We don't need to tell you that a pivot table can be frustrating when the data doesn't cooperate. The real issue here is that you're fighting a tool designed for generic reporting instead of building one that matches how HR actually works. Your instinct to create a dedicated summary page is exactly right, because payroll compliance lives and dies on clarity, not on forcing a spreadsheet to behave like something it isn't.
Your formula for pay period calculation is solid logic, but that -3286 error is a symptom of a deeper problem: your spreadsheet is trying to compute values on empty rows. The fix is straightforward. Wrap your formula in an IF statement that checks whether column H has a date before running the calculation. Something like `=IF(H6="","",INT((H6-DATE(2025,12,14))/14)+1)` will return a clean blank cell when there's no entry. This isn't just cosmetic. A summary page that references column J will now only pull real data, which means your totals will be accurate from the start instead of requiring manual cleanup every pay period.
For the summary page itself, you have two practical paths. The first is a simple SUMIFS formula that adds up total hours where column B matches the employee name and column J matches the pay period number. That gives you a clean table with names down the side and pay period numbers across the top. The second path, which we'd recommend, is to use a QUERY function if you're in Google Sheets, or a combination of UNIQUE and SUMIFS in Excel. This automatically updates as you add new rows, so you never have to manually extend ranges. Your pivot table failed because it was designed for ad-hoc analysis, not for a fixed, repeatable report that HR needs to run every two weeks.
What you're building is a tool that eliminates the friction between raw time entries and payroll decisions. That -3286 error was a warning sign that your spreadsheet was treating blank rows as data. Fixing it is the first step toward a summary that actually works. From there, the real value emerges: a single page where you can see, at a glance, whether any employee is approaching overtime thresholds across multiple pay periods. That's the kind of clarity that turns a spreadsheet from a record-keeping chore into a proactive compliance tool. Keep the formulas simple, keep the layout predictable, and let the data do the heavy lifting.