, before Sarah Mitchell signs it off. The fields that matter are the same across formats: who worked, for which employer and department, the period covered, the daily hours, any overtime, absences taken, and the supervisor approval that releases the record to payroll. Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, an employer has to keep an accurate record of the hours a non-exempt employee works, so the timesheet is a compliance document as much as a payroll input. Where a timesheet gets messy is the daily detail. Hours arrive as a grid of days, sometimes split by project code or cost center, with regular hours capped at 40 per week and anything above 40 paid at 1.5 times the base rate of $28.50 an hour, so 2 overtime hours add $85.50 to the check. A day can carry a mix of worked hours, sick leave, and vacation, and the totals have to separate cleanly. Contractors log against a project such as PRJ-2048 so the time can be billed back to a client, while a salaried approver signs off on 2026-06-02 before the period closes. A stray hour in the wrong column changes gross pay of $1,225.50 or a client invoice. Talonic reads the timesheet and returns the employee identity, the period, the daily entries, and the summary totals as structured fields and a table. Daily hours of 8, 8, 8, 8, and 10 across the week of 2026-05-25 roll up to 40 regular and 2 overtime, reconciled against the stated totals, so payroll and billing both start from figures that tie out rather than a scanned grid.

What gets extracted from timesheets

How extraction works for timesheets

Timesheets come out of workforce platforms such as ADP, Deputy, and Kronos, out of spreadsheet templates, and off paper sheets signed on a clipboard, so the grid of days and the placement of overtime and leave differ from one employer to the next. Talonic reads the sheet and maps it to the timesheet schema in the Field Registry, which separates the employee identity and the reporting period from the daily entries and the summary totals. Daily rows keep their date, hours, project or cost-center code, and any overtime, and worked hours are separated from sick and vacation time so a mixed day does not inflate the regular total. Regular and overtime hours are summed and reconciled against the stated totals, so a sheet where the daily grid does not match the summary is flagged before it reaches payroll. Under United States wage-and-hour rules the supervisor approval and its date are captured, since an unapproved timesheet should not release to a pay run. Every value returns with a confidence score and a pixel-region pointer under DIN SPEC 91491 conformity, so a payroll or billing analyst can verify a day's hours against the source sheet.

Sample extraction

A weekly timesheet with daily entries and supervisor sign-off

{
  "document_number": "TS-2026-05-4471",
  "employee.name": "Marcus Lee",
  "employee.id": "EMP-4471",
  "employee.department": "Field Operations",
  "employer": "Northgate Logistics Inc.",
  "supervisor.name": "Sarah Mitchell",
  "period_start_date": "2026-05-25",
  "period_end_date": "2026-05-31",
  "daily_entries": [
    {
      "entry_date": "2026-05-25",
      "hours_worked": 8,
      "project_code": "PRJ-2048",
      "overtime_hours": 0
    },
    {
      "entry_date": "2026-05-26",
      "hours_worked": 8,
      "project_code": "PRJ-2048",
      "overtime_hours": 0
    },
    {
      "entry_date": "2026-05-27",
      "hours_worked": 8,
      "project_code": "PRJ-2048",
      "overtime_hours": 0
    },
    {
      "entry_date": "2026-05-28",
      "hours_worked": 8,
      "project_code": "PRJ-2048",
      "overtime_hours": 0
    },
    {
      "entry_date": "2026-05-29",
      "hours_worked": 10,
      "project_code": "PRJ-2048",
      "overtime_hours": 2
    }
  ],
  "total_hours": 40,
  "total_overtime_hours": 2,
  "total_absences": 0,
  "status": "Approved",
  "approval_date": "2026-06-02"
}

Frequently asked