What Should Be Included in an Employee Daily Time Record (DTR)?

If you’ve already read about What is Daily Time Record (DTR) , you might be wondering what should actually be written on one. 

A DTR is one of the simplest tools used for employee attendance. Its job is straightforward: to record when an employee starts and finishes work.   

While different companies may use different formats, the basic information stays almost the same.  

What Should You Include in a DTR?  

A typical Employee Daily Time Record should include:  

• Employee name so the record can be matched to the right person.

• Employee details such as an employee ID, department, or position, depending on your company’s format.

• Date to show which workday the record covers.

• Time in to record when the employee started work.

• Time out to record when the employee finished work.

• Employee signature, if you’re using a manual DTR, to confirm the attendance record

That’s really all a DTR is meant to do. 

At a glance, it should tell you who worked, when they reported for work, and when they ended their shift.  

So why Is a DTR Important?  

A DTR provides a record of employee attendance that can help HR monitor work hours and prepare payroll.  

A paper DTR or spreadsheet can be perfectly manageable when you only have a handful of employees. The challenge comes when attendance records start piling up and you need to check schedules, hours, or past entries more often. At that point, having a digital attendance system like LILO can take attendance tracking beyond simply recording who came in and out. 

LILO is a mobile attendance app that lets employees clock in and out using their phones, while giving HR a simpler way to manage attendance wherever their teams work. This makes it easier to keep attendance information accessible without relying entirely on paper records or spreadsheets.

If you're considering whether a digital system is the right fit for your business, see our article: Online and Attendance App vs. Traditional Attendance Systems in the Philippines: Which Fits Your Business?

 A DTR Is Only One Part of Employee Timekeeping  

This is where many people get confused.  

A Daily Time Record is simply the attendance record. Employee timekeeping is the bigger process that happens after that. It covers how businesses review attendance records, compute working hours, manage overtime, undertime, tardiness, leave, and other attendance-related information.  

In other words, a DTR tells you when an employee worked. Timekeeping helps you make sense of those records.