A night shift starts on Thursday and ends on Friday; which date do I put on the row?

The date does not change the arithmetic

Take a shift starting Thursday 2026-03-05 at 22:00 and ending Friday at 07:00, with an hour's break, at 30 SAR an hour. The calculator shows 8:00 and 240.00 SAR, and under the result it says 'Shifts ending the next day: 1'.

Put Friday's date instead, or no date at all, and you get exactly the same: 8:00 and 240.00 SAR. The calculator does not read the date to work out the length and has no idea which day is Thursday. It only sees that 07:00 is earlier than 22:00, so the shift crossed midnight.

So why does the choice matter?

Because the date appears in the PDF and CSV, and that is what the employee and the accountant read. One shift on its own is never the problem; the edges of a pay period are:

• A weekly sheet that closes on Thursday: Thursday night's shift started in this week. Date it Friday and it may slide into next week's sheet, or someone logs it again there.
• A monthly sheet: a shift starting on the last night of the month and ending on the morning of the first. With the start date, it stays on the first month's sheet with no argument.
• Checking attendance: a supervisor remembers 'Thursday night's shift', not 'Friday morning's', so the start date matches how people think.

The rule that works: every shift is dated the day it began, always, for everyone. Consistency is what matters, and the start date is the clearest choice because it cannot be read two ways.

A week of night shifts

1. Open the Timesheet calculator and on each row enter the date of the night it began: 2026-03-05, then 2026-03-06, then 2026-03-07.
2. Give each row 22:00, 07:00 and a 60 minute break.
3. Check that every row is 8:00 with a '+1 day' badge, and the total is 24:00.
4. At 30 SAR an hour the total is 720.00 SAR, and the night-shift line says 3.

Note that the calculator does not split a shift between the two days. Hours before and after midnight sit together in one row. If you need to know how many hours fell on Friday itself, for a reason in your contract or for holiday pay, split the shift yourself into two rows: 22:00 to 00:00 dated Thursday and 00:00 to 07:00 dated Friday. The calculator applies no special holiday rate, so any difference of that kind is yours to work out.

In short

The date is for your organisation; the two times are what the calculator counts. Pick the start date, stick to it, and look for the '+1 day' badge to confirm the shift was read as overnight, as you intended.