Time card

What a week looks like on a card

A grip on a 12-hour guarantee, hours shown as clock times and as decimal hours:

Monday's arithmetic: 6:30 AM to 7:36 PM is 13 hours 6 minutes, or 13.1 hours. Subtract the half-hour meal and you get 12.6. Many production payroll systems record hours in tenths (one tenth is 6 minutes), which is why wrap times like 7:36 turn up so often.

Other boxes on the card: position and union local if any, rate, kit or box rental days, mileage, per diem, whether a meal was non-deductible, and the crew member's and department head's signatures.

How the numbers become pay

The payroll company reads the card against the deal memo and any union agreement. On Monday the grip worked 12.6 hours, so on a 12-hour guarantee 0.6 hours is overtime. On a union show the agreement also decides when meal penalties apply, when turnaround is violated (Wednesday's 12:00 PM call came after Tuesday's 8:12 PM wrap, which is 15.8 hours, so no problem), and how a sixth day is paid. Use the overtime calculator to check a week before you submit.

Mistakes that delay checks

Writing call sheet times instead of actual times comes up most often, and the DPR will disagree with the card. Leaving meal times blank makes it impossible to calculate penalties. Crossing midnight confuses people: a 1:24 AM wrap belongs on Wednesday's line, not Thursday's. Missing department head signatures send cards back. And kit rental claimed on the card that isn't in the deal memo will be cut.

Where it connects

Accounting compares time cards to the daily production report crew times, and cast times are checked against Exhibit G. Before the first card can be processed, the crew member needs completed start paperwork. The film crew time cards guide covers the process in more detail.