By the end of August, Brightwater had paid $212.40 in late fees in a single month. It had missed early-payment discounts on its biggest dairy account, and one produce supplier had warned it was about to put the account on credit hold. The cash was there. The problem was that nobody could see, in one place, who was owed what and how late it was.

This is how an accounts payable aging report fixed that, using the two free templates on this page. The Excel workbook ages every open bill automatically. The one-page Word summary turns it into a payment decision the owner can sign off.

The situation in September

Dana’s starting point was a folder of supplier invoices, a bank login and a sticky note of “who’s chasing us”. There was no list of what was due when. There were 13 unpaid bills across eight suppliers, worth almost $90,000 in total, but nobody knew that number until the template added it up.

The first job was to type each open invoice into the AP Aging tab: vendor, invoice number, invoice date, payment terms in days, amount, and anything already paid. That took about forty minutes. Everything else on the sheet is calculated:

• Due date is the invoice date plus terms.
• Days late is how far the “aged as of” date is past the due date. Change that one date at the top and the whole report re-ages.
• Status drops each bill into Current, 1–30, 31–60, 61–90 or 90+ days. The 90+ bucket shows in red, so it’s hard to ignore.
• Discount columns show the deadline for any early-payment discount. It’s highlighted in amber while it’s still open and struck through once it’s missed.

What the aging report showed

Once everything was in, the tiles across the top told the story in one line:

Nothing about that table is a crisis. More than half the balance isn’t even due yet, and 86% is either current or less than a month late. But it was the first time anyone at Brightwater had seen the picture as a whole, and three problems jumped out once it was there.

Problem 1: the biggest bill was paid on noise, not on schedule

Midland Dairy Co-op is Brightwater’s largest supplier at roughly $18,000 a month. Its terms are 2/10 net 30: take 2% off if you pay within ten days, otherwise the full amount is due in thirty. August’s invoice was paid only when Midland’s credit team called, twenty days after the discount window had closed. September’s invoice, MD-88412, had already missed its discount deadline of September 28, because the paper copy reached Dana on day eleven.

That’s $369 gone on one invoice. Over a year it’s about $4,300, and that’s from a single supplier. Paying ten days early to save 2% is worth roughly a 37% annual return on the cash, which beats anything else a small distributor can do with it.

Problem 2: the bills that were actually costing money were sitting quietly

Ridgeway Logistics charges 1.5% a month on overdue balances, and invoice RL-7612 was 31 days late. Coastal Packaging had an agreed balance of $2,980 still unpaid after a part-payment in August. Neither supplier had phoned, so neither had been paid. The suppliers who were quiet weren’t necessarily patient. Some of them were just charging interest.

Problem 3: the oldest bills weren’t really bills yet

The 90+ item was a $1,186.20 paper-goods invoice that had never been approved, because nobody could find the delivery receipt. The 61–90 item was a $3,450 refrigeration repair that Brightwater disputed: it was the second call-out for the same compressor fault. Paying either one would have been a mistake. Leaving them to age without a note was a mistake too.

What changed: a weekly payment run

The fix wasn’t paying everything. It was deciding in what order. The By Vendor tab in the workbook does most of that thinking. It totals each supplier’s balance by bucket, finds their oldest open bill, and suggests an action:

Dana then applied two bits of judgment the formulas can’t. First, anything with an open discount moves to the front of the queue: Coastal’s 1% on CP-10455, worth $62.40 if paid by October 2. Second, Midland and Sunfield were paid this week anyway, even though they’re only 10 and 13 days late. One is the main supplier and the other had threatened a credit hold. A template should make the decision easier. It shouldn’t make it for you.

The one-page summary for the owner

The owner didn’t want a 14-row spreadsheet. He wanted to know how much was going out, why, and what was being held back. That’s the Word template:

It has three sections and fits on one page. Pay in this run lists five invoices totaling $40,527.60, each with a one-line reason. Hold lists the disputed repair and the unapproved invoice, with what’s being done about each. What changed is four bullet points comparing this run with last month: late fees, missed discounts, the over-90 balance, and what’s due before the next run. There’s a signature line at the bottom, because a payment run someone has approved is a control, and one nobody approved is just a habit.

Results after one month (illustrative)

• Late fees: $212.40 in August, nothing in September.
• Over-90 balance: down from $4,980.55 to $1,186.20 after old Lakeview and Harlan items were matched and paid. The one left over is under query.
• Discounts: one captured (Coastal), one missed (Midland, because of invoice routing). The fix is simple: Midland now emails invoices straight to the AP inbox.
• Time: about 30 minutes every Tuesday to update the workbook and fill in the summary, instead of a scramble every time the phone rang.

If you’re setting this up yourself

A few things Brightwater learned that apply to almost any small business:

1. Age from the due date, not the invoice date. A 30-day bill that’s 20 days old is current. The template ages from the due date, the same as most accounting software’s “days past due”.
2. Run it on the same day each week. AP aging is only useful if it’s fresh. Change the “aged as of” date and everything re-sorts.
3. Write notes. “Disputed”, “part-paid” and “never approved” turn a list of numbers into a list of decisions. The By Vendor tab looks for “DISPUTED” at the start of a note to hold that supplier automatically.
4. Keep the vendor names identical. The vendor summary uses exact matches. “Coastal Packaging” and “Coastal Packaging Inc” count as two suppliers. A check cell at the bottom tells you if the totals don’t tie.
5. Look at the other side, too. AP aging shows what you owe. The accounts receivable aging report shows what customers owe you. Putting the two next to each other is the simplest cash forecast there is.

When paying suppliers on time starts to squeeze cash, the next step is a proper cash flow statement, plus a budget report to see whether the pressure is timing or something more structural. For most small businesses, though, the aging report alone ends the phone-call method of paying bills. Usually that’s enough.

This page works through the questions owners actually ask, in roughly the order they ask them. Along the way it uses a real-looking example: Fernhill Outdoor Supply, a small camping and outdoor-gear shop, as of September 30, 2026. Both balance sheet templates used here are free. One is an Excel workbook that compares two dates and works out the key ratios. The other is a one-page Word statement you can hand to a lender.

What is a balance sheet, in one sentence?

It’s a snapshot of everything a business owns, everything it owes, and what would be left for the owner if every debt were paid off today.

The key word is snapshot. A profit and loss statement covers a stretch of time, like a month or a year. A balance sheet is one moment. Fernhill’s balance sheet says “as of September 30, 2026”. On October 1 it would already be slightly different.

Why does it have to balance?

Because every dollar the business holds came from somewhere. Either someone lent it (a liability) or it belongs to the owner (equity). That gives the equation the whole statement rests on:

Assets = Liabilities + Owner’s Equity

For Fernhill, that’s $238,230 of assets = $124,640 of liabilities + $113,590 of equity. If the two sides don’t match, something has been left out or entered twice. It doesn’t mean the business is in trouble. It means the bookkeeping is.

What goes on each side?

There are three groups, and each one is split by timing. Anything “current” turns into cash, or has to be paid, within a year.

Two lines tend to confuse people. Accumulated depreciation is shown as a negative number under fixed assets. It’s the share of the equipment’s cost that has already been “used up” on paper. Current portion of the bank loan is the $12,000 of principal due in the next twelve months. It moves out of long-term debt and into current liabilities, because that’s money the business needs to find this year.

Where do I get the numbers?

If you use accounting software, it will produce a balance sheet on its own, so this template is mostly for checking, presenting or comparing. If you keep books in a spreadsheet, or haven’t kept them at all, the numbers come from places you already have:

• Cash: the closing balance on every business bank statement for that date, after reconciling.
• Accounts receivable: unpaid customer invoices. Your AR aging list, if you keep one.
• Inventory: a stock count valued at what you paid, not what you’ll sell it for.
• Fixed assets: purchase receipts and your depreciation schedule (your accountant will have one).
• Liabilities: unpaid supplier bills, credit card statements, loan statements, payroll owed but not yet paid, and sales tax collected but not yet sent.
• Equity: what the owner put in, plus profits kept in the business over the years, minus what the owner took out.

How do I fill in the Excel template?

Type your figures into the shaded column for the current date, and last year-end’s figures into the column next to it. Every subtotal, total, dollar change and percentage change is a formula. So is the check line at the bottom. It turns green and says Balanced when assets equal liabilities plus equity, and red with the size of the gap when they don’t.

Rename, add or delete lines freely. The subtotals are simple SUM ranges, so inserting a row inside a section keeps it included. Enter negatives (depreciation, draws) with a minus sign and they’ll display in brackets the way accountants expect.

The second tab, Ratios, reads straight from the balance sheet and writes a plain-English sentence next to each result. You never type on it.

What should I look at once it’s done?

A balance sheet becomes useful when you compare it with an earlier one and run a few ratios. Here’s what Fernhill’s tells us:

The headline looks reassuring: a current ratio near 3, and debt shrinking as the loan is paid down. The detail is more interesting. Inventory jumped $15,600 (22%) since December, while cash rose only $2,460. For an outdoor shop heading into autumn, some of that is seasonal stock. But if winter gear doesn’t sell, more than half of Fernhill’s “healthy” working capital is tied up in tents and jackets. That’s the kind of insight a balance sheet gives you that a sales report never will.

Accounts receivable rising 16% is the other thing worth a look. A shop with trade customers and team accounts should check who’s paying slower than before.

How is this different from a P&L or a cash flow statement?

The three statements answer three different questions, and they connect to each other:

• The profit and loss statement asks did we make money over this period? Fernhill’s $39,250 year-to-date net income comes from there and lands in equity on the balance sheet.
• The cash flow statement asks where did the cash actually go? It explains why cash rose only $2,460 when profit was $39,250. Inventory, receivables, loan payments and owner’s draws absorbed the rest.
• The balance sheet asks where do we stand right now?

If you need all three in one pack for a lender or investor, our financial report template pulls them together with a short commentary page.

What’s the Word version for?

This is the version you send, not the one you work in. It uses the “account form” layout, with assets on the left and liabilities and equity on the right, so the balance is visible at a glance. Below that is a strip of four ratios, short notes on how inventory and assets are valued, and a sign-off line. Banks often want exactly this: one page, a clear date, the word “unaudited” if it is, and the owner’s name on it.

Update the numbers by typing over them. Keep the Excel file as your working copy, so the arithmetic is checked before anything goes into the Word statement.

How often should a small business prepare one?

At minimum, once a year at year end, because your tax preparer needs it. Quarterly is better for most businesses that carry inventory or debt. Monthly makes sense if you’re managing a credit line, growing quickly or trying to fix a cash problem. The Excel template’s comparison column works for any of these. Put the previous period’s figures in column D and the changes follow.

What if it doesn’t balance?

Check these in order. Between them they cover nearly every case:

1. Is this year’s profit in equity? Leaving out year-to-date net income is the most common reason for a gap.
2. Are owner’s draws entered as a negative? A positive $18,000 creates a $36,000 error.
3. Did you double-count the loan? The current portion should come out of the long-term figure, not sit in both places.
4. Is depreciation negative? Same sign problem as draws.
5. Are both dates really the same date? A bank balance from October 2 mixed with a payables list from September 30 won’t match.
6. Is the gap divisible by 9? If so, look for two transposed digits, such as 3,215 typed as 3,125.

Once it balances, save a copy with the date in the filename. Next quarter, that copy becomes your comparison column, and the balance sheet starts telling you a story instead of just giving you a total.

So rather than one generic grid, this page has two free timesheet templates and a short guide to which parts matter for which person. The Excel file is a weekly calculator, plus a client time log on a second tab. The Word file is a printable pay-period timesheet for teams that still sign paper. Both are filled in with sample hours, so you can see them working before you clear them out.

Quick start: five minutes to your first timesheet

1. Download the Excel template and open the Weekly Timesheet tab.
2. Type the employee’s name, the Monday that starts the week, the hourly rate and your overtime threshold (40 is the US federal default) into the shaded cells.
3. Enter start, lunch and finish times for each day. Type 7:00 or 3:30 PM. Excel will understand either.
4. Read the bottom line. Hours, regular time, overtime and gross pay fill in on their own.
5. Print it or save it as a PDF, get it signed, and keep a copy. That’s the whole routine.

If you’d rather hand out paper, skip to the Word template further down. It works the same way, minus the math.

The Excel timesheet: what it does for you

The sample week belongs to Jordan, a print technician who worked a long Wednesday, a late Friday and a Saturday morning. That came to 47.25 hours. The sheet keeps a running count of regular hours, so overtime kicks in at exactly the point Jordan crosses 40. Here, that’s partway through Friday, not on some arbitrary day. That’s how US federal overtime works: it’s based on hours in the workweek, not hours per day.

A few details took some testing. A shift that finishes after midnight still calculates correctly, because the formula wraps the clock. A day with no lunch break is fine, so Saturday’s four hours don’t need dummy entries. The time cells reject nonsense like “7 o’clock”, so you won’t end up with a quietly broken total.

Which parts matter depends on who you are

This is where most timesheet advice goes generic. Here’s the same template seen from three chairs.

If you’re an hourly employee

Your timesheet is your evidence. If your paycheck looks short, it’s the only document you control. Three habits make it bulletproof:

• Fill it in daily, not on Friday afternoon. A week of guessed start times is how 15 minutes a day goes missing. That’s over 60 hours a year.
• Record the real lunch, not the scheduled one. If you ate at your desk and answered calls, that time isn’t an unpaid break. Under federal rules, short breaks of about 5 to 20 minutes are paid time anyway.
• Keep your own copy. Save the PDF before you send it. If there’s a dispute later, a copy dated the week it happened is worth a lot more than memory.

Check the overtime column every week. If you’re non-exempt and it says 7.25 while your pay stub says 5, that’s a conversation worth having.

If you’re a freelancer or contractor

You probably don’t care about overtime. You care about two numbers: billable hours and your real hourly rate. That’s what the second tab, Client Time Log, is for. Every block of work gets one line: client, task, start, finish and whether it’s billable. The sheet then totals hours and fees for each client.

The sample tells a familiar story. A designer logs 15.75 hours across three clients in a week, but only 14.25 of them can be billed. The rest went on admin and a re-export that was the designer’s own mistake. Their quoted rates run from $60 to $70, but the effective rate across every hour worked comes out at $59.21. Watch that number over a month. It tells you which clients are actually worth it.

Track non-billable time too, even though nobody pays for it. If you only log billable hours, you’ll keep underquoting, because you’ll never see how much invoicing, revisions and email take.

If you run a small team

Your problem isn’t formulas. It’s getting timesheets back on time, complete and signed. What helps:

• Pick one workweek and stick to it. The template assumes Monday to Sunday. If your payroll week runs Sunday to Saturday, change the start date and the rest follows.
• Set the overtime rules once. The threshold and multiplier sit in two cells at the top. If you’re in a state with daily overtime, such as California, you’ll need a daily rule on top of the weekly one. The template only handles the weekly federal rule.
• Make approval a real step. There’s a manager signature line for a reason. An unapproved timesheet that went straight to payroll is a weak record.
• Keep them. Federal rules expect payroll records to be kept for three years, and time cards and wage-calculation records for two. A folder of signed PDFs per pay period covers it.

Once timesheets are in, they feed straight into the rest of the payroll paperwork. Our payroll report template picks up where this one stops, and the attendance report template is better for spotting absence patterns across a whole team than a stack of individual sheets.

The Word timesheet: for paper, clipboards and signatures

Some workplaces simply run on paper. Think of a shop counter, a job site trailer, or a volunteer desk. This version is a two-week pay-period form with a row for every day, a notes column and a summary strip at the bottom. In the sample, Aisha worked 25 hours in week one and 21 in week two. That’s 46 hours, or $793.50 at $17.25 an hour, and no overtime because neither week went over 40.

That last point trips people up. A two-week period with more than 80 hours doesn’t automatically mean overtime, and one with fewer than 80 doesn’t rule it out. Overtime is counted week by week. A 50-hour week followed by a 30-hour week still owes 10 hours of overtime, even though the period total is exactly 80. The Word form keeps the weeks separate on purpose so that this is obvious at a glance.

Because it’s a normal Word table, you can add a column for job codes, rename “Unpaid break” to suit your policy, or switch the period to weekly by deleting the second block.

Small things that keep timesheets honest

• Pick a rounding rule and write it down. Rounding to the nearest quarter hour is common and allowed in the US, as long as it evens out over time and doesn’t always favor the employer. Rounding 7:07 to 7:15 and 4:53 to 4:45 every day isn’t neutral.
• Don’t let anyone pre-fill the week. A timesheet showing exactly 8.00 hours every day for a month is usually fiction, and it protects nobody.
• Use the notes column. “Covered for Dev” or “inventory count” takes four seconds and answers a question a manager would otherwise have to ask.
• Store the signed copy, not the spreadsheet. A spreadsheet can be changed later. A signed PDF from the week in question is the actual record.

Which template should you pick?

For a weekly summary of what the team actually got done, rather than how many hours it took, pair these with the weekly report templates. Hours tell you what work cost. A weekly report tells you what it produced.

Both timesheet files are free to use, edit and share inside your business. Clear the sample hours, put in your own company name, and save a blank copy as your master before the first real week goes in.

They’re written for the manager who’ll skim them later in the week, so they open with headcount and output and bury the useful part somewhere around line fourteen. But the person who actually needs the report is standing in front of you at 6:30 in the morning with a coffee, about to take over your floor. They have ten minutes before their shift starts, and they need to know what’s broken, what’s late and what could hurt someone.

Write for that person and almost everything else about the report sorts itself out. That’s the whole argument of this piece. There’s a free end of shift report template further down, a one-page Word handover sheet and an Excel version with a weekly log, both built around that idea.

A handover that went wrong in eleven words.

Here’s a version of a story most shift supervisors could tell.

A night supervisor at a distribution center has a rough shift. A conveyor jams just before midnight. Around two, a forklift starts leaking hydraulic fluid near the mast; it gets tagged out and parked. The Wi-Fi in one zone drops and the scanners go with it. The crew still ships most of what it should.

At the end of the shift the supervisor writes a thorough report. Headcount, orders shipped, units picked, trucks loaded, three downtime events with times, two near misses, a first-aid case. Halfway down the downtime table, in eleven words: FL-07 hydraulic leak by mast, tagged out, maintenance ticket raised.

The morning lead reads the top of the report. Output’s a bit down, nobody was seriously hurt, fine. At 6:45 they hand out trucks. The tag on FL-07 is on the side facing the wall, and a driver takes it. Twenty minutes later there’s a slick of fluid down an aisle, the aisle is closed for cleanup, and the trailer that was supposed to leave at eight leaves at nine.

Nobody did anything wrong, exactly. The information was in the report. It was just in the wrong place.

Put three things at the top, and only three.

The fix is simple, and it’s the single design choice everything in the template follows: the first section of the report is the handover. Not the date block, not the numbers. Three lines, written as instructions to the next shift:

• What’s broken or unsafe, and what they should do about it. FL-07 is tagged out. Do not use it. Parts due at 10:00.
• What’s late or at risk. Ashford batch 7 is picked and staged in lanes D4 to D6 but not loaded. Their carrier comes at 08:00. Load it first.
• What might happen again, and who to call. Zone D Wi-Fi dropped twice. If it drops again, call IT on-call, not the help desk.

Why three? Because a list of seven is a list nobody remembers, and because forcing yourself to choose is the useful part. If something doesn’t make your top three, it goes in the open-issues table further down, where it’s still recorded but isn’t competing for attention.

Write each line so it would make sense to someone who wasn’t there and didn’t read anything else. Equipment ID, location, what to do, when it changes. Leaked fluid near the mast on FL-07 is a fact. Do not use FL-07 is a handover.

Numbers come second, and never on their own.

I’m not against numbers. A shift report without them is just a diary. But a number without a target is trivia, and a number below target without a reason invites the wrong conversation.

So every output line in the template has a target, an actual, the percentage of target and a short note. Here’s the night from the story:

Read the notes column and the shortfall stops looking like a slow crew. It’s one forklift and one carrier booking. That’s a very different Monday meeting.

The Excel version also works out labor hours (people on shift × 8, plus overtime) and units per labor hour, which came to 65.4 against a target of 70. Downtime minutes are calculated from start and end times, including stops that run past midnight, which is exactly where hand-typed minutes tend to go wrong.

What’s in the free template.

Start with the Word handover sheet. It’s one printed page, designed to be read at the start of the next shift with both supervisors standing at the desk. The handover is section one, in a box you can’t miss.

Below the top three it has the shift numbers with notes, a safety strip (recordable injuries, first aid, near misses, days without a recordable), an open-issues table with priority, owner and due time, a short before-you-leave checklist and two signature lines: one for the outgoing supervisor, one for the incoming supervisor to confirm they’ve read it.

The Excel template carries the same structure, plus the arithmetic:

• Shift Report tab: people on shift, output against target with a status that flags anything under 95% as Behind, a downtime log that totals minutes and counts unfixed equipment, safety counts, open issues with drop-down priorities and statuses, and a line that counts open and high-priority items automatically.
• Week Log tab: one row per shift, three shifts a day for a week. The current shift’s row pulls straight from the report, and the week-to-date line shows total orders against target, total downtime and safety counts. In the sample, the week is running at 95.3% of target, and Thursday night stands out with 102 minutes of downtime.

Rename the measures to fit your operation. A hospital ward, a security desk, a hotel front office and a production line will each track different things. The order of the sections is the part worth keeping.

Ten minutes, not forty.

If writing the report takes forty minutes, it gets written badly or not at all, usually in the car park. A few habits keep it short:

• Write as you go. Log downtime and incidents when they happen, with times. At the end of the shift you’re only writing the top three.
• Write the handover last. By 6:15 you know which of the night’s problems are still problems.
• Hand it over in person. Walk the incoming supervisor through the three lines, then both sign. The signature isn’t bureaucracy. It’s the moment the next shift accepts the floor as it is.
• Don’t copy yesterday’s report. Stale open issues are worse than none, because people learn to skip the section.

The report doesn’t end at the handover.

Once the shift has been handed over, the same page feeds everything else. Anything that hurt someone or nearly did belongs in a proper incident report, not just a line on the shift sheet. Equipment that keeps showing up in the downtime log is a case for the maintenance report. Absences and agency cover roll into an attendance report, and the week log gives you most of what a KPI report or a broader daily report needs without re-keying anything.

But all of that comes second. The first job of an end-of-shift report is to make sure the next person walks onto a floor they understand. If your report does that, it’s a good report, whatever else is on it.

If you’ve ever stared at a gap like that at month-end, here’s the good news: it’s almost never a mystery, and it’s almost never fraud. It’s a pile of small, explainable differences that haven’t been sorted yet. Sorting them is what a bank reconciliation is.

This post follows one month for a small business, Harbor Lane Bakery, from the messy before to the tidy after. Every item that caused the gap is listed, explained and fixed, so you can see exactly how a bank reconciliation template gets from $2,891.71 to zero. The Excel workbook and the Word statement used here are free to download, and both come filled in with this example so you can check your work against it.

Before: what the two numbers actually mean

The bank balance is what the bank has processed by the statement date. The ledger balance is what your bookkeeping says you should have. They disagree for three reasons, and only three:

• Timing. You’ve recorded something the bank hasn’t processed yet: a deposit made on the last evening of the month, or a check the supplier hasn’t cashed.
• Information the books don’t have yet. The bank has done something you haven’t recorded: charged a fee, paid interest, collected a customer payment by ACH, or bounced a check you deposited.
• Mistakes. Usually yours, occasionally the bank’s. A transposed number, a duplicate entry, a payment posted to the wrong account.

Keep those three buckets in mind. Each one gets fixed on a different side of the reconciliation, and mixing them up is the most common reason a reconciliation that should take half an hour takes all afternoon.

Here’s the starting point in the Excel template, with the September statement balance and the ledger balance typed into the two copper cells at the top of each column. Everything else on the sheet is calculated from the item lists on the other tabs.

The workbook has four tabs: Reconciliation (the summary above), Outstanding (deposits in transit and uncleared checks, with days outstanding worked out for you), Book Adjustments (bank items missing from your books, each with its journal entry) and Monthly Log (one line per month, so a year of reconciliations sits on a single screen).

Pass 1: things the bank hasn’t caught up with

Start with timing, because it’s the easiest. Put last month’s reconciliation next to this month’s statement and tick off everything that has now cleared. Then go through this month’s ledger and look for deposits and checks that don’t appear on the statement yet.

Harbor Lane had two deposits in transit and five checks still out:

Deposits in transit are added to the bank balance and outstanding checks are subtracted, because the bank will catch up with both within a few days. After this pass the bank side reads 48,212.67 + 3,971.30 − 6,024.75 = $46,159.22. That’s the adjusted bank balance, and it won’t move again unless the bank itself made an error.

Notice the last line. A check written in June and still not cashed in September isn’t a timing difference anymore. It’s a lost check, a customer who never deposited it, or something worse. The template flags anything past 60 days as Follow up so it can’t hide in the list. Somebody should call J. Park this week.

Pass 2: things the bank knows and your books don’t

Now read the statement line by line, looking for anything the bank did on its own. These items are never corrected on the bank side. The bank is right; your books just don’t know yet. Each one goes on the Book Adjustments tab and needs a journal entry.

Two of these deserve a second look. The $1,450 ACH payment means a customer invoice is still showing as unpaid on your receivables, so recording it fixes cash and accounts receivable at the same time. And the returned check goes back onto the customer’s balance, because they still owe you. If you track receivables in an AR aging report, both changes show up there too.

Pass 3: the $27 that was our own fault

After passes 1 and 2, Harbor Lane’s book side came to $46,132.22. The bank side was $46,159.22. Still $27.00 apart.

A small, round-ish leftover like this is nearly always a recording error, and there’s an old bookkeeper’s trick for finding it: if the difference divides evenly by 9, look for a transposition, two digits swapped. 27 ÷ 9 = 3, so the culprit is likely a pair of adjacent digits that differ by 3.

Scanning the cleared checks turned it up in a couple of minutes. Check #2183 to Rossi Packaging cleared the bank at $658.00. It had been entered in the ledger as $685.00. The books had taken out $27 too much, so the correction adds $27 back to the book balance and takes it off packaging supplies expense.

Errors like this are why you reconcile from the statement’s cleared amounts, not from your own check register. The bank processed what was written on the check. Your register shows what someone typed.

After: both sides at $46,159.22

With every item in place, the reconciliation reads:

Difference: $0.00. The status bar in the template turns from red to brown and reads Reconciled.

But the job isn’t quite done. The adjusted book balance only exists on paper until the adjustments are posted. Harbor Lane needs two journal entries, which the template writes out for you on the Book Adjustments tab:

• AJE-1: debit Cash 1,495.42; credit Interest income 18.42, Accounts receivable (Lakeside Events) 1,450.00 and Packaging supplies 27.00.
• AJE-2: debit Bank and merchant fees 352.66, Accounts receivable (Delgado Catering) 240.00 and Payroll service fees 64.50; credit Cash 657.16.

Once those are posted, the ledger reads $46,159.22, and next month’s reconciliation starts from a clean, agreed number. A Posted? column next to each adjustment makes it obvious when something was reconciled but never booked, which is a surprisingly common way for the same difference to come back every month.

For the file, or for an owner or accountant who doesn’t want a spreadsheet, the Word template turns the same month into a short, signed statement: the four headline balances, both sides of the reconciliation, the journal entries, the items needing follow-up and a sign-off for the preparer and the reviewer.

When it still won’t balance

Some months the difference refuses to go away. Before you start re-checking every line, try these, roughly in order of how often they’re the answer:

• Last month didn’t actually reconcile. If the opening position was off, this month will be off by the same amount. Check the Monthly Log first.
• The difference matches a single item. Search the statement and the ledger for that exact amount. It’s usually something entered twice or not at all.
• The difference is exactly twice an item. Something was recorded with the wrong sign: a deposit entered as a payment, or the other way round.
• It divides by 9. A transposition, as in pass 3 above.
• Someone edited a closed month. A back-dated entry in the software changes the ledger balance you reconciled to. Compare the ledger balance today with the one written on last month’s reconciliation.
• The bank made the error. Rare, but it happens: another customer’s deposit, or a check cleared for the wrong amount. These are the only items that adjust the bank side. Call the bank and keep a note of the reference.

Whatever you do, don’t plug the gap with a miscellaneous entry to make it balance. A small unexplained difference this month is often a much bigger one hiding underneath it.

Questions people ask about bank reconciliation

How often should you reconcile a bank account?

At least monthly, when the statement arrives. Busy accounts, or businesses that have had cash problems, often reconcile weekly. The fewer transactions in each round, the faster errors are found.

Who should do it?

Ideally someone who doesn’t write checks or approve payments, with a second person reviewing and signing. In a very small business that may be the bookkeeper preparing and the owner reviewing, which is what the sign-off lines in the Word template are for.

My accounting software has a reconcile feature. Do I still need this?

The software does the matching well. What it doesn’t give you is a clear record that a person looked at the old outstanding items, approved the adjustments and signed off. Many businesses reconcile in the software and keep the one-page statement as their month-end record.

What do I do with a check that’s been outstanding for months?

Contact the payee first. If the check was lost, void it in the books and reissue it. If you can’t reach them, don’t simply write it off: most US states have unclaimed property rules that eventually require you to report and send the money to the state, so check the rules where you operate.

Where this fits in your month-end

A reconciled bank balance is the number every other report leans on. It’s the closing cash figure in your cash flow statement, it anchors the profit and loss statement because the fees and interest you just found belong there, and it’s the first thing an accountant checks before trusting a financial report. If unrecorded card fees keep turning up month after month, an expense report that logs them as they happen will make the next reconciliation shorter.

Start with one month. Type in two balances, list what’s in transit, read the statement for anything the bank did on its own, and see what’s left. It’s rarely as big as the number you started with.

You can do better in about an hour a month. A useful social media report fits on one page, uses the same numbers every month, and tells the reader three things: did we grow, did people care, and did any of it lead to sales? Below is the five-step routine I’d use, plus a free social media report template in Excel and Word, filled in with a month of sample data from a small coffee roaster.

1. Choose five numbers and stick with them

Every platform will happily show you forty metrics. Pick a small set that you can pull from every channel, and report them the same way every month:

• Followers at the start and end of the month (net new and growth % are calculated).
• Reach: unique accounts that saw your content. Impressions are worth logging too, but reach is the better base for rates.
• Engagements: likes, comments, shares, saves and replies.
• Link clicks to your site.
• Conversions: orders, sign-ups or leads you can trace to social, usually through UTM-tagged links.

That’s it. Posts published and ad spend go in too, as context. Anything else belongs in a deep-dive, not the monthly report.

2. Pull the data on the same day every month

Pick a day, such as the first working day of the month, and export from each platform’s own analytics: Meta Business Suite for Instagram and Facebook, TikTok Studio, LinkedIn page analytics, YouTube Studio. Conversions come from your web analytics.

Platforms sometimes revise recent numbers for a few days, so pulling on the same day keeps your months comparable. Write down where each number came from in a notes cell. Six months from now, someone will ask.

3. Compare channels with rates, not totals

TikTok reached 251,400 people for the sample brand in September. LinkedIn reached 8,700. Comparing those totals is meaningless. Comparing rates isn’t:

Now there’s a story. TikTok and Instagram get similar engagement, but Instagram turns attention into clicks at more than three times the rate and brings in twice the conversions. Facebook barely engages anyone, yet it still sends traffic. LinkedIn is tiny and has the best click-through of the lot.

The template uses engagement rate = engagements ÷ reach and click-through = link clicks ÷ impressions. Some tools divide engagements by followers or by impressions instead. Any of them is fine as long as you pick one, label it on the report and never switch quietly.

4. Put this month next to last month and next to the goal

A number with nothing to compare it to is just trivia. The template gives each headline metric two comparisons:

• Versus last month: reach was up 13%, engagement rate rose from 6.48% to 7.03% (+0.55 points), and conversions went from 129 to 148.
• Versus the goal: four monthly targets with a status that calculates itself. In the sample, followers (48,110 against 48,000) and engagement rate (7.03% against 7.0%) are marked as hit, while link clicks are 9% short and conversions 1% short.

Write rate changes in percentage points, not percent. “Engagement rate up 8.5%” and “engagement rate up 0.55 points” describe the same change, but only the second is hard to misread.

For the bigger picture, a 12-Month Trend tab keeps one row per month. September’s row pulls straight from the monthly report, and a column chart of reach shows the shape of the year. Here it’s the expected January dip after a busy December, then growth (apart from a small dip in June) to a record September.

5. Write three sentences someone will actually read

The numbers are for you. The summary is for your boss, client or owner. Open the report with a short paragraph that answers “so what?” Here’s the sample brand’s:

“September was our best month of the year for reach and engagement rate. TikTok did most of the lifting. Instagram is still where sales come from. We hit two of four goals; clicks and conversions came in just short.”

Then add what worked, what didn’t, and what you’ll do next month, with an owner for each action. The Word template is set up exactly that way.

The templates

Excel: Social Media Report + 12-Month Trend

The Monthly Report tab has four headline cards (followers, reach, engagement rate, conversions), an audience and reach table, an engagement and results table, the month-on-month and goals blocks, and a top-posts table ranked by engagements. You type in the raw numbers for each channel. Net new followers, growth, reach per post, engagement rate, engagements per post, click-through and cost per conversion are all formulas, shown in bold teal. The best engagement rates are highlighted, and growth gets a pink color scale so the fastest-growing channel is easy to spot.

Five channels are set up (Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube). Rename any row to Pinterest, Threads, X or whatever you use. The totals don’t care what the rows are called.

Word: Social Media Monthly Recap

A two-page write-up of the same month: a summary paragraph, four headline figures, a channel snapshot table, wins worth repeating, the top five posts, misses and what was learned, next month’s plan with owners and goals, and a short note on how each metric is measured. Send it as a PDF, or paste the sections into an email.

Metric cheat sheet

Keep this near the template so everyone on the team calculates things the same way.

Reporting to a client? Change two things

If you run social for clients, the template works as it is, with two adjustments.

Agree on the goals before the month starts. Put the targets in the goals block on day one and send the client a copy. A report that says “we hit 2 of 4 goals” is only fair if they agreed to those four goals in advance. Otherwise you’ll spend the review call debating whether 7% engagement is good instead of what to do next.

Lead with their business, not your platform metrics. A café owner cares about orders and footfall more than reach. Make conversions the first number they see (it already has its own headline card in the template) and talk about clicks and conversions before followers. Keep the channel tables. They show your working, and the client’s marketing manager will want them. But the summary paragraph should start with what the month did for the business.

One more thing: send the Word recap as a PDF, and keep the Excel file yourself. Clients forward reports, and you don’t want your formulas, notes or ad spend columns traveling with them.

Where this report fits

Social is one part of marketing, so this report usually feeds a bigger one. Roll the headline numbers into a monthly marketing report alongside email, search and paid campaigns, or track a couple of them, such as engagement rate and conversions, on a KPI report. If social drives most of your online orders, put the conversion figures next to your sales report so the two teams are looking at the same numbers. Running a launch or a busy season? A short weekly report with just reach, clicks and conversions keeps everyone up to date between the monthly reports.

Last tip: when you start a new month, copy the Monthly Report tab, paste last month’s trend row as values, and update the inputs. The whole routine should take an hour. Spend the time you save on the posts themselves.

A good employee turnover report answers those questions on one or two pages, and it does the math the same way every month so the trend means something. This guide walks through how to calculate turnover properly, which numbers deserve a place next to the headline rate, and how to read the result without overreacting to it. You can download a free employee turnover report template in Excel and Word along the way. Both files come filled in with a year of sample data from a fictional home health agency so you can see the finished report before you add your own.

Start with the formula (and the two places people get it wrong)

The standard calculation is simple:

Turnover rate = number of separations in the period ÷ average headcount in the period × 100

A separation is anyone who left the payroll for any reason: resignations, terminations, layoffs and retirements. Most of the arguments start with the two inputs.

Mistake 1: dividing by today’s headcount

If you divide twelve months of exits by the headcount on the last day of the year, a company that grew will look better than it is and one that shrank will look worse. Use an average instead. The cleanest version is the average of each month’s (opening headcount + closing headcount) ÷ 2, then the average of those twelve figures. That’s what the Excel template does in the Average headcount column.

Here’s the sample company’s year in short form:

Divide by the closing figure of 218 instead and you get 18.8%. Small difference here, but at a company that hired fast or ran a layoff it can be several points.

Mistake 2: annualizing a single bad month

One month of 2.4% turnover is not “29% a year.” Monthly figures jump around, especially in small teams, so treat them as a signal to look closer rather than as a forecast. If you do report a quarter, say clearly whether the number is quarterly (Northfield’s Q3 was 5.5%) or annualized (about 22% at that pace). Mixing the two in one slide is how a board ends up debating the wrong figure.

A third, smaller point: decide up front whether to include temporary staff, interns and internal transfers. Most HR teams leave out transfers and seasonal workers. Either way, write the rule in the report so next year’s numbers can be compared fairly.

Four numbers that matter more than the headline rate

The overall rate is a starting point. These four tell you what’s behind it, and all of them are calculated for you in the template.

Voluntary turnover

Resignations only, divided by the same average headcount. This is the number most people mean when they say “turnover,” and it’s the one you can do the most about. In the sample, 31 of the 41 exits were voluntary, so voluntary turnover is 14.5%. The other 10 were terminations for attendance, performance or policy reasons. Those deserve attention too, but they say more about hiring and onboarding than about why people choose to leave.

First-year turnover

The share of leavers who had been with you less than a year. This one is often the most useful number in the whole report. At Northfield it’s 61%: 25 of the 41 people who left hadn’t reached their first anniversary. When most of your exits come from new hires, the fix usually lies in recruiting, pay at the entry level and the first 90 days, not in engagement surveys for long-serving staff.

Regrettable losses

A plain count of the leavers you would have hired back tomorrow. It’s a judgment call made by the manager, and that’s fine. Twenty-two regrettable exits tells a very different story from 41 total. If your best performers are leaving, the headline rate can look healthy while the organization is quietly getting weaker.

Retention rate

Turnover’s mirror image, but not exactly the opposite. Retention asks: of the people employed on day one of the period, what share are still here at the end? New hires who joined and left within the year don’t count. In the sample, 26 of the 210 opening employees left, so retention is (210 − 26) ÷ 210 = 87.6%. The Excel file works this out with a COUNTIFS that looks for leavers whose hire date is before the period start.

The templates

Two files, one dataset. Use the spreadsheet as the working tool that HR updates every month. Use the Word document when the numbers need to go to leadership with some explanation attached.

Excel: Employee Turnover Report with Leavers Log

The workbook has four tabs:

• Turnover Summary: five headline figures at the top (turnover, voluntary turnover, retention, first-year leavers and regrettable losses), a twelve-month table, and breakdowns by exit reason and by tenure at exit.
• By Department: exits, voluntary and involuntary split, turnover rate, first-year exits, average tenure of leavers and regrettable losses for each team. Any department running above the company rate is highlighted.
• Leavers Log: one row per person who left, with drop-downs for department, separation type, exit reason and the regrettable flag. Tenure in years and a tenure band are calculated from the hire and exit dates.
• Lists: the departments and exit reasons that feed the drop-downs. Rename them to match your organization.

You only type in three places: the period start date and opening headcount, the number of hires each month, and the Leavers Log. Monthly exits are counted from the log with COUNTIFS on exit date and type, closing headcount is opening + hires − exits, and every rate follows from there. Months running more than 25% above the average monthly rate are shaded, and two small checks warn you if a leaver has no exit reason or if the department totals don’t match the summary.

Word: Quarterly Employee Turnover Report

A two-page write-up for a leadership meeting, built on the same data. It opens with a short plain-language summary and four headline figures, then compares this quarter with the last one, shows turnover by department, lists the main exit reasons with an anonymized quote from an exit interview, sets out the actions being taken with owners and due dates, and ends with a short watch list for next quarter and a sign-off block. Replace the sample text with your own. The structure is the useful part.

Reading a real report: what the Northfield numbers say

Numbers only help if someone draws a conclusion from them. Here’s how I’d read the sample data if it landed on my desk.

The headline is fine. The detail isn’t. 19.2% annual turnover is unremarkable for a home care business, where aide roles turn over constantly. Stopping there would miss the point, though. The department view shows where the exits are concentrated:

Aides make up 43% of the workforce but account for half of all exits and 16 of the 25 first-year leavers. That one group is the story.

The quarter got worse, and in a specific way. Q3 had 12 exits against 9 in Q2. Eleven of the twelve were voluntary and eleven had less than a year of service. When the same pattern shows up in both columns, it usually points to one cause rather than several.

The exit reasons line up with the tenure data. Pay or a better offer is the top reason (10 exits), followed by schedules and hours (7). All four “career growth” exits were aides leaving to study nursing. Put together: newer aides are leaving early, for slightly better pay and more predictable schedules. That’s something the business can act on, which is why the Word report pairs each finding with an action and an owner.

Small teams need a footnote. Scheduling & Intake shows 21.1%, which looks alarming until you see it’s four people on a team of nineteen. The template highlights it because it’s above the company rate. A human still has to decide whether it matters.

Watch the regrettable count in Field Nursing. Ten exits, seven of them regrettable. Nurses are harder to replace than aides, so a lower turnover rate can still hurt more. That’s why regrettable losses get their own column.

Should you compare yourself to an industry benchmark?

Carefully. Published benchmarks vary a lot depending on who collected them, which separations they count and how they define headcount. In the United States, the Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes monthly quits and total separation rates by industry in its JOLTS survey, and many industry associations run their own surveys. Both are worth a look for context.

The comparison that matters most is with yourself: the same calculation, run the same way, every month. If your first-year turnover drops from 61% to 45% after you change onboarding, that tells you far more than learning you’re three points above some sector average. If you do quote a benchmark, put the source and the year next to it, and make sure you’re comparing like with like, such as voluntary with voluntary or annual with annual.

Monthly, quarterly or once a year?

All three, at different levels of detail.

• Monthly: update the Leavers Log and the hires column. Takes ten minutes if exits are logged as they happen. Look at the shaded months and the department view, and leave it there unless something stands out.
• Quarterly: write the Word report. Compare the quarter with the one before, pick out two or three findings, and agree actions with owners. Most leadership teams don’t need more often than this.
• Annually: run the full twelve-month view, review your exit reason list (rename anything vague, split “Other” if it’s grown), and reset targets.

Turnover rarely tells the whole people story alone. It sits well next to an employee performance report, since you’ll want to know whether the people leaving were strong or weak performers, and an attendance report, because rising absence often comes a few months before resignations. If you track people measures alongside business ones, a KPI report can carry the headline turnover and retention rates each month.

Getting exit reasons you can trust

The exit reason column is the weakest part of most turnover reports, so it’s worth a few minutes of extra care.

• Keep the list short. Eight to twelve reasons is plenty. If one reason grows past about a quarter of exits, split it into more specific ones.
• Separate the stated reason from the real one. “Personal reasons” on a resignation letter often turns into “my manager” in a candid exit conversation. Record the reason you believe is true and note how you know.
• Track exit interview completion. The template shows it at 77% of voluntary leavers. Below about 70%, your reasons breakdown is based on too few people to lean on.
• Ask someone other than the direct manager. People are more open with HR, or with a short anonymous form, than with the boss they’re leaving.

Keep the log factual, the way you would in an employee incident report: dates, roles and reasons, not opinions about the person. Some of what lands in it is sensitive, so store the workbook where only HR and the people who need it can open it, and share the department and company totals rather than the named list.

One last thing

The most useful turnover reports I’ve seen are short. They show a rate calculated the same way every time, the three or four figures that explain it, and a sentence or two about what the team will do next. The template takes care of the calculations. The judgment about what the numbers mean is still yours, and it’s the part leadership will actually remember.

The daily report can. Rain and wind stood the tower crane down from 8:00 to 10:00. The city inspector arrived 45 minutes late for the pre-pour deck inspection. RFI-087 was still waiting on the engineer, which held up the plumbing risers in Shaft P2. That’s 4.25 hours of documented delay, with times, names and a responsible party next to each one. One reply, attached PDF, question closed.

That is what a construction daily report is really for. It isn’t busywork. It’s the one record written on the day by someone who was standing on the slab, and months later it’s usually the document that settles arguments about time, money and safety. Below you’ll find a free construction daily report template in Excel and Word, a walk-through of a real filled-in day, and the habits that make a daily log hold up when somebody finally reads it closely.

Download the Templates

Both files use the same sample day, Report No. 163 on a medical office building job, so you can see how they line up. The Excel file is the working log your super or foreman fills in on site. The Word file is the version you send to an owner, architect or lender, where it needs to read well.

Excel: Construction Daily Report + Monthly Log

The Daily Report sheet is a single printable form split into eight numbered sections: weather, manpower, equipment, work performed, materials delivered, delays and RFIs, safety and visitors, and a look-ahead with sign-off. Type over the white cells. The shaded cells do the math for you:

• Report number counts working days since contract start with =NETWORKDAYS(B8,A8), so you never have to track it by hand.
• Day of contract, days left and time elapsed come from the report date, start date and contract duration.
• Man-hours for each trade are =C19*D19+E19: workers × hours each, plus total overtime hours.
• Equipment utilization is hours used ÷ (used + idle), and anything under 60% turns orange.
• Hours lost totals every delay line, and a small check warns you if toolbox talk attendance is lower than the headcount.

The four cards at the top (workers on site, man-hours, hours lost and safety events) update on their own. A second tab, Monthly Log, keeps one line per working day with month-to-date totals and averages; the last row pulls today’s numbers straight from the Daily Report sheet.

Word: Daily Site Report

Same day, written up for people who weren’t there. It opens with a short “today in brief” summary and four headline numbers, then works through weather, work completed, manpower, equipment, deliveries, delays and open RFIs, safety and visitors, and the next two days. Page three is a photo log with captioned boxes; drop your own photos in and keep the captions specific.

Not on a construction job? The general daily report template suits offices, service crews and shift teams, and the daily progress report templates focus on percent complete rather than site conditions.

What Belongs on the Page

Whether you use our file or build your own, check that it captures these ten things. Skip one and that’s exactly where the gap will show up in a claim file.

• Project, date and report number. Numbered reports make it obvious when one is missing.
• Weather, morning and afternoon. Temperature, rain in inches, wind and ground conditions, not just “rain.”
• Manpower by trade and by company. Headcount, hours and overtime for each sub.
• Equipment on site. What ran, and what sat idle.
• Work performed, by location. Gridlines, levels or rooms, so progress can be traced later.
• Deliveries. Material, quantity, supplier and the ticket number.
• Delays and open issues. Cause, start and stop times, hours lost and who is responsible.
• Safety. Toolbox talk topic and attendance, recordables, first aid cases and near misses.
• Visitors and inspections. Who came, when, and the result.
• Photos and a signature. Dated, captioned photos, and the name of the person who stands behind the report.

One Day, Filled In: Report No. 163

Here’s how the sample report reads, section by section, so you can see what “good enough” looks like.

Weather. Overcast with light rain in the morning, rain until 1:30 pm, then clearing. 48°F low, 59°F high, 0.42 inches of rain, wind 12 mph from the southwest. The laydown area turned to mud. None of that is dramatic, but it explains the crane stand-down and the skid steer hours.

Manpower. 39 workers from seven trades. Concrete had 8 people on 8-hour days plus 6 overtime hours to finish the pour, so 8 × 8 + 6 = 70 man-hours. Add up every trade and the day comes to 326 man-hours, or about 8.4 hours per worker. If a sub later invoices for 12 concrete finishers that day, you have the number.

Equipment. This is where the report quietly saves money. The figures from the sample day:

Work performed. Six activities, each with a location, a status and a percent complete. The plumbing risers are marked Behind, which the template highlights, and the note points to RFI-087. Someone reading it a month later can join the dots without calling anyone.

Delays. Three entries: 2.00 hours for weather, 0.75 hours for the late inspection and 1.50 hours for the open RFI, 4.25 hours in total, with one item still open. Each has a cause and a responsible party, which is what turns a complaint into a time-extension request.

Safety. The toolbox talk covered working around concrete pumps and booms, with 39 attendees, matching the headcount. No recordables, one first-aid case (a minor hand cut, treated on site) and one near miss (an unsecured load on telehandler forks). Near misses are worth writing down. They’re the cheapest safety lessons you’ll ever get.

The bigger picture. On the Monthly Log tab, ten working days in, the job has logged 2,928 man-hours, four days with delays and 9.25 hours lost. That’s the kind of summary a PM can paste straight into a weekly status report or a monthly project status report without digging through ten separate files.

Six Mistakes That Make a Daily Report Useless

1. Writing it tomorrow morning. By then the times are guesses. Block 15 minutes before you leave the site and finish it while the details are fresh.
2. “Rain” with no times. A delay claim needs a start, a stop and the work it stopped. “Rain 8:00–10:00, crane picks suspended” is evidence. “Rainy day” isn’t.
3. Counting heads but not companies. “35 workers” doesn’t help when two subs dispute who was on site. List each company and its headcount.
4. Leaving out what didn’t happen. Idle equipment, crews waiting on an inspection and work you couldn’t start matter as much as the work that got done.
5. Opinions instead of facts. “The inspector was useless” will be read aloud at a deposition one day. “Inspector arrived 7:45; inspection was booked for 7:00” won’t hurt anyone.
6. Photos with no captions. A folder of 60 photos called IMG_4471.jpg proves nothing. Date them, say where they were taken, and tie them to the report number.

Who Fills It Out, and When

On most jobs the superintendent owns the daily report. On larger projects each foreman or sub submits their own sheet and the super rolls them into one. Either way, one person signs it, and the PM reviews it within a day or two.

The rhythm is simple: notes and photos during the day, the report written at the end of the shift, a PDF to the project file that evening, and a weekly bundle to the owner. When something bigger happens, the daily report just flags it and points to the full document. Injuries go on a separate incident report, formal checks get their own inspection report, and owner or consultant walkthroughs can be written up with a site visit report.

Working from a tablet? The Excel file opens in the Excel app and in Google Sheets, and the formulas it uses (NETWORKDAYS, SUM, COUNTIF and IF) work in both. Set it up once with your company name, contract start date, contract days, your usual subs and your regular equipment, then save it as a master. Each morning, copy the sheet (right-click the tab, then Move or Copy, then Create a copy), change the date, and you’re only typing what changed.

One more practical tip: name the files the same way every time, such as 2026-10-14_Daily-163.pdf. They’ll sort by date on their own, and a missing number jumps out.

Before You Hit Send: A 60-Second Check

• Headcount in the manpower table matches the toolbox talk sign-in (the Excel template flags a mismatch).
• Every delay line has a cause, start and stop times and hours lost.
• Open RFIs, change orders and submittals are referenced by number.
• Delivery ticket numbers match the paper tickets in the job box.
• Photos are dated, captioned and saved with the report number.
• The look-ahead lists any inspections you’ve requested for the next two days.
• The report is signed, saved as PDF and filed under the right date.

That’s it. A good construction daily report is a bit boring to write and surprisingly valuable to read later. Fill it in every working day, keep it factual, and when that email about the late slab shows up, you’ll be able to answer it in five minutes.

Below you can download two free, fully editable templates. The first is an Excel payroll report that works as a payroll register: it calculates regular pay, overtime, gross pay, 401(k), federal and state income tax, Social Security, Medicare and net pay for each employee, then rolls the results into a department summary and a tax liability schedule. The second is a Word payroll summary report you can send to an owner, controller or accountant: it presents the headline totals, payroll by department, an earnings and deductions breakdown, the taxes to remit and an approval block on a clean, printable page.

What Is a Payroll Report?

A payroll report is a summary of employee compensation for a specific pay period, such as a week, two weeks or a month. For each employee it shows hours worked, pay rate, gross earnings, every tax and deduction taken out, and the final net pay. At the bottom it totals those amounts and usually adds the employer’s share of payroll taxes, which gives you the full cost of the payroll.

Most payroll reports have two levels. The detail level, often called the payroll register, lists every employee on its own row. The summary level groups the figures by department, location or pay type and lists the tax and benefit amounts that must be paid to government agencies, insurers and retirement plans. Together they answer three questions: what did we pay, what do we owe, and where did the cost go?

A payroll report is also a control document. Gross pay minus total deductions must equal net pay, net pay must match the amount that leaves your bank account, and the withholding totals must match your tax deposits and quarterly filings.

Why Use a Payroll Report?

Payroll is usually one of the largest expenses a business has, and mistakes are costly for both employees and employers. A consistent payroll report helps you:

• Pay people correctly. Seeing hours, rates, overtime and deductions side by side makes it easy to catch a missing timesheet or a wrong rate before payday.
• Fund payroll and plan cash. Net pay plus tax and benefit remittances tells you exactly how much cash you need and when it leaves the account.
• Stay on top of tax deposits. The liability totals show how much federal income tax, Social Security, Medicare and state tax to deposit and by which date.
• Record accurate journal entries. Gross wages, employer taxes and each withholding liability map directly to accounts in your general ledger.
• Control labor costs. Department totals and overtime figures reveal where payroll is growing and whether overtime is becoming routine.
• Support audits and filings. Payroll reports back up quarterly Form 941 filings, year-end W-2s, workers’ compensation audits and lender requests.

Free Payroll Report Templates (Editable)

Both templates use the same sample company and the same September 14–27, 2026 biweekly pay period, so you can see how the detailed spreadsheet and the written summary fit together.

1. Payroll Report (Excel)

This workbook is the working tool. On the Payroll Register sheet you set the pay period, pay date, pay periods per year, overtime multiplier and tax rates in the yellow cells, then enter one row per employee: name, department, pay type (Hourly or Salary), pay rate, regular hours, overtime hours, bonus, 401(k) percentage, pre-tax health insurance and federal withholding rate. Regular pay, overtime pay, gross pay, every deduction and net pay calculate on their own, and cards at the top show total gross pay, total net pay and total payroll cost.

The Payroll Summary sheet uses SUMIFS and COUNTIF to total headcount, hours, gross pay, pre-tax deductions, employee taxes, net pay and employer FICA for each department, with a bar chart of payroll cost. A tax and deduction liability table shows the employee share, employer share and total to remit for each item, and a built-in check confirms that gross pay minus deductions equals net pay.

Best for: small business owners, bookkeepers and office managers who run payroll in a spreadsheet or want to double-check the figures from their payroll software.

2. Payroll Summary Report (Word)

This document is the reporting layer. It opens with a company header, pay period, pay date, pay frequency and preparer, then gives a short executive summary and four headline figures: gross pay, net pay, employer taxes and total payroll cost. A department table shows headcount, hours, gross pay, net pay and total cost for each team.

An earnings and deductions table walks from regular, overtime and bonus pay down to net pay, with each item as a percentage of gross. The second page lists every tax and deduction liability with the employee share, employer share, total to remit and due date, followed by notes that explain unusual items and an approval table for the preparer, reviewer and approver.

Best for: payroll administrators, controllers and accountants who need to present each payroll run to owners, managers or clients for review and approval.

What to Include

Whatever tool you use, a complete payroll report contains the following sections. The first group comes from timesheets and employee records; the rest is calculated.

How to Create a Payroll Report (Step by Step)

1. Set up the pay period. Enter the pay period start and end dates, the pay date and the number of pay periods per year (26 for biweekly, 24 for semi-monthly, 52 for weekly, 12 for monthly).
2. Confirm your tax rates. Check the Social Security and Medicare rates, your state income tax rate and the overtime multiplier in the settings cells.
3. Collect approved timesheets. Gather regular and overtime hours for hourly employees, plus any bonuses, commissions or other pay for the period.
4. Enter employee details. Add each employee’s department, pay type, rate, hours, bonus, 401(k) percentage, health insurance premium and federal withholding rate in columns A to J.
5. Let the formulas calculate pay. The template works out regular pay, overtime pay, gross pay, each deduction and net pay. Scan the overtime column, which is highlighted when hours are entered.
6. Review the totals. Check that gross pay minus total deductions equals net pay and that the Payroll Summary check shows Balanced.
7. Schedule the remittances. Use the liability table to plan federal tax deposits, state withholding payments, 401(k) transfers and insurance premiums.
8. Prepare the summary report. Copy the headline totals, department figures and liabilities into the Word template, add notes on unusual items and send it for approval.
9. File and compare. Save a copy of every payroll run. Comparing periods shows trends in overtime, headcount and labor cost.

Formulas and Example

The Excel template keeps its logic simple so you can audit every number. Settings sit in the yellow cells (periods per year in E4, overtime multiplier in H3, state tax rate in H4, Social Security in J3 and Medicare in J4) and the first employee is in row 7. Each formula is copied down the table.

Example: Linda Okafor is an hourly employee in Field Services paid $31.00 an hour. She worked 80 regular hours and 9 overtime hours. Regular pay is 80 × $31.00 = $2,480.00 and overtime pay is 9 × $31.00 × 1.5 = $418.50, so gross pay is $2,898.50. Her 5% 401(k) contribution is $144.93 and her health premium is $210.00. Social Security is ($2,898.50 − $210.00) × 6.2% = $166.69 and Medicare is $38.98. Federal tax at 10% of $2,543.57 taxable wages is $254.36 and state tax at 4% is $101.74. Total deductions are $916.70, leaving net pay of $1,981.80.

Across all 12 sample employees, gross pay is $33,513.75: $28,186.99 regular pay (84.1%), $1,626.76 overtime (4.9%) and $3,700.00 bonuses (11.0%). Deductions total $9,853.24, or 29.4% of gross, so net pay is $23,660.51. Adding $2,442.18 of employer Social Security and Medicare brings the total payroll cost to $35,955.93, and the business must remit $12,295.42 in taxes and benefit deductions.

Note: the template uses a simple effective federal withholding rate per employee so the math is easy to follow. For real payroll, take federal withholding from IRS Publication 15-T or your payroll software, and remember that Social Security stops at the annual wage base and that FUTA, SUTA and local taxes may also apply.

Tips

• Lock the cutoff dates. Pick a fixed timesheet cutoff for each pay period so late hours are always handled the same way in the next run.
• Review overtime every run. Overtime that keeps appearing for the same team usually points to understaffing or scheduling issues, not a one-off rush.
• Separate pre-tax and post-tax deductions. Health insurance under a Section 125 plan reduces both income tax and FICA wages, while traditional 401(k) contributions reduce only income tax wages. Mixing them up changes every tax figure.
• Reconcile to the bank. Net pay on the report should match the direct deposit file and the bank debit to the cent.
• Keep a payroll calendar. List pay dates, tax deposit dates, quarterly filing dates and benefit remittance dates in one place so nothing is paid late.
• Protect the file. Payroll reports contain sensitive pay information. Store them in a restricted folder and share the summary report rather than the full register when possible.
• Insert rows inside the table. Add new employees above the TOTAL row so every total and summary formula expands to include them.

Payroll Report vs Payroll Register vs Pay Stub

These three documents are related but serve different readers. The table below shows how they compare.

Related Report Templates

Payroll connects to the rest of your financial reporting. These free templates help you cover the other pieces:

• Attendance Report Template – track hours, absences and leave that feed into each payroll run.
• Accounts Receivable Aging Report Template – make sure customer collections keep pace with payroll and other cash needs.
• Cash Flow Statement Template – see how payroll and tax payments affect your cash balance.
• Profit and Loss Statement Template – report wages and payroll taxes alongside revenue and other expenses.
• Budget Report Template – compare actual payroll cost with the labor budget and explain variances.
• Expense Report Template – handle employee expense reimbursements separately from wages.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between gross pay and net pay?

Gross pay is the total an employee earns before anything is taken out, including regular pay, overtime, bonuses and commissions. Net pay, often called take-home pay, is what is left after income taxes, Social Security, Medicare and benefit deductions such as 401(k) and health insurance. In the sample payroll, net pay is 70.6% of gross pay.

How often should I run a payroll report?

Run a payroll report for every pay period, before payday, so the figures can be reviewed and approved. Many businesses also prepare monthly, quarterly and year-to-date payroll summaries to support journal entries, Form 941 filings and year-end W-2 preparation.

What is the total cost of payroll for an employer?

The true cost of payroll is gross pay plus the employer’s share of payroll taxes and any employer-paid benefits. At minimum, employers match Social Security (6.2%) and Medicare (1.45%), and most also pay federal and state unemployment taxes. The Excel template adds employer FICA to gross pay to show total payroll cost, and you can extend it with columns for unemployment tax or employer benefit contributions.

Can I use this template to calculate federal withholding?

The template uses a simplified effective withholding rate for each employee so you can see how the numbers flow. Actual federal withholding depends on each employee’s Form W-4, pay frequency and the IRS tables in Publication 15-T. Calculate the real amount with those tables or your payroll software and enter it in place of the rate-based figure.

Can I use these templates in Google Sheets or Google Docs?

Yes. Upload the .xlsx file to Google Drive and open it with Google Sheets; the IF, ROUND, SUMIFS and COUNTIF formulas work as they do in Excel, though some formatting such as data bars may look different. The .docx report opens in Google Docs, Word and LibreOffice Writer.

Below you can download two free, fully editable templates. The first is an Excel accounts receivable aging report that ages each invoice automatically against an “As of” date you choose and rolls the results into a customer summary with SUMIFS formulas, percentages and a chart. The second is a Word AR aging summary report you can hand to a manager, controller or client: it presents the bucket totals, the top overdue customers, a collection action plan and a sign-off block on a clean, printable page.

What Is an Accounts Receivable Aging Report?

An accounts receivable (AR) aging report is a list of unpaid customer invoices grouped by how long they have been outstanding. Each open balance is compared with a reporting date, usually the last day of the month, and placed into one aging bucket. Most businesses age invoices from the due date, so a Net 30 invoice issued on August 1 is “current” until August 31 and starts counting days past due after that.

The report normally has two levels. The detail level shows every invoice with its customer, invoice number, dates, original amount, payments received and remaining balance. The summary level adds those balances up by customer and by bucket, so you can see at a glance that, for example, 27% of your receivables are more than 90 days late and most of that sits with two customers.

The aging report is also a control tool: the total of all buckets should equal the accounts receivable balance on your balance sheet. If it does not, look for an unposted payment, a missing credit note or a duplicate invoice.

Why Track AR Aging?

Revenue does not pay the bills until customers actually pay. Tracking aging closes the gap between sales and cash and warns you early when collections slip.

• Protect cash flow. Overdue invoices are cash you have already earned but cannot use. Seeing them by age helps you forecast when money will really arrive.
• Prioritize collection effort. The older an invoice gets, the less likely it is to be paid in full. The report tells your team which accounts to call first.
• Spot risky customers early. A customer drifting from 1–30 into 31–60 month after month is a warning sign before you extend more credit.
• Support credit decisions. Credit limits, deposits and payment terms are easier to justify when you can point to a customer’s actual payment history.
• Estimate bad debt. Many businesses set their allowance for doubtful accounts by applying a higher loss percentage to each older bucket.
• Satisfy lenders and auditors. Banks offering a line of credit and auditors testing receivables often ask for an aged receivables listing as of a specific date.

Free Accounts Receivable Aging Report Templates (Editable)

Both templates use the same sample company and the same September 30, 2026 figures, so you can see how the detailed spreadsheet and the written summary fit together.

1. Accounts Receivable Aging Report (Excel)

This workbook is the working tool. On the AR Aging sheet you enter one row per open invoice: customer, invoice number, invoice date, due date, invoice amount and amount paid. The balance due, days past due, all five aging buckets and a status label (Current, Overdue, High Risk or Critical) calculate on their own. Change the yellow “As of Date” cell and every invoice re-ages instantly, which makes month-end reporting a two-minute job.

The Customer Summary sheet uses SUMIFS and COUNTIFS to total each customer’s balance by bucket, show their share of total receivables and flag their oldest past-due invoice. A bucket summary with a column chart and a built-in check confirms that the bucket totals match the detail sheet. Conditional formatting highlights invoices more than 60 and 90 days late, and summary cards at the top show total outstanding, total past due and the percentage past due.

Best for: bookkeepers, small business owners and AR teams who track receivables in a spreadsheet and need a monthly aging schedule with customer totals.

2. AR Aging Summary Report (Word)

This document is the reporting layer. It opens with a company header, report date, preparer and payment terms, then gives a short executive summary and four headline figures: total receivables, total past due, the amount over 90 days and the percentage past due. A summary table breaks the balance into the five aging buckets with invoice counts and percentages.

The second half focuses on action. A top overdue customers table ranks accounts by past-due balance with their oldest invoice age and a risk rating, followed by a collection action plan that lists the next step, owner and follow-up date for each account. A notes section explains what changed since last month, and a sign-off table records who prepared, reviewed and approved the report.

Best for: controllers, finance managers and accountants who need to present month-end receivables and collection plans to owners, management or clients.

What to Include

Whatever tool you use, a useful AR aging report contains the following fields. The first group comes from your invoices; the second group is calculated.

How to Create an AR Aging Report (Step by Step)

1. Pick the As of date. Most businesses use the last day of the month so the report lines up with the balance sheet. Enter it in the As of Date cell.
2. Export your open invoices. Pull an open invoice list from your accounting software, including partially paid invoices.
3. Enter the invoice details. Paste the customer, invoice number, invoice date, due date, amount and amount paid into columns A to F. Keep customer names spelled exactly the same way on every row.
4. Let the formulas age each invoice. The template calculates the balance due, days past due and the correct bucket for every row. Check that no invoice appears in more than one bucket.
5. Review the totals. Confirm that the sum of all buckets equals the total balance due and that this matches your AR control account in the general ledger.
6. Read the customer summary. Sort or scan the Customer Summary sheet to find accounts with large balances in the 61–90 and 90+ columns.
7. Decide on collection actions. For each overdue account, choose a next step such as a reminder email, a phone call, a payment plan, a credit hold or escalation.
8. Prepare the summary report. Copy the bucket totals and top overdue customers into the Word template, add notes and actions, and send it for sign-off.
9. Save and compare. Keep a copy each month. Comparing this month’s bucket percentages with last month’s shows whether collections are improving.

Formulas and Example

The Excel template keeps its logic simple so you can audit every number. The As of date sits in cell B4 and the first invoice is in row 7. Each formula is copied down the table.

Example: Harbor Point Logistics has invoice INV-1035 for $12,750.00, due June 19, 2026, and has paid $4,000.00. The balance due is $12,750 − $4,000 = $8,750.00. Against an As of date of September 30, 2026, the invoice is 103 days past due (11 days left in June plus 31, 31 and 30 days for July, August and September), so the full $8,750.00 lands in the 90+ bucket and the status shows Critical.

Across all 12 sample invoices, total receivables are $65,890.00. The buckets split as $10,150.00 current (15.4%), $19,175.00 at 1–30 days (29.1%), $5,340.00 at 31–60 days (8.1%), $13,575.00 at 61–90 days (20.6%) and $17,650.00 over 90 days (26.8%). In total, 84.6% of the balance is past due, a clear signal to focus collection effort on the oldest accounts.

Tips

• Age from the due date, and say so. Aging from the invoice date makes Net 30 and Net 60 customers look equally late. Whichever basis you choose, state it on the report.
• Record partial payments and credits promptly. An unapplied payment makes a customer look overdue and can lead to an embarrassing collection call.
• Watch percentages, not just dollars. A growing business will see total AR rise naturally. A rising share in the 61–90 and 90+ buckets is the real warning sign.
• Note disputes separately. If an invoice is unpaid because of a pricing or delivery dispute, write that in the notes so the team fixes the issue instead of just chasing payment.
• Set clear escalation rules. For example: reminder at 1 day late, phone call at 15 days, statement and second call at 30 days, credit hold at 60 days and final demand at 90 days.
• Insert rows inside the table. Add new invoices above the TOTAL row so every total and summary formula expands to include them.

AR Aging vs AP Aging

Accounts payable aging uses the same bucket structure, but it looks at the other side of the business. The table below shows how the two reports compare.

Related Report Templates

Receivables are one part of the financial picture. These free templates help you report on the rest:

• Cash Flow Statement Template – show how collections and payments change your cash balance.
• Profit and Loss Statement Template – report revenue, expenses and net profit for the period.
• Financial Report Template – combine key statements and commentary in one report.
• Budget Report Template – compare actual results with budget and explain variances.
• KPI Report Template – track DSO, collection rate and other finance KPIs over time.

Frequently Asked Questions

How often should I run an accounts receivable aging report?

At minimum, run it once a month at month-end so it matches your balance sheet. Businesses with many invoices or tight cash flow often run it weekly to drive collection calls, then keep the month-end version as the official record.

Should aging be based on the invoice date or the due date?

Aging from the due date is more common because it measures how late a customer actually is under their terms. The Excel template uses the due date; to age from the invoice date instead, change the reference in the Days Past Due formula from column D to column C.

What percentage of receivables should be current?

There is no universal benchmark, because it depends on your industry and payment terms. As a practical guide, most of your receivables should sit in the Current and 1–30 day buckets, and a steadily growing share in the 61–90 and 90+ buckets means your credit or collection process needs attention. Tracking the percentages month to month matters more than hitting a single target.

How does the aging report help estimate bad debt?

Under the aging method, you apply an estimated loss rate to each bucket, for example a small percentage to current balances and a much higher percentage to balances over 90 days, based on your own collection history. The total gives you a target balance for the allowance for doubtful accounts. The bucket totals and percentages in the template give you the starting figures for that calculation.

Can I use these templates in Google Sheets or Google Docs?

Yes. Upload the .xlsx file to Google Drive and open it with Google Sheets; the IF, SUMIFS, COUNTIFS and SUMPRODUCT formulas work as they do in Excel, though some formatting such as data bars may look different. The .docx report opens in Google Docs, Word and LibreOffice Writer.