Work out hours worked between a clock in and a clock out time, minus unpaid breaks, in HH:MM and decimal hours.
Enter a clock-in and clock-out time. Overnight shifts are detected automatically, and unpaid breaks come off the total.
Hours worked
8:00
8 hours
Payroll wants the decimal figure. A 7:45 shift is 7.75 hours, never 7.45.
Total any number of daily or weekly entries. Set a row to minus to take time back off the total.
Total hours
0:00
Enter your entries above.
Hours worked is the time from clock in to clock out, minus any unpaid break. A shift running 9:00 AM to 5:30 PM is 8 hours 30 minutes on the clock. Take off a 30 minute unpaid lunch and you are paid for 8 hours 00 minutes, which payroll records as 8.00 decimal hours. Enter both punches in the tool above and you get the answer in HH:MM, decimal hours, total minutes, total seconds, and gross pay if you add an hourly rate.
span = clock out − clock in 17:30 − 09:00 = 8 h 30 min paid = span − unpaid break 8 h 30 min − 30 min = 8 h 00 min decimal = paid minutes ÷ 60 480 ÷ 60 = 8.00 hoursAn hours calculator answers one question that a pocket calculator gets wrong: how much time is there between two clock readings, and what is that worth once the unpaid break comes off. Clock time is base 60, so 9:00 to 5:30 is not 8.30 hours and never was. The gap is 8 hours and 30 minutes, and payroll wants that written as 8.5.
The tool above has two tabs. Hours Worked takes a clock in time, a clock out time, optional dates, an unpaid break in minutes and an optional hourly rate. Add Up Hours takes any number of hours and minutes entries with plus or minus signs and totals them, which is what you want when you are summing a week of shifts that have already been worked out.
Everything the calculator does happens in seconds. Both punches are converted to seconds since midnight, the smaller is subtracted from the larger, the break is subtracted as seconds, and the remainder is converted back into hours and minutes. That single trick removes borrowing, carrying and the midnight problem in one move. If the clock out time is smaller than the clock in time, the shift crossed midnight and 86,400 seconds get added before the subtraction, so 10:00 PM to 6:00 AM returns 8 hours rather than a nonsensical negative.
What you do with the result depends on who is asking. A supervisor wants 7:45. A payroll system wants 7.75. An invoice wants 7.75 multiplied by a rate. A scheduling spreadsheet may want 465 total minutes. All four are the same shift, and the calculator prints all four at once so you never have to convert twice and risk a mistake in the middle.
Four steps, roughly twenty seconds. The result updates as you type, and the working is available under the result if you need to show someone how the number was reached.
Type the time you started, in 24 hour or 12 hour format depending on your browser. Add the date only if the shift runs past midnight or spans more than 24 hours.
Type the finish time, or press Use now as clock out if you are still on shift. A clock out earlier than the clock in is read as an overnight shift automatically.
Enter the unpaid break in whole minutes: 30 for a half hour lunch, 45, 60, or 0 if every break is paid. Paid rest breaks stay in the total, so leave those out.
You get HH:MM at the top, plus decimal hours, HH:MM:SS, total minutes and total seconds. Add an hourly rate and a gross pay figure appears alongside them.
Only deduct breaks you are not paid for. A 15 minute paid rest break is working time and must not be subtracted. A 30 minute unpaid meal period during which you are free of all duties is normally deducted. If you are required to stay at your post, answer the phone or watch a machine during the meal, that period is usually still working time in most jurisdictions, so leave it in and raise it with your employer.
Use this when you have two clock readings and want the paid hours between them. It handles the break deduction, the midnight wrap and the pay multiplication for you. This is the tab for a single shift.
Use this when the daily figures already exist and you need a weekly or monthly total. Set a row to minus to take unpaid time back off, for example a half day of leave that was recorded in error.
If you are entering seven days of punches rather than one, the Time Card Calculator lays out a full week of in and out times with a running total. For a plain gap between two moments with no payroll layer on top, use the Time Duration Calculator.
The shifts people look up most, worked out in full. Find your start and finish time, read across for paid hours in HH:MM, decimal hours and total minutes.
| Shift | Span | Unpaid break | Paid HH:MM | Decimal | Total minutes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM | 8:00 | 30 min | 7:30 | 7.50 | 450 |
| 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM | 8:00 | 60 min | 7:00 | 7.00 | 420 |
| 9:00 AM to 5:30 PM | 8:30 | 30 min | 8:00 | 8.00 | 480 |
| 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM | 8:00 | none | 8:00 | 8.00 | 480 |
| 8:30 AM to 5:00 PM | 8:30 | 60 min | 7:30 | 7.50 | 450 |
| 7:00 AM to 3:30 PM | 8:30 | 30 min | 8:00 | 8.00 | 480 |
| 6:00 AM to 2:00 PM | 8:00 | 30 min | 7:30 | 7.50 | 450 |
| 9:00 AM to 1:00 PM half day | 4:00 | none | 4:00 | 4.00 | 240 |
| 11:00 AM to 7:15 PM | 8:15 | 45 min | 7:30 | 7.50 | 450 |
| 2:00 PM to 10:00 PM | 8:00 | 20 min | 7:40 | 7.67 | 460 |
| 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM 12 hour | 12:00 | 60 min | 11:00 | 11.00 | 660 |
| 7:00 PM to 7:00 AM 12 hour night | 12:00 | 60 min | 11:00 | 11.00 | 660 |
| 10:00 PM to 6:00 AM overnight | 8:00 | 30 min | 7:30 | 7.50 | 450 |
| 11:00 PM to 7:30 AM overnight | 8:30 | 30 min | 8:00 | 8.00 | 480 |
The 2:00 PM to 10:00 PM row is the only one that does not land on a quarter hour: 460 minutes divided by 60 is 7.6666, shown as 7.67. Keep the extra decimal places when you are summing a week, because rounding 7.67 five times drifts from the true total by about a minute.
The span column is the raw gap between the two punches, sometimes called gross hours or hours on the clock. The paid columns are what remains after the unpaid break comes off, sometimes called net hours or worked hours. Payroll almost always wants the second figure, but scheduling and attendance systems often report the first, which is why the same shift can appear in two different places as 8:30 and 8:00 without either being wrong.
Notice how often a 30 minute lunch turns a tidy shift into an untidy one. A 9 to 5 with a half hour break pays 7.5 hours, so a five day week pays 37.5 rather than 40. Employers who want staff paid for a full 40 hour week generally schedule 8:30 spans, which is where 9:00 to 5:30 and 7:00 to 3:30 come from. Both appear in the table and both pay exactly 8.00.
The break is the single biggest source of disagreement on a timesheet. It is also the easiest part to get right, because it is straight subtraction once you know which breaks are unpaid.
paid minutes = (clock out − clock in in minutes) − unpaid break minutes paid hours = paid minutes ÷ 60 gross pay = paid hours × hourly rate
Every 15 minutes of unpaid break costs a quarter of a decimal hour. At a rate of $22.00 an hour that is $5.50 gone each time, or $27.50 across a five day week. The table below holds the span constant at 8 hours 30 minutes and varies only the break, so you can see exactly what each policy is worth.
| Unpaid break | Paid HH:MM | Paid minutes | Decimal hours | Gross pay | Weekly pay (×5) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No break | 8:30 | 510 | 8.50 | $187.00 | $935.00 |
| 15 minutes | 8:15 | 495 | 8.25 | $181.50 | $907.50 |
| 20 minutes | 8:10 | 490 | 8.17 | $179.67 | $898.33 |
| 30 minutes | 8:00 | 480 | 8.00 | $176.00 | $880.00 |
| 45 minutes | 7:45 | 465 | 7.75 | $170.50 | $852.50 |
| 60 minutes | 7:30 | 450 | 7.50 | $165.00 | $825.00 |
| 75 minutes | 7:15 | 435 | 7.25 | $159.50 | $797.50 |
| 90 minutes | 7:00 | 420 | 7.00 | $154.00 | $770.00 |
The 20 minute row is the one worth checking twice. 490 minutes divided by 60 is 8.1666, which rounds to 8.17, and 490 multiplied by $22.00 divided by 60 is $179.6666, which rounds to $179.67. If you round to 8.17 first and then multiply you get $179.74, seven cents high. Multiply from the full precision figure, then round the money at the end.
Short rest breaks, typically 10 to 20 minutes, are usually counted as working time and paid. Do not enter these in the break box. Only the unpaid meal period belongs there.
Some systems subtract 30 minutes whether or not the break was taken. If you worked through lunch, that is 30 minutes of unpaid work per occurrence. Record it and query it.
If you take two unpaid 20 minute breaks, enter 40 in the break box rather than running the calculation twice. The tool subtracts the total, and one subtraction cannot drift.
Payroll multiplies hours by a rate, and you cannot multiply 7:45 by a dollar figure. You can multiply 7.75. This conversion is the bridge, and it is a single division.
Divide minutes by 60 to get decimal hours. Multiply the decimal part by 60 to get minutes back. The error people make is writing the minutes after the point unchanged, so 7 hours 45 minutes becomes 7.45 instead of 7.75. That is 18 minutes lost per shift, which is a real amount of money.
7 h 45 min → 7 + (45 ÷ 60) = 7 + 0.75 = 7.75 decimal hours 7.6 hours → 0.6 × 60 = 36 min = 7 h 36 min 465 minutes → 465 ÷ 60 = 7.75 = 7 h 45 min| Min | Decimal | Min | Decimal | Min | Decimal | Min | Decimal |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 0.017 | 16 | 0.267 | 31 | 0.517 | 46 | 0.767 |
| 2 | 0.033 | 17 | 0.283 | 32 | 0.533 | 47 | 0.783 |
| 3 | 0.050 | 18 | 0.300 | 33 | 0.550 | 48 | 0.800 |
| 4 | 0.067 | 19 | 0.317 | 34 | 0.567 | 49 | 0.817 |
| 5 | 0.083 | 20 | 0.333 | 35 | 0.583 | 50 | 0.833 |
| 6 | 0.100 | 21 | 0.350 | 36 | 0.600 | 51 | 0.850 |
| 7 | 0.117 | 22 | 0.367 | 37 | 0.617 | 52 | 0.867 |
| 8 | 0.133 | 23 | 0.383 | 38 | 0.633 | 53 | 0.883 |
| 9 | 0.150 | 24 | 0.400 | 39 | 0.650 | 54 | 0.900 |
| 10 | 0.167 | 25 | 0.417 | 40 | 0.667 | 55 | 0.917 |
| 11 | 0.183 | 26 | 0.433 | 41 | 0.683 | 56 | 0.933 |
| 12 | 0.200 | 27 | 0.450 | 42 | 0.700 | 57 | 0.950 |
| 13 | 0.217 | 28 | 0.467 | 43 | 0.717 | 58 | 0.967 |
| 14 | 0.233 | 29 | 0.483 | 44 | 0.733 | 59 | 0.983 |
| 15 | 0.250 | 30 | 0.500 | 45 | 0.750 | 60 | 1.000 |
The bold row holds the four quarter hour marks, which are the only values most payroll systems will ever store if your employer rounds punches. For a converter that goes in both directions and handles values above one hour, see the Decimal Hours Converter. To convert a raw minute total such as 2,415 minutes into hours, use Minutes to Hours.
You will use these constantly, and knowing them by heart makes it obvious when a timesheet is wrong at a glance. Fifteen minutes is 0.25. Twenty minutes is 0.33. Thirty minutes is 0.50. Forty five minutes is 0.75. Anything ending in .25, .50 or .75 is a clean quarter hour. Anything ending in .17, .33, .67 or .83 is a third of an hour, which means the workplace deals in 10 or 20 minute blocks. Anything else is an exact punch that has not been rounded at all.
The reverse conversion trips people up more often. A payroll line reading 38.75 hours is 38 hours and 45 minutes, because 0.75 multiplied by 60 is 45. A line reading 38.45 hours is 38 hours and 27 minutes, because 0.45 multiplied by 60 is 27. Those two look similar and differ by 18 minutes.
When the clock out time is smaller than the clock in time, the shift crossed midnight. Subtracting directly gives a negative answer, so a full day has to be added first.
A shift from 22:00 to 06:00 looks like 6 minus 22, which is minus 16 hours. The correction is to treat the clock out as belonging to the next day, so 06:00 becomes 06:00 plus 24:00, which is 30:00. Then 30:00 minus 22:00 is 8 hours, which is the right answer.
if clock out < clock in: clock out += 86,400 seconds paid = clock out − clock in − break 06:00 = 21,600 s 21,600 + 86,400 = 108,000 s 22:00 = 79,200 s 108,000 − 79,200 = 28,800 s = 8 h 00 min
The calculator above applies this automatically whenever you leave the date fields blank. It also flags the result with a note that the shift crosses midnight, so you are never left guessing whether the tool spotted it.
Fill in both dates when the shift is longer than 24 hours, when you are on call across two nights, or when a public holiday premium depends on which calendar day the hours fell on. With dates supplied the calculator compares two full timestamps and the midnight wrap becomes irrelevant. If you also need to translate the punches into 24 hour notation before entering them, the Military Time Converter does that conversion in both directions.
| Clock in | Clock out | Span | Decimal |
|---|---|---|---|
| 18:00 | 02:00 | 8:00 | 8.00 |
| 19:00 | 07:00 | 12:00 | 12.00 |
| 20:00 | 04:30 | 8:30 | 8.50 |
| 21:45 | 06:15 | 8:30 | 8.50 |
| 22:00 | 06:00 | 8:00 | 8.00 |
| 22:30 | 06:45 | 8:15 | 8.25 |
| 23:00 | 07:30 | 8:30 | 8.50 |
| 23:30 | 08:00 | 8:30 | 8.50 |
| 00:30 | 09:00 | 8:30 | 8.50 |
The 00:30 to 09:00 row does not cross midnight at all, because both punches fall on the same calendar day. Starting after midnight feels like a night shift but arithmetically it is an ordinary morning.
Daylight saving nights are not 24 hours long. On the night clocks move forward, an overnight shift is one hour shorter on the clock than the punches suggest; on the night they move back it is one hour longer. Payroll practice varies on whether staff are paid for hours on the clock or hours actually worked, so check your employer's written policy before adjusting a timesheet by hand. The calculator measures clock readings and does not apply a daylight saving correction.
Many employers round every punch to the nearest quarter hour. Whether that is allowed, and how it works, is one of the most searched questions about hours worked.
Quarter hour rounding moves each punch to the nearest :00, :15, :30 or :45. The practitioner name for it is the 7 minute rule, because the boundary falls seven and a half minutes either side of the quarter mark. In practice: a punch 1 to 7 minutes past a quarter hour rounds down to that quarter, and a punch 8 to 14 minutes past rounds up to the next one. Clock in at 9:07 and you are recorded as starting at 9:00. Clock in at 9:08 and you are recorded as starting at 9:15.
In the United States, rounding of this kind is permitted under the Fair Labor Standards Act provided it is neutral over time, meaning it must not systematically work in the employer's favour. A policy that rounds start times up and finish times down is not neutral, and neither is a policy that only ever rounds against the employee. Rules differ by country, state and province, and case law in some US states has narrowed the practice further, particularly where the timekeeping system already records the exact minute. This page is general information and not legal advice; check the rules that apply where you work.
| Actual punch | Minutes past the quarter | Rounds to | Movement | Direction |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9:00 | 0 | 9:00 | 0 min | Exact, no change |
| 9:03 | 3 | 9:00 | 3 min | Down |
| 9:07 | 7 | 9:00 | 7 min | Down, the last minute that does |
| 9:08 | 8 | 9:15 | 7 min | Up, the first minute that does |
| 9:11 | 11 | 9:15 | 4 min | Up |
| 9:14 | 14 | 9:15 | 1 min | Up |
| 9:15 | 0 | 9:15 | 0 min | Exact, no change |
| 9:22 | 7 | 9:15 | 7 min | Down |
| 9:23 | 8 | 9:30 | 7 min | Up |
| 9:37 | 7 | 9:30 | 7 min | Down |
| 9:38 | 8 | 9:45 | 7 min | Up |
| 9:53 | 8 | 10:00 | 7 min | Up |
The largest movement in either direction is 7 minutes, which is why a neutral policy should cancel out across many punches. Employers who round to 6 minute blocks (one tenth of an hour) or 5 minute blocks move each punch by at most 3 and 2 minutes respectively, so the drift is smaller.
Once you know the total, the next question is which part of it attracts a premium. The threshold depends entirely on where you work, and daily and weekly rules can both apply at once.
| Rule | Overtime starts after | Typical premium | Where this pattern appears |
|---|---|---|---|
| Weekly 40 | 40 h in a workweek | 1.5× | The United States federal minimum for non-exempt employees under the Fair Labor Standards Act. Also the weekly standard in British Columbia and for federally regulated Canadian workplaces. |
| Weekly 44 | 44 h in a work week | 1.5× | Ontario, and the weekly half of Alberta's rule. |
| Daily 8 | 8 h in a workday | 1.5× | California and British Columbia, applied alongside their weekly rules rather than instead of them. |
| Daily 12 | 12 h in a workday | 2.0× | California and British Columbia. Double time for the hours beyond twelve. |
| Greater of daily 8 or weekly 44 | whichever gives more | 1.5× | Alberta, commonly called the 8 and 44 rule. You count both ways and the larger overtime figure wins. |
| Seventh consecutive day | first hour of the 7th day | 1.5×, then 2.0× | California. The first 8 hours of a seventh consecutive workday attract time and a half, and hours beyond 8 attract double time. |
This table is general information, not legal advice. Overtime rules vary by country, state, province and industry; many roles are exempt, averaging agreements and modified work schedules can change the thresholds, and some sectors such as trucking, agriculture and healthcare have their own rules. Check your employment standards authority or your collective agreement for the figures that bind your workplace.
overtime hours = max(0, total hours − threshold) regular hours = total hours − overtime hours gross pay = (regular × rate) + (overtime × rate × 1.5)
Take a 44 hour week at $21.00 an hour. Under a weekly 40 rule there are 4 overtime hours: 40 multiplied by $21.00 is $840.00, and 4 multiplied by $31.50 is $126.00, giving $966.00. Under a weekly 44 rule the same week produces no overtime at all: 44 multiplied by $21.00 is $924.00. Identical hours, a $42.00 difference, decided purely by which side of a provincial border the workplace sits on.
Daily thresholds complicate this because the same hour cannot usually be counted twice. Where both a daily and a weekly rule exist, jurisdictions generally require you to work out the daily overtime first, then apply the weekly test to the remaining regular hours so that no hour is paid a premium twice over. Work out each day separately in the calculator above, then bring the daily figures into the Add Up Hours tab for the weekly total.
Two pictures that cover most of what an hours calculator is for: what a break does to a single shift, and how five days add up against the overtime line.
Summing HH:MM by hand is where weekly totals go wrong. The hours column here is 8 plus 7 plus 8 plus 9 plus 6, which is 38. The minutes column is 30 plus 45 plus 15 plus 0 plus 30, which is 120. Those 120 minutes are 2 whole hours, so the total is 38 plus 2, which is 40 hours exactly. Leave the 120 in the minutes column and you would write 38:120, which is not a number anyone can use.
In decimal the same sum needs no carrying at all: 8.50 plus 7.75 plus 8.25 plus 9.00 plus 6.50 is 40.00. That is the whole argument for decimal hours. Convert once at the start, add normally, and convert back at the end only if a human needs to read it.
The dashed line shows why a single weekly figure can hide overtime. This employee never worked more than 40 hours in the week, but on three days they passed 8 hours. Under a daily 8 rule those excess hours attract a premium even though the week totals 40. Under a weekly 40 rule they do not.
To reproduce this chart with your own numbers, enter each day in the tool above and then bring the five results into the Add Up Hours tab. For a layout built around a whole week at once, the Time Card Calculator keeps all seven days on screen together.
Every one of these is reproducible in the calculator above. The working is spelled out so you can check your own method against it line by line.
You clock in at 8:45 AM, clock out at 5:20 PM, take a 45 minute unpaid lunch, and earn $24.50 an hour.
= 7:50 → 7.83 hours → $191.92 gross
You start Tuesday at 10:30 PM and finish Wednesday at 6:45 AM, with a 30 minute unpaid break.
= 7:45 → 7.75 paid hours
You work 9:00 AM to 12:30 PM, go home, then come back for 5:00 PM to 9:15 PM. No unpaid breaks in either block.
= 7:45 → 7.75 decimal hours
Paid hours were 8:30, 9:15, 8:00, 10:30 and 7:45 across five days, at $21.00 an hour.
44:00 total → $966.00 gross (a weekly 44 rule would pay $924.00)
You punch in at 8:57 and out at 17:03 every day, with a 30 minute unpaid lunch, five days running.
Actual 38.00 h · Rounded 37.50 h · A 0.50 h gap each week
Saturday 11:00 to 19:30 with a 30 minute break, Sunday 12:00 to 17:00 with none, Wednesday 17:30 to 21:45 with none. Rate $17.20.
= 17:15 → 17.25 hours → $296.70 gross
Once the daily figures are settled, the rest is addition. These are the schedule patterns that turn up most often, with what each one comes to over a week, a pay period and a year.
| Pattern | Days | Paid hours per day | Per week | Per 2 weeks | Per year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Five eight hour days | 5 | 8.00 | 40.00 | 80.00 | 2,080 |
| Five days, 9 to 5 with a 30 min lunch | 5 | 7.50 | 37.50 | 75.00 | 1,950 |
| Five days, 8:30 span less a 45 min lunch | 5 | 7.75 | 38.75 | 77.50 | 2,015 |
| Four ten hour days compressed | 4 | 10.00 | 40.00 | 80.00 | 2,080 |
| Three twelve hour shifts nursing | 3 | 12.00 | 36.00 | 72.00 | 1,872 |
| Four twelve hour shifts | 4 | 12.00 | 48.00 | 96.00 | 2,496 |
| Two twelve hour weekend shifts | 2 | 12.00 | 24.00 | 48.00 | 1,248 |
| Five six hour days part time | 5 | 6.00 | 30.00 | 60.00 | 1,560 |
| Six eight hour days | 6 | 8.00 | 48.00 | 96.00 | 2,496 |
Annual figures assume 52 weeks with no unpaid leave and no public holidays deducted, which is why 40 hours a week gives the familiar 2,080. A calendar year is 52 weeks and 1 day, or 2 days in a leap year, so the true count varies slightly depending on which weekday the year starts on.
There are two safe methods and one unsafe one. The unsafe method is adding HH:MM values in a column and forgetting to carry the minutes, which produces answers like 38:120.
Method one: total the minutes. Convert every day to minutes, add them all, then divide by 60 at the end. Five days of 465, 510, 480, 555 and 450 minutes total 2,460 minutes, and 2,460 divided by 60 is 41 hours exactly. Nothing can carry wrongly because there is nothing to carry until the last step.
Method two: total the decimals. Convert every day to decimal hours, add them normally, and stop. The same five days are 7.75, 8.50, 8.00, 9.25 and 7.50, which sum to 41.00. Keep at least two decimal places throughout, and preferably more when a day involves thirds of an hour such as 7.67.
The Add Up Hours tab does either for you and prints both formats at once. Set a row to minus when you need to take something back off a total, for example when a scheduled shift was cancelled after it had already been entered, or when you are checking how far a running total sits below a contracted number of hours. For pure unit conversion in either direction, the Time Calculator homepage handles hours, minutes and seconds in one place, and the Time Duration Calculator covers spans that run across several calendar days.
Round once, at the end. If you round each day to two decimal places and then add, a week of 7.67 hour days totals 38.35, whereas the exact total of five 460 minute days is 2,300 minutes, which is 38.3333 hours. The gap is small on one week and grows across a year. Carry full precision through the addition and round only the figure you actually submit.
Nearly every disputed timesheet traces back to one of these six. Each has a one line fix.
| Mistake | What it looks like | The fix |
|---|---|---|
| Writing minutes as decimals | 7:45 entered as 7.45 | Divide the minutes by 60. 7:45 is 7.75. The error is 18 minutes per shift, or 1.5 hours across a week. |
| Subtracting a paid break | A 15 min rest break deducted | Only unpaid meal periods come off. A paid rest break is working time and stays in the total. |
| Ignoring the midnight wrap | 22:00 to 06:00 read as −16 h | Add 24 hours to the clock out time when it falls before the clock in. The answer is 8 h. |
| Mixing 12 and 24 hour values | 5:00 PM entered as 05:00 | Convert everything to one format first. 5:00 PM is 17:00, and 12:30 AM is 00:30. |
| Not carrying past 59 minutes | A weekly total of 38:120 | 120 minutes is 2 hours, so the total is 40:00. Sum in minutes or decimals and this cannot happen. |
| Rounding every day, then adding | Five 7.67 days totalled as 38.35 | Keep full precision through the week. Five 460 minute days are 2,300 minutes, or 38.33 hours. |
A seventh worth watching: entering the break in hours rather than minutes. The break box on this page expects whole minutes, so a one hour lunch is 60, not 1. Entering 1 removes a single minute and leaves the total 59 minutes too high.
In a spreadsheet, format a total of hours as [h]:mm rather than h:mm. Without the brackets, any total above 24 hours silently wraps back to zero and a 44 hour week reads as 20 hours.
Write down your punches as you make them. A private note of in and out times is the only way to check a payslip later, and it costs nothing to keep.
Overtime is counted within a defined workweek, not a calendar week. If your employer's week runs Sunday to Saturday, a Saturday night shift ending Sunday morning can straddle two overtime periods.
The vocabulary that appears on timesheets, payslips and employment standards pages, defined plainly.
If you have a full week of in and out times rather than a single shift, the Time Card Calculator is the faster route. If you already have a total and simply need it in another format, the Decimal Hours Converter goes both ways between HH:MM and decimal, and Minutes to Hours handles a raw minute count. For punches written in 24 hour notation that you would rather read as AM and PM, use the Military Time Converter. And for any span that is not about work at all, the Time Duration Calculator and the Time Calculator cover general time arithmetic.
Direct answers to the questions people ask most about this calculation.
Subtract the clock in time from the clock out time, then take off any unpaid break. Convert both punches to minutes past midnight first to make the subtraction easy. A 9:00 AM start is 540 minutes and a 5:30 PM finish is 1,050 minutes, so the span is 510 minutes, or 8 hours 30 minutes. Deduct a 30 minute lunch and you are paid for 480 minutes, which is 8 hours or 8.00 decimal hours.
Nine to five is 8 hours on the clock. With a 30 minute unpaid lunch you are paid for 7 hours 30 minutes, or 7.50 decimal hours, and a five day week comes to 37.50 hours rather than 40. With a full hour unpaid you are paid 7.00 hours a day and 35.00 a week. This is why many employers schedule 9:00 to 5:30 instead, which pays a clean 8.00 hours after a half hour break.
Work out the span first, then subtract the unpaid break as a separate step. From 8:30 AM to 5:00 PM the span is 8 hours 30 minutes, which is 510 minutes. A 45 minute unpaid lunch leaves 465 minutes, which is 7 hours 45 minutes, or 7.75 decimal hours. Only subtract breaks you are not paid for; paid rest breaks are working time and stay in the total.
When the clock out time is earlier than the clock in time, add 24 hours to the clock out before subtracting. A shift from 10:00 PM to 6:00 AM looks like 6 minus 22, which is wrong. Treat 6:00 AM as 30:00, and 30:00 minus 22:00 gives 8 hours. The calculator on this page detects this automatically whenever you leave the date fields blank, and marks the result as crossing midnight.
It is 7.75 decimal hours. Divide the minutes by 60: 45 divided by 60 is 0.75, so 7 hours 45 minutes is 7 plus 0.75. The common mistake is writing 7.45, which understates the shift by 18 minutes. The four quarter hour values worth memorising are 15 minutes equals 0.25, 30 minutes equals 0.50, 45 minutes equals 0.75 and 60 minutes equals 1.00.
It is the everyday name for rounding clock punches to the nearest quarter hour. A punch 1 to 7 minutes past a quarter hour rounds down to that quarter, and a punch 8 to 14 minutes past rounds up to the next one. So 9:07 becomes 9:00 and 9:08 becomes 9:15. No punch ever moves by more than 7 minutes, which is where the name comes from.
In the United States, rounding to the nearest quarter hour is permitted under the Fair Labor Standards Act provided the practice is neutral over time and does not systematically favour the employer. Rounding start times up and finish times down is not neutral. Rules differ by country, state and province, and some jurisdictions have narrowed the practice further. This is general information, not legal advice; check the rules that apply where you work.
Exactly 8 hours, or 8.00 decimal hours. The span from 9:00 to 17:30 is 8 hours 30 minutes, which is 510 minutes. Removing a 30 minute unpaid lunch leaves 480 minutes, and 480 divided by 60 is 8. Five such days give a 40.00 hour week. At $22.00 an hour that single shift is worth $176.00 gross before deductions.
Convert every day to minutes or to decimal hours before adding, then convert back once at the end. Adding HH:MM values in a column risks totals like 38:120, which needs the 120 minutes carried into 2 hours to become 40:00. The Add Up Hours tab on this page does the conversion, the addition and the carry in one step, and prints the total in both HH:MM and decimal hours.
It depends where you work. The United States federal standard is over 40 hours in a workweek at one and a half times the regular rate, with no federal daily rule. Ontario uses 44 hours a week, Alberta uses whichever of 8 hours a day or 44 hours a week gives more overtime, and British Columbia and California both add daily thresholds at 8 and 12 hours. Check your local employment standards.
A 40 hour week over 52 weeks is 2,080 hours, which is the figure most salary conversions use. A 37.5 hour week gives 1,950 hours and a 36 hour week of three twelve hour shifts gives 1,872. These totals assume no unpaid leave and no public holidays removed. A calendar year is 52 weeks plus 1 day, or 2 days in a leap year, so the real count shifts slightly year to year.
Usually not, if the break is a genuine meal period during which you are relieved of all duties. That is why it is deducted from the span. Short rest breaks, typically 10 to 20 minutes, are normally treated as working time and paid, so they should not be deducted. If you are required to stay at your post or remain on call during a meal, that time is often still working time. Rules vary by jurisdiction.
Convert the hours to decimal, then multiply by the hourly rate. A 7 hour 45 minute shift is 7.75 hours, and at $24.00 an hour that is $186.00 gross. Never multiply HH:MM directly: 7.45 multiplied by $24.00 gives $178.80, which is $7.20 short. Enter a rate in the calculator above and the gross pay figure is worked out for you alongside the hours.