Contractor Timesheets in the UK: Templates, Rules and IR35 (2026 Guide)
Nobody makes a contractor fill in a timesheet the way an employer makes an employee clock in. And yet almost every UK contractor ends up keeping one anyway: the agency wants hours approved before it pays, the client wants to see what the day rate bought, and HMRC wants records that back up every invoice. The timesheet sits underneath all three.
The practical side is easy to get right: a weekly grid, a handful of columns, an approval trail. The rules side moved in April 2026, when the small-company thresholds for IR35 rose sharply and responsibility for umbrella workers' PAYE shifted to recruitment agencies. Both changes reach the records you keep. Everything here applies whether you work through your own limited company, an umbrella, or as a sole trader.
Why contractors keep timesheets at all
There's no law that says a contractor must complete a timesheet. The obligation, where it exists, is contractual: agencies and many end clients simply won't process payment without approved hours.
Keep one even where nobody asks. When an invoice is queried three months later, "here are the approved hours for that week" ends the conversation; without a record, you're negotiating from memory against a client's finance system. HMRC expects the income on your return to trace back to invoices, and the invoices to trace back to something. And a timesheet tells you things nobody else will: which clients soak up unbilled extra hours, and whether your day rate actually covers the admin, travel and gaps between contracts. The split between paid and unpaid time is worth understanding on its own; our guide to billable and non-billable hours covers it properly.
What a contractor timesheet needs
A contractor timesheet is a simple document trying to do a precise job. Whatever format you use, each week should capture:
- The week commencing date, Monday to Sunday. Almost every UK agency and client works in weekly cycles, so fighting that convention just creates reconciliation work.
- The client, project or assignment each block of time belongs to, especially if you run more than one contract at once.
- Hours or days per day, in the units your contract bills in. If you're on a day rate, record days and part-days; on an hourly rate, record hours, ideally with start and finish times for anything disputed later.
- A billable flag, so travel days, bench time and admin don't silently disappear into the billable total (or worse, get billed by accident).
- The rate, so the week totals to a value as well as a number of hours.
- Approval: who signed it off and when, whether that's a signature, an email, or a click in a portal.
That last line matters more than any formatting decision. An unapproved timesheet is a claim; an approved one is an agreed fact. Get the approval in writing, every week, even when the relationship is friendly.
Templates: paper, spreadsheet or software
Three honest options, in ascending order of effort saved.
The agency's own template. If your agency issues one, use it; you'll be keying into their portal or emailing their form regardless. Just keep your own copy of every submission, because portal access tends to vanish the day the contract ends.
A spreadsheet you own. A weekly Excel or Google Sheets grid with the columns above will total hours and value with a couple of formulas, and it's yours forever. The cost is discipline: you are the data entry, and Friday-afternoon reconstruction is where hours leak. Our walkthrough on creating a timesheet in minutes keeps the setup painless.
Software that fills itself in. A contractor's calendar already knows where the week went: client stand-ups, site visits, delivery sessions, all timed and dated. VibaCloud connects to your Outlook or Google calendar and turns those events into a draft weekly timesheet, so you tag each entry to a client and rate rather than reconstructing the week from scratch. It's free, and the finished week exports to Excel or PDF in exactly the shape an agency or client expects. If your work lives in your Outlook calendar, you're most of the way to a timesheet already.
Agency approval and self-billing
If you contract through a recruitment agency, the weekly rhythm is usually: submit by a deadline (often Monday morning for the previous week), the client approves, the agency pays on approved hours. Miss the deadline and payment slips a week, so put the submission in your calendar like any other recurring commitment.
Many agencies run self-billing: instead of you invoicing them, they generate the invoice on your behalf from the approved timesheet. It's convenient, but it makes the timesheet the single source of truth for what you're paid, which is precisely why you should reconcile every remittance against your own records rather than assuming the portal got it right. If you invoice directly, the approved timesheet becomes the backing document; our guide to invoicing for hourly work covers turning one into the other, and if a client pays late, UK law gives you statutory interest and a fixed fee on top.
IR35 in 2026: what changed, and where timesheets fit
IR35 (the off-payroll working rules) asks one question: if the intermediary between you and the client vanished, would you look like an employee? Work that would be employment is taxed like employment. Since 2021, medium and large private-sector clients have had to answer that question themselves and hand you a Status Determination Statement (SDS); for small clients, the responsibility stays with your own limited company.
From 6 April 2026, "small" got considerably bigger. The thresholds a company measures itself against rose from £10.2m to £15m turnover and from £5.1m to £7.5m balance sheet (the 50-employee test is unchanged; a company counts as small if it meets two of the three). Roughly 14,000 UK companies moved from medium to small as a result. If your client is one of them, the IR35 decision, and the risk that goes with it, has moved back across the table to you, and you'll no longer receive an SDS. If you've been coasting on a client's "outside" determination, it's now your assessment to make and defend, with HMRC's CEST tool as the usual starting point.
So where do timesheets fit? A persistent myth says filling in timesheets makes you look "inside IR35". It doesn't. Status turns on the reality of the engagement: who controls how, when and where you work, whether you could send a substitute, whether the client is obliged to keep feeding you work. Recording hours so you can bill for them is perfectly normal commercial behaviour for a supplier on a time-based contract. If anything, your own independently kept records are modest supporting evidence that you're in business on your own account: they show you working for more than one client, on your own hours, billing for your time like any other supplier. What you shouldn't do is use the client's internal HR systems as if you were staff when nothing in your contract requires it.
Working through an umbrella after April 2026
If you work through an umbrella company, you're its employee: the approved timesheet drives the umbrella's payroll, and your payslip should reconcile to it, minus the umbrella's margin and employment costs.
April 2026 changed who answers for that payroll. From 6 April 2026, responsibility for operating PAYE on umbrella workers' pay sits with the recruitment agency that supplies you to the client (or with the client itself if there's no agency in the chain), and agencies and end clients are jointly and severally liable if an umbrella in the chain fails to pay the right tax. HMRC can pursue the agency directly without chasing the umbrella first. For contractors this is mostly good news: agencies now have a hard financial reason to keep dodgy umbrellas out of their supply chains, and the "90% take-home" schemes that left workers with the bill are being squeezed out.
Your part is unglamorous but simple: keep your own record of hours worked, check every payslip against your approved timesheets, and query gaps immediately. When liability is being passed around a supply chain, the worker with contemporaneous records is the one nobody can shortchange quietly.
Record-keeping, VAT and how long to keep timesheets
Timesheets are part of your business records, and the retention rules are longer than most people expect. A limited company must keep records for at least six years from the end of the financial year they relate to. A sole trader should keep them for at least five years after the 31 January filing deadline of the relevant tax year. A folder per tax year, whether that's paper or cloud storage, costs nothing and answers questions years later.
On VAT: registration becomes compulsory once taxable turnover passes £90,000 in any rolling 12 months (the threshold was left unchanged again for 2026-27), which a full-time contractor on a typical day rate will hit comfortably. Your timesheets underpin the invoices your VAT returns are built from, so they're part of the same evidence chain. None of that demands anything elaborate. One consistent weekly record, filed by tax year and never thrown away, covers the lot.
Setting up your timesheet in five steps
1. Pick a weekly, Monday-to-Sunday format
Match the cycle your agency and clients already run. One row per client or project, one column per day, in the units (hours or days) your contract bills in.
2. Record as you go, ideally from your calendar
The gap between doing the work and writing it down is where billable time evaporates. Log daily, or let a calendar-native tool draft the week from the events you already keep and just confirm it.
3. Follow the approval process, in writing
Submit on the agency's or client's deadline, and keep evidence of every approval: the signed sheet, the confirmation email, a copy of the portal submission.
4. Reconcile approved time against money in
Check invoices, remittances and (through an umbrella) payslips against your approved hours every time. Self-billing and portals get it right most weeks, which is exactly why the odd wrong one slips through unnoticed.
5. Keep your own copy, for years
Export or file every week somewhere you control, organised by tax year. Six years for a limited company, five for a sole trader, and portal access never outlives the contract.
The bottom line
The contractors who come out of April 2026 unbothered will be the ones with boring records: a weekly sheet, approved in writing, reconciled against the money in, filed by tax year. That habit costs ten minutes a week. It costs less still if you let your calendar do the drafting, because the calendar already knows where the week went.
Frequently asked questions
Do contractors legally have to complete timesheets in the UK?
No. There's no statutory requirement; the obligation is contractual, and agencies and many clients won't pay without approved hours. Even where nobody asks, an approved timesheet settles invoice queries and backs up the income on your tax return.
Does filling in a timesheet put me inside IR35?
No. IR35 status turns on the reality of the engagement: control over how, when and where you work, the right of substitution, and mutuality of obligation. Recording hours so you can bill for them is normal supplier behaviour on a time-based contract, not an indicator of employment.
What changed for UK contractors in April 2026?
Two things. The small-company thresholds for the off-payroll rules rose to £15m turnover and £7.5m balance sheet, so around 14,000 clients became 'small' and the IR35 decision moved back to the contractor's own company. And responsibility for umbrella workers' PAYE moved to the recruitment agency, with joint and several liability through the supply chain.
How long should I keep timesheets?
Treat them as business records: at least six years from the end of the financial year for a limited company, and at least five years after the 31 January filing deadline for a sole trader. Keep your own copies; agency portal access rarely outlives the contract.
What should a contractor timesheet include?
The week commencing date, the client or assignment, hours or days per day in the units your contract bills in, a billable flag, the rate, and written evidence of approval. The approval is the part that settles disputes.
