A time log you can post: the receipt format

23 August 2026 · 6 min read

If you want to post your workday somewhere other people will see it, the format that works is a receipt: a short itemized list of where the hours went, a total at the bottom, a date, and nothing else. Paragraphs get skimmed and dashboards need a legend, but everyone already knows how to read a receipt in five seconds. This post explains why the format works, what goes on one, how to write one by hand, and how Punchcard prints one for you at the end of the day.

Why a receipt and not a paragraph

People who post their workday usually start with prose: “Busy day, mostly heads-down on the redesign, a couple of calls.” It reads fine once. By the fifth day it is the same sentence with different nouns, and nobody, including the writer, can compare one day with another.

A receipt fixes three things at once.

It is itemized, so the day has parts. “Editor 3h 40m, browser 1h 15m, calls 55m” says more than “heads-down” and takes fewer words.

It is totaled, so the day has a size. A total is the one number people actually look at, and it makes a long day and a short day visibly different.

It is finite. A receipt ends. There is a last line and a stamp and then the paper stops, which is exactly the feeling you want from the end of a workday and exactly what a live dashboard never gives you. Why a daily summary beats a live dashboard goes into that difference.

The anatomy of a postable time log

A receipt that works as a post has five parts, top to bottom.

1. A header. The date, and optionally a day name. This is what makes a stack of receipts a record rather than a pile.
2. Line items. One line per thing, with a time on the right. The “thing” can be an app, a task, a project, or a client, depending on what you track. Five to ten lines is readable; twenty is a spreadsheet.
3. A total. Hours and minutes for the day. Put it on its own line and make it the most prominent number.
4. A stamp or a mark. Something that says “done”. On a paper receipt it is the store’s stamp; on a time log it is the signal that the day is closed and the number will not change.
5. A footer. Anything that identifies the log as yours: a name, a tag, a barcode. Optional, but it makes a posted receipt look deliberate rather than like a screenshot.

Everything else (notes, mood, what went well) belongs somewhere else. The moment a receipt has a paragraph on it, it stops being a receipt.

How to write one by hand

You do not need an app to use this format. A plain text note works and takes three minutes at the end of the day.

1. At your closing time, open a new note and write the date on the first line.
2. List the three to six things that took the day, one per line. Be honest about the ones you would rather not list; a log that only shows the good lines teaches you nothing.
3. Put a time next to each, to the nearest quarter hour. Use your calendar for meetings and your best guess for the rest, then read why your estimate of your own workday is wrong by hours to see how far off the guess usually is.
4. Add the times and write the total on its own line.
5. Write DONE, or CLOSED, or draw a line. Something that marks the end.
6. Post it, or keep it. Either way, do not edit it tomorrow.

The weak step is number 3. Handwritten times are reconstructed from memory, and memory is generous about focus and forgetful about the hour in a chat app. The format is still worth using by hand; it is just worth knowing which line is the soft one.

Printing one automatically

Punchcard produces this format without the guessing. It sits in the menu bar, notices which app is in front during the day, and at the closing time you set it prints a receipt: one line per app with its time, a day total, a stamp that lands at a slightly different angle each day, and a Code 128 barcode at the bottom that encodes the date. The paper feeds out of a slot over about two and a half seconds, and you tear it off by dragging down.

For posting, there are two exports. One is a 1080 by 1350 PNG, the portrait size most feeds display without cropping. The other is plain text, for a chat message or a note. The three paper styles (Classic, Kraft, Blueprint) give you a look to keep consistent across a week of posts.

What it will not do is worth stating. The lines are apps, never projects, clients or tasks; if your audience needs “client A, 3 hours”, you write that yourself or you use a timer-based tool that has projects. It records app names only, never window titles, document names or URLs, so nothing on the receipt can leak the name of a file or a site. And it has no sharing built in: no integrations, no networking code at all. You export, then you post, by hand, every time. For a log you choose to make public, that is the right amount of friction.

Where people post them, and what to check first

A receipt works in most places a screenshot works: a team chat, a personal feed, a weekly email to yourself, a folder you scroll through on a Sunday. Why posting your workday keeps you honest covers the reasons to do it in public at all.

Before posting, read the lines once. Two checks:

• Is there an app on the receipt you would rather not explain? Punchcard’s “Items we never print” setting removes it from every receipt going forward, which is cleaner than cropping.
• Does the total say what you think it says? A receipt that shows nine hours on a day you remember as slow is not wrong. It is the reason you are keeping a log.

Then post the receipt as-is. The day it shows is the day you had.

What a receipt leaves out on purpose

A receipt is a record of time, not of quality. Four hours in the editor is four hours with the editor in front; it does not say whether the code was good. Five lines and a total cannot tell anyone what you achieved, which is why the best posts pair a receipt with one sentence of “what got done”. The receipt carries the shape of the day, the sentence carries the substance, and neither has to do the other’s job.

It also leaves out everything that happened off the Mac. A walk, a phone call, a notebook session: none of it appears, and a receipt that tried to include it would stop being automatic. Treat the receipt as the Mac’s account of the day and add the rest in the sentence if it matters.

Questions

Is a receipt format really better than a bullet list?

For posting, yes. A bullet list has no total and no end, so it reads as a to-do list that happens to be in the past tense. A receipt’s total and stamp are what make it feel finished, and finished is the point.

What size should the image be?

Portrait, around 4 by 5. Punchcard exports at 1080 by 1350 pixels, which is the size most feeds show in full. If you are making one by hand, a tall narrow crop reads as a receipt; a wide one reads as a table.

Can I post a receipt for a week or a month instead of a day?

Yes. The same format scales: lines, total, date range, stamp. Punchcard prints a week roll on Sundays and a month roll at the end of the month in the same shape, and what a week of workdays looks like as receipts shows what a week of daily ones looks like side by side.