Add up a full week of punches, take out unpaid breaks, split regular from overtime hours, and see the gross pay.
Fill in each day. Daily hours, the weekly total, overtime above the threshold and gross pay are all worked out for you.
| Day | Start | End | Break (min) | Hours | Decimal |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monday | 0:00 | 0.00 | |||
| Tuesday | 0:00 | 0.00 | |||
| Wednesday | 0:00 | 0.00 | |||
| Thursday | 0:00 | 0.00 | |||
| Friday | 0:00 | 0.00 | |||
| Saturday | 0:00 | 0.00 | |||
| Sunday | 0:00 | 0.00 |
Weekly total
0:00
Rounding note: keep full precision all week and round only the final total. Rounding each day first can drift by several minutes by Friday.
A time card calculator turns a week of clock-in and clock-out times into paid hours, and then into money. You enter a start time, an end time and the unpaid break minutes for each of the seven days. It works out the span of each shift, removes the break, reports the day in both hours-and-minutes and decimal form, adds the seven days into a weekly total, splits that total into regular and overtime hours at whatever threshold you set, and multiplies both parts by your hourly rate to give gross pay.
Nothing you type leaves the browser. There is no account, no spreadsheet template to download and no formula to maintain.
daily paid minutes = (out − in) − unpaid break week total = sum of the seven days overtime hours = week total − threshold (never below zero) gross pay = regular hours × rate + overtime hours × rate × multiplierA time card, sometimes called a punch card or a timesheet, is the record of when somebody started work, when they stopped, and how long they were off the clock in between. On paper it is a grid: a row for each day, a column for the in punch, a column for the out punch, a column for the break. The arithmetic that turns that grid into a paycheque is easy to describe and surprisingly easy to get wrong, because clock time is base 60 and money is base 10.
The wrongness usually creeps in at one of three places. First, subtracting two clock times by hand invites borrowing errors: 17:15 minus 8:45 is not 9:30. Second, unpaid breaks have to be removed in minutes, not in decimal hours, or the deduction is off. Third, the weekly total has to be converted to decimal hours before it can be multiplied by a rate, and writing 45 hours 45 minutes as 45.45 instead of 45.75 loses eighteen minutes of pay in a single stroke.
The calculator above removes all three failure points. Every shift is converted to minutes since midnight, subtracted, corrected for a midnight crossing if the out time is earlier than the in time, reduced by the break, and reported twice: once as HH:MM so it matches the paper card, and once as a decimal so it matches the payroll system. If you only need a single shift rather than a week, the Hours Calculator is the quicker tool, and for the raw gap between any two clock times the Time Duration Calculator does the same job without the payroll layer.
Three groups, mostly. Hourly employees checking that the number on their pay stub matches the hours they actually worked. Small business owners and office managers who run payroll manually and need a defensible weekly total before they key anything into an accounting package. And contractors, cleaners, caregivers, tradespeople and freelancers who invoice by the hour and have to turn a scribbled list of start and finish times into a line item.
All three want the same thing: a number they can defend. A time card total is not a rough estimate. If it is out by fifteen minutes a day, that is more than sixty hours a year.
Four steps. Leave a day blank and it counts as zero, so a five-day week needs no extra fiddling.
Type the in punch and the out punch for every day worked. Use the same format throughout. If your card is written in 24-hour time and you think in 12-hour time, the Military Time Converter will translate the column first.
Put the total unpaid break for that day into the break box, in whole minutes. A 45-minute lunch is 45. Two 15-minute paid rest breaks are 0, because paid breaks are already inside the span you are being paid for.
The defaults are 40 hours and 1.5, which match the United States federal weekly standard. Change the threshold to 44 for Ontario, or to whatever number your employment standards or collective agreement specifies.
The weekly total appears in hours and minutes and in decimal hours, split into regular and overtime, with regular pay, overtime pay and gross pay underneath. Copy the decimal figure into payroll, not the HH:MM one.
This page is general information, not legal or payroll advice. Overtime thresholds, break entitlements, rounding rules and record-keeping periods differ by country, by province or state, by industry and by employment agreement, and they change. Use the figures here to understand the arithmetic, then check the current rules that apply to you with your jurisdiction's employment standards authority or a qualified adviser before relying on a number.
One realistic week with an early start, a long Thursday, a short Saturday and a day off. Every figure below is checked twice: once through the daily rows, once through the totals.
| Day | In | Out | Break (min) | Clock span | Paid hours | Decimal |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monday | 08:00 | 16:30 | 30 | 8:30 | 8:00 | 8.00 |
| Tuesday | 07:45 | 17:15 | 45 | 9:30 | 8:45 | 8.75 |
| Wednesday | 08:00 | 16:00 | 30 | 8:00 | 7:30 | 7.50 |
| Thursday | 09:00 | 19:00 | 60 | 10:00 | 9:00 | 9.00 |
| Friday | 08:15 | 16:45 | 30 | 8:30 | 8:00 | 8.00 |
| Saturday | 10:00 | 14:30 | 0 | 4:30 | 4:30 | 4.50 |
| Sunday off | not worked | not worked | 0 | 0:00 | 0:00 | 0.00 |
| Week total | 195 | 49:00 | 45:45 | 45.75 |
Check the total two ways. Down the paid column: 480 + 525 + 450 + 540 + 480 + 270 = 2,745 minutes, and 2,745 ÷ 60 = 45 remainder 45, so 45:45. Across the totals row: 49 hours of clock span (2,940 minutes) minus 195 minutes of unpaid break is also 2,745 minutes. Both agree, so 45.75 decimal hours is right.
week total = 2,745 min = 45 h 45 min = 45.75 h regular = 40.00 h (the threshold) overtime = 45.75 − 40 = 5.75 h at $24.00/h regular pay = 40.00 × 24.00 = $960.00 overtime = 5.75 × 24.00 × 1.5 = $207.00 gross pay = $1,167.00
Notice where the fortieth hour lands. Running totals go 8.00, 16.75, 24.25, 33.25 at the end of Thursday. Friday's eight hours push the week through 40 partway through the afternoon, so 6.75 of Friday's hours are regular and 1.25 are overtime. Saturday is entirely overtime because the threshold was already crossed. That is the shape the chart below draws.
Four numbers describe a day: in, break start, break end, out. Only two of the three intervals they create are paid.
Mechanical punch clocks stamp a card in hours and hundredths of an hour or in hours and minutes, and the two look almost identical at a glance. A stamp reading 8 07 could be 8:07 in the morning or 8.07 hours elapsed. Look at the column header. If the card has an IN column and an OUT column it is clock time. If it has a single ELAPSED or TOTAL column it is already a duration, and adding it to a clock time is meaningless.
Digital systems usually export in 24-hour time, which removes the AM and PM ambiguity but introduces a different trap: midnight is 00:00, not 24:00, and a shift ending at 00:30 belongs to the previous working day even though the calendar date has rolled over. When you enter an overnight shift, put the real out time in and let the calculator detect the wrap. It adds twenty-four hours automatically whenever the out time is earlier than the in time.
Handwritten cards are the hardest, because people round in their heads before they write. A worker who arrives at 7:52 and writes 8:00 has silently applied an eight-minute rounding policy that nobody agreed to. If you are auditing a card, the raw punch is the evidence; the written figure is an interpretation.
Convert both punches to minutes since midnight, subtract, then deal with breaks. Doing it in HH:MM invites borrowing mistakes at exactly the moments you are tired.
A split shift with a three-hour gap in the afternoon is still one row: enter the full span and put the gap in the break box. Two separate rows would double-count the day.
A shift that starts Friday at 22:00 and ends Saturday at 06:00 belongs to whichever day your employer's policy assigns it to. Be consistent, or a week will gain or lose a shift.
The single most common time card error is putting a paid break into the unpaid break box, or forgetting to put an unpaid one there at all.
The distinction is simple in principle. If you are free to leave, free to do what you like, and genuinely relieved of duty for a meaningful stretch, the break is usually unpaid and comes out of the paid total. If you are still on call, still at your station, or the break is short enough that it is treated as part of the working day, it is usually paid and stays inside the total. Short rest breaks of roughly five to twenty minutes are commonly treated as paid working time in both the United States and Canada; longer bona fide meal periods, typically thirty minutes or more with the worker fully relieved of duty, are commonly unpaid. The exact boundaries are set by statute and by the employment agreement, so treat those figures as the usual pattern rather than a rule.
| Kind of break | Typical treatment | Enter in break box | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| 30 to 60 minute meal, fully relieved | Unpaid | 30 to 60 | You are off the clock, so the minutes come out of the paid span. |
| 10 or 15 minute rest break | Usually paid | 0 | Already inside the paid span. Entering it would deduct time you are owed. |
| Working lunch at your desk | Usually paid | 0 | Not relieved of duty, so it is generally working time. |
| On-call meal break, interrupted | Often paid | 0 | If you were called back, the interruption commonly makes the whole period working time. |
| Unpaid gap in a split shift | Unpaid | the full gap | Enter one row for the full span and put the gap in the break box. |
| Travel between two job sites mid-day | Often paid | 0 | Travel that is part of the day's work is usually compensable. Commuting from home is usually not. |
| Voluntary early arrival, not working | Unpaid | the waiting minutes | Only if you were genuinely not working and not required to be there. |
Treatments in this table are the common pattern, not a statement of law. Meal and rest break entitlements vary widely: some jurisdictions mandate a paid rest break every few hours, some mandate an unpaid meal period after five hours, and some leave it entirely to the employment contract. Check your own rules.
A thirty-minute unpaid lunch on five days a week for fifty-two weeks is 7,800 minutes, which is 130 hours, or better than three full working weeks. Whether that block is paid or unpaid is not a rounding detail. It is the difference between a 40-hour paid week and a 37.5-hour paid week, and at a rate of $24.00 an hour it is $3,120.00 a year.
30 min × 5 days × 52 weeks = 7,800 min 7,800 ÷ 60 = 130.00 hours per year 130.00 × $24.00 = $3,120.00
This is why the break column deserves the same care as the punches. If you want to convert an odd break total on its own, the Minutes to Hours converter handles it in one step, and the Decimal Hours Converter turns the result into the format your payroll system wants.
Many electronic systems deduct a fixed lunch automatically whenever a shift runs past a certain length, whether or not the worker actually took it. This is efficient and it is also the source of a great many payroll disputes, because on the days the break was skipped the deduction removes real working time. If your system does this, the fix is procedural rather than mathematical: give people a documented way to cancel the automatic deduction, and reconcile the exceptions weekly. On a manual card, simply enter 0 in the break box for a day the break was genuinely not taken, and note why.
There is no universal answer. The two families of rule are weekly and daily, and some places apply both at once.
The weekly rule is the one most people know: hours worked beyond a set number in a fixed and recurring seven-day workweek are paid at a premium. In the United States the federal standard under the Fair Labor Standards Act is 40 hours in a workweek at one and a half times the regular rate, for employees who are not exempt. The workweek is a fixed period the employer designates; it does not have to start on Monday, but once set it has to stay put, and each week stands alone. Averaging a busy week against a quiet one across a two-week pay period is not permitted under that standard.
The daily rule counts hours within a single workday instead. California is the best-known example: hours beyond eight in a workday attract a premium, and hours beyond twelve attract a larger one. Several Canadian provinces work the same way, sometimes combined with a weekly threshold that is not 40. When both a daily and a weekly test apply, the point of the design is that no hour is counted twice: an hour that has already been paid as daily overtime does not also count towards the weekly threshold.
| Rule set | Threshold | Multiplier | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| US federal (FLSA) | Over 40 h in a workweek | 1.5× | Applies to non-exempt employees. State law may be more generous, and the more generous rule governs. |
| California, daily | Over 8 h in a workday | 1.5× | Applied alongside the weekly test so that no hour is paid a premium twice. |
| California, long day | Over 12 h in a workday | 2.0× | Double time. Separate rules apply to a seventh consecutive day in a workweek. |
| Canada, federally regulated | Over 8 h in a day or 40 h in a week | 1.5× | Covers sectors such as banking, interprovincial transport and telecommunications. |
| Ontario | Over 44 h in a work week | 1.5× | Weekly only. Set the threshold in the calculator to 44. |
| British Columbia | Over 8 h in a day or 40 h in a week | 1.5× | Hours beyond 12 in a day attract 2.0×. |
| Alberta | Over 8 h in a day or 44 h in a week | 1.5× | The daily and weekly results are compared and the greater one is paid. |
| Quebec | Over 40 h in a week | 1.5× | Weekly only. |
| This calculator default | Over 40 h in the week you enter | 1.5× | Both the threshold and the multiplier are editable fields. |
A general summary for orientation only. Exemptions, averaging agreements, industry-specific orders, collective agreements and recent amendments all change the answer, and several of these jurisdictions have special rules for agriculture, healthcare, transport and managerial staff. Confirm the current position with the relevant employment standards authority before paying or disputing anything.
Two workers can work exactly forty hours and be owed very different amounts, because the shape of the week matters under a daily rule and does not matter at all under a weekly one.
| Week shape | Total hours | Overtime, weekly 40 only | Overtime, daily 8 plus weekly 40 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sample week above (8.00, 8.75, 7.50, 9.00, 8.00, 4.50, 0) | 45.75 | 5.75 at 1.5× | 5.75 at 1.5× |
| Four compressed 10-hour days | 40.00 | 0.00 | 8.00 at 1.5× |
| Six 7-hour days | 42.00 | 2.00 at 1.5× | 2.00 at 1.5× |
| Three 13-hour days | 39.00 | 0.00 | 12.00 at 1.5× plus 3.00 at 2.0× |
Working of the last row: each 13-hour day gives 8 regular hours, 4 hours between the 8 and 12 marks at time and a half, and 1 hour beyond 12 at double time. Three days multiply that to 24 regular, 12 at 1.5 and 3 at 2.0. The weekly total of 39 never reaches 40, so a pure weekly rule finds no overtime at all. The first and third rows come out the same under both rules because no day exceeded twelve hours and the week never reached a seventh consecutive day.
Each workweek stands alone. If a two-week pay period contains a 44-hour week and a 36-hour week, that is four hours of overtime, not zero. Averaging the two to 40 each understates the pay. At $25.00 an hour the correct gross is $2,050.00 and the averaged figure is $2,000.00, a shortfall of $150.00 in a single fortnight.
The multiplier is applied to the regular rate of pay, and the regular rate is not always the same thing as the base hourly wage.
Time and a half means 1.5 times the regular rate. Double time means 2.0. Some collective agreements use 1.25 for a shift premium, 1.75 for a statutory holiday worked, or 2.5 for a holiday in the middle of an overtime week. The calculator takes any multiplier you type, so if your agreement says 1.75 you can put 1.75 in and the arithmetic follows.
overtime rate = regular rate × multiplier $24.00 × 1.5 = $36.00 per overtime hour $24.00 × 2.0 = $48.00 per double-time hour overtime pay = overtime hours × overtime rate 5.75 × $36.00 = $207.00
The subtlety worth knowing is the phrase regular rate of pay. Under the FLSA and under many comparable rules elsewhere, the regular rate is not just the posted hourly wage. It is total straight-time earnings for the week divided by total hours worked, and it can include non-discretionary bonuses, shift differentials, commissions and piece-rate earnings. A worker paid $24.00 an hour who also earns a $60.00 production bonus in a 45.75-hour week has a regular rate above $24.00, and the overtime premium is computed on that higher figure. Discretionary gifts, genuine reimbursements and certain premium payments are commonly excluded. If a bonus is in play, the calculator's straight rate field will understate the premium, and the calculation needs a payroll professional.
Payroll systems describe overtime in two equivalent ways and it causes endless confusion. Some pay all hours at the base rate and then add a separate premium line of 0.5 times the rate for the overtime hours. Others pay regular hours at the base rate and overtime hours at 1.5 times. The totals are identical.
Method A: 45.75 × $24.00 = $1,098.00 plus premium 5.75 × $24.00 × 0.5 = $69.00 total $1,167.00 Method B: 40.00 × $24.00 = $960.00 plus 5.75 × $36.00 = $207.00 total $1,167.00
If your stub shows a line called OT premium at half rate rather than a line called overtime at time and a half, it is using Method A. Check the total, not the line labels.
1.5× the regular rate. The near-universal first tier of overtime in North America, applied above a weekly or a daily threshold.
2.0×. Common for very long days, statutory holidays and consecutive-day rules where those rules exist. It is not a federal requirement in the United States.
Some jurisdictions allow overtime to be taken as paid time off instead of cash, usually at the same premium rate, and usually only with a written agreement.
Rounding is legal in many places. Rounding that always lands in the employer's favour generally is not.
Rounding exists because mechanical clocks and paper cards were awkward to total to the minute. A payroll clerk with 200 cards found it far quicker to snap every punch to the nearest quarter hour. The practice survived into software, where it is no longer necessary but remains extremely common. Under the United States Fair Labor Standards Act, rounding to increments of up to fifteen minutes has long been accepted, provided the practice is neutral over time: it must round up as often as it rounds down and must not, on average, shortchange the worker. Some jurisdictions and some courts have taken a stricter view, and where a system can record exact minutes there is a growing expectation that it should.
| Interval | 8:07 becomes | Effect on a clock-in | Largest possible swing | Where you see it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 minute (no rounding) | 8:07 | 0 min | 0 min | Modern digital systems that record exact punches. |
| 5 minutes | 8:05 | +2 min for the worker | 2.5 min | Retail and hospitality scheduling apps. |
| 6 minutes 0.1 h | 8:06 | +1 min for the worker | 3 min | Legal, accounting and agency billing, where a tenth of an hour is the unit. |
| 10 minutes | 8:10 | −3 min for the worker | 5 min | Some manufacturing and logistics shops. |
| 15 minutes 0.25 h | 8:00 | +7 min for the worker | 7.5 min | The classic quarter-hour punch clock rule. |
| 30 minutes | 8:00 | +7 min for the worker | 15 min | Rare and hard to defend on a punch clock. |
A clock-in that rounds backwards gives the worker paid time they did not work, which is why the sign flips depending on which side of the increment the punch falls. The largest possible swing on any single punch is half the interval, so a 15-minute rule can move a punch by up to 7.5 minutes and a two-punch day by up to 15 minutes in either direction.
Quarter-hour rounding is usually described as the seven-minute rule. Punches from 1 to 7 minutes past a quarter mark round back to that mark; punches from 8 to 14 minutes past round forward to the next one. So 8:07 becomes 8:00 and 8:08 becomes 8:15. Applied to both the in punch and the out punch, the rule is symmetrical and therefore neutral in expectation.
It stops being neutral the moment somebody applies it in one direction only. Rounding the in punch forward and the out punch backward, so that both movements favour the employer, is the pattern that gets systems challenged. Over a five-day week, three minutes taken twice a day is thirty minutes; over a year that is 26 hours of unpaid work.
3 min × 2 punches × 5 days = 30 min per week 30 × 52 = 1,560 min per year 1,560 ÷ 60 = 26.00 unpaid hours
Round the punches, not the totals. If your policy rounds, apply it to each in and out punch and then subtract, so the result is reproducible from the raw card. Rounding the daily total instead produces figures nobody can audit, and rounding each day before summing the week compounds the drift. Keep three decimal places through the week and round only once, at the end.
Payroll multiplies hours by a rate. You cannot multiply 45:45 by $24.00, but you can multiply 45.75.
Decimal hours are hours written as one number with a fractional part, where the fraction is the minutes divided by sixty. Forty-five hours and forty-five minutes is 45.75, because 45 ÷ 60 = 0.75. This is the single conversion that causes more timesheet disputes than any other, because the intuitive but wrong move is to write the minutes after the decimal point: 45.45. The gap between 45.45 and 45.75 is eighteen minutes, and it recurs every week.
decimal hours = whole hours + (minutes ÷ 60) 45 h 45 min = 45 + (45 ÷ 60) = 45 + 0.75 = 45.75 minutes = (decimal − whole) × 60 8.4 h = 0.4 × 60 = 24 min, so 8 h 24 min
| Minutes | Decimal | Minutes | Decimal | Minutes | Decimal |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | 0.083 | 25 | 0.417 | 45 | 0.75 |
| 6 | 0.100 | 30 | 0.50 | 48 | 0.800 |
| 10 | 0.167 | 35 | 0.583 | 50 | 0.833 |
| 12 | 0.200 | 36 | 0.600 | 54 | 0.900 |
| 15 | 0.25 | 40 | 0.667 | 55 | 0.917 |
| 20 | 0.333 | 42 | 0.700 | 60 | 1.00 |
Bold values are the quarter-hour marks, the only points where the minute reading and the decimal reading are both tidy. The 6-minute row is worth memorising if you bill in tenths: 6 minutes is exactly 0.1 hours, so 18 minutes is 0.3 and 42 minutes is 0.7. For anything not in this table use the Decimal Hours Converter, or the Time Calculator if you also need to add the values together first.
Most payroll systems accept two decimal places. Two places is enough to represent every quarter hour exactly and every six-minute increment exactly, but not every minute: twenty minutes is 0.3333 recurring, and 0.33 is twelve seconds short. Over a week of odd minute values those twelve-second gaps can add up to a minute or two. If your system takes four decimal places, use them, or better, work in minutes internally and convert once at the end. Summing 2,745 minutes and dividing once by 60 is always exact; summing seven rounded decimals is not.
Four numbers come out of the calculator: regular hours, overtime hours, regular pay and overtime pay. Gross pay is the last two added.
Gross pay is what the card earns before anything is taken off. Income tax, employment insurance, pension contributions, union dues, health premiums and garnishments all come out afterwards, so the figure the calculator shows will be larger than what lands in the bank. It is still the right number to check first, because a deduction dispute and an hours dispute are different problems and you cannot investigate the second until the first is settled.
regular hours = the lesser of (week total, threshold) overtime hours = week total − threshold, floored at zero regular pay = regular hours × rate overtime pay = overtime hours × rate × multiplier gross pay = regular pay + overtime pay
| Hourly rate | Overtime rate | Regular pay (40.00 h) | Overtime pay (5.75 h) | Gross pay |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $18.00 | $27.00 | $720.00 | $155.25 | $875.25 |
| $20.00 | $30.00 | $800.00 | $172.50 | $972.50 |
| $24.00 | $36.00 | $960.00 | $207.00 | $1,167.00 |
| $28.00 | $42.00 | $1,120.00 | $241.50 | $1,361.50 |
| $32.00 | $48.00 | $1,280.00 | $276.00 | $1,556.00 |
| $40.00 | $60.00 | $1,600.00 | $345.00 | $1,945.00 |
Each gross figure is regular pay plus overtime pay. Spot check the $28.00 row: 40.00 × 28.00 = $1,120.00, the overtime rate is 28.00 × 1.5 = $42.00, and 5.75 × 42.00 = $241.50, giving $1,361.50. Every row here happens to land on a whole cent. Rates such as $22.50 produce fractions of a cent in the overtime line, and payroll systems differ on whether they round each line or only the total, so a stub can legitimately differ from a hand calculation by one cent.
Divide gross pay by total hours. For the sample week, $1,167.00 ÷ 45.75 gives an average of $25.51 an hour against a base rate of $24.00. That average should always sit between the base rate and the overtime rate, closer to the base rate when overtime is a small share of the week. If it comes out below the base rate, hours have been paid at the wrong rate somewhere. If it comes out above the overtime rate, something has been double counted.
Each one can be reproduced in the calculator above. The working is shown so you can check your own method against it.
Six days worked, 195 minutes of unpaid break, a threshold of 40 hours, a multiplier of 1.5 and a rate of $24.00.
= 45.75 h · gross $1,167.00
Four nights 22:00 to 06:30 with a 30-minute break, plus one long night 22:00 to 08:00 with 45 minutes. Rate $26.00.
= 41.25 h · gross $1,088.75
Five days of 7 h 30 min, entered into payroll as 7.30 instead of 7.50. Rate $22.00.
= 1.00 h lost weekly · $1,144.00 a year
In at 07:00, out at 17:30, 30-minute unpaid lunch, four days. Rate $30.00.
Weekly rule $1,200.00 · daily rule $1,320.00
Punches at 8:07 and 17:02 with a 30-minute break, rounded to the nearest 15 minutes.
= 8.50 paid vs 8.4167 actual · +25 min a week
Week one is 44.00 h, week two is 36.00 h. Threshold 40, multiplier 1.5, rate $25.00.
= $2,050.00, not the $2,000.00 an average gives
Most bad time cards are honest mistakes with a recognisable shape. A few are not, and those have a recognisable shape too.
| Problem | How it shows up | The fix |
|---|---|---|
| Minutes written as decimals | 8:45 entered as 8.45 | Divide minutes by 60. 8:45 is 8.75. The error is 18 minutes per shift. |
| Overnight shift not wrapped | 22:00 to 06:00 shown as 0:00 or negative | Add 24 hours to the out time when it is earlier than the in time. The answer is 8:00. |
| Paid break deducted anyway | Two 15-minute rests entered as 30 | Enter 0. Paid breaks are already inside the span. This one costs half an hour a day. |
| Automatic lunch on a skipped lunch | 30 deducted on a day nobody stopped | Override the deduction and record the reason. Reconcile exceptions before the pay run closes. |
| Weeks averaged across a pay period | 44 h and 36 h treated as 40 and 40 | Assess each workweek separately. Four overtime hours are owed, not zero. |
| Rounding each day, then summing | Seven roundings compounding | Round the punches, keep full precision through the week, round once at the end. |
| 12-hour and 24-hour values mixed | 5:00 PM entered as 5:00 | Convert the whole column first. 5:00 PM is 17:00. |
| Spreadsheet total wrapping at 24 h | 45:45 displayed as 21:45 | Format the total cell as [h]:mm, not h:mm, so hours accumulate past 24. |
The spreadsheet wrap is the quietest of these because the number still looks plausible. A weekly total that suddenly drops by exactly 24 hours is almost always a cell format problem, not a scheduling one.
Time card fraud is usually small, repetitive and boring, which is exactly why it survives. The patterns below are worth a second look, though none of them proves anything on its own. A worker with a long commute and an unpredictable schedule can produce several of them innocently.
One person clocks in for another who has not arrived. It shows up as an in punch that is suspiciously consistent to the minute while the out punch varies, or as two employees whose punches are seconds apart every single day.
Arriving at 8:07 and leaving at 16:53 every day under a quarter-hour rule collects 7 paid minutes at each end, because the in punch rounds back to 8:00 and the out punch rounds forward to 17:00. That is 14 free minutes a day, or roughly 60 hours a year.
A break box that reads 0 on every single card for months, on shifts long enough that a break is required, usually means breaks are being worked through and not recorded rather than genuinely not taken.
Punches amended after the fact with no note explaining why. A legitimate correction has a reason attached and a name against it. A silent edit does not.
A card that totals exactly 40.00 hours week after week, with punches at 8:00 and 16:30 to the minute, is a card that was written rather than recorded.
Fifteen extra minutes on most days, never enough to attract attention individually, adding up to more than an hour of overtime a week that nobody authorised.
The response to all of these is the same and it is not accusation. It is a written policy that says what gets recorded, when corrections are allowed, who approves overtime in advance, and how a disputed punch is resolved. Most of the patterns above disappear once the rules are written down and applied consistently.
Longer than most people expect, and the period is different for the raw card than for the payroll register built from it.
Employers are generally required to keep records showing hours worked, wages paid and the basis on which wages were calculated. The point of the requirement is that a wage claim brought two or three years later can be tested against contemporaneous evidence. Where records are missing, the burden of proof in a dispute tends to shift towards the employer, so retention is a practical protection rather than a formality.
| Record type | Commonly cited period | Context |
|---|---|---|
| Payroll records and wage computations | 3 years | The baseline under the United States Fair Labor Standards Act. |
| Time cards, schedules, wage-rate tables | 2 years | Supporting records on which wage computations are based, under the same federal rule. |
| Employment standards records, Canada | Commonly 3 years | Set provincially and territorially, generally running from the date the work was performed. |
| Employment tax records, United States | Commonly 4 years | Counted from the date the tax was due or paid, whichever is later. |
| Books and records, Canada Revenue Agency | Commonly 6 years | Generally from the end of the last tax year to which they relate. |
| Records under an active dispute or audit | Until resolved | Retention holds override the ordinary periods. Do not destroy anything under a hold. |
These are the periods most often quoted, not a complete legal statement, and several of them run from different starting points. Where two rules overlap, the longer one governs in practice. If you are unsure, keeping payroll and time records for seven years is a common conservative default that satisfies most overlapping requirements at once.
A defensible time record is more than a total. It carries the employee's name and identifier, the workweek the record covers, the day-by-day in and out times, the break periods, the total hours for each day and for the week, the pay rate and the basis on which it is paid, the regular and overtime hours separately, the gross pay, every deduction, and the date the pay was made. If a record has been corrected, it should also show what changed, who changed it and why.
Keeping the calculator output alongside the raw punches is a cheap way to satisfy most of that. Print or save the weekly total, and keep the card it came from. A total without its underlying punches is an assertion; a total with its punches is evidence.
For related calculations that often sit alongside a time card, the Time Duration Calculator handles a single interval, Minutes to Hours converts an accumulated minute count, and the Military Time Converter translates a 24-hour export back into the 12-hour times most people read more easily.
The vocabulary that appears on cards, in payroll software and in employment standards documents.
Direct answers to the questions people ask most about this calculation.
A time card calculator adds up a week of clock-in and clock-out times, subtracts unpaid breaks, and reports the result in both hours-and-minutes and decimal hours. It then splits the weekly total into regular and overtime hours at a threshold you set, and multiplies each part by your hourly rate to give regular pay, overtime pay and gross pay. It removes the base-60 arithmetic that makes manual timesheets error-prone.
Work out each day separately, then add. For each day, convert both punches to minutes since midnight, subtract the in punch from the out punch, and take off the unpaid break minutes. Add the seven daily figures in minutes, then divide the total by 60 once at the end. A week totalling 2,745 minutes is 45 hours 45 minutes, or 45.75 decimal hours. Summing in minutes avoids rounding drift.
Only if the lunch is unpaid. A meal period where you are fully relieved of duty, typically 30 minutes or more, is usually unpaid and comes out of the paid total. Short rest breaks of roughly five to twenty minutes are usually paid and stay inside the total, so enter 0 for those. Entering a paid break in the break box deducts time you are owed.
Eight hours exactly. The clock span from 08:00 to 16:30 is 8 hours 30 minutes, which is 510 minutes. Subtracting a 30-minute unpaid break leaves 480 minutes, and 480 ÷ 60 = 8.00. Enter 8.00 into payroll, not 8:00, because payroll multiplies hours by a rate and cannot handle the colon format.
It depends on where you work. The United States federal standard is more than 40 hours in a fixed workweek. Ontario uses 44 hours a week. California, British Columbia and several other places also apply a daily test, commonly more than 8 hours in a workday. Some jurisdictions apply both a daily and a weekly test, arranged so that no hour attracts a premium twice. Check your local employment standards.
The factor applied to the regular rate for hours above the threshold. Time and a half is 1.5, so a $24.00 rate becomes $36.00 an overtime hour. Double time is 2.0, giving $48.00. Some collective agreements specify other figures such as 1.75 for a statutory holiday. The calculator accepts any multiplier you type, and the default is 1.5.
Divide the minutes by 60 and add the whole hours. 45 minutes ÷ 60 = 0.75, so 8 hours 45 minutes is 8.75 decimal hours. Never write the minutes after the decimal point: 8.45 is not 8 hours 45 minutes and understates the shift by 18 minutes. For odd values, use the Decimal Hours Converter linked from this page.
In many places yes, within limits. Under the United States Fair Labor Standards Act, rounding to increments of up to fifteen minutes has long been accepted provided the practice is neutral over time, meaning it rounds up as often as down and does not systematically favour the employer. Some jurisdictions and courts take a stricter view, particularly where a system can record exact minutes. Rules vary, so check yours.
Enter the real in and out times and let the calculator detect the wrap. When the out time is earlier than the in time, it adds 24 hours before subtracting. A 22:00 to 06:30 shift becomes 30:30 minus 22:00, which is 8 hours 30 minutes, or 8.00 paid hours after a 30-minute break. Decide separately which working day the shift is assigned to, and be consistent.
No. Forty hours a week is the United States federal standard and the most common software default, but Ontario uses 44 hours a week, Quebec uses 40, and Alberta uses 8 hours a day or 44 a week whichever gives more. Several places apply a daily threshold of 8 hours regardless of the weekly total. Set the threshold field to whatever your jurisdiction or agreement specifies.
Double time is an overtime multiplier of 2.0, so an hour is paid at twice the regular rate. It typically applies to very long days, such as hours beyond twelve in a workday in California and British Columbia, and to statutory holidays or consecutive-day rules where those exist. It is not required by United States federal law, which sets only the one and a half times standard.
Commonly two to seven years depending on the record and the jurisdiction. Under the United States Fair Labor Standards Act, payroll records are generally kept three years and the supporting time cards two years. Canadian provincial employment standards commonly require three years, and tax authorities often expect longer. Where periods overlap, the longest one governs, and anything under an active dispute must be retained until resolved.
No. Every calculation runs in your browser using JavaScript. Nothing you type is sent to a server, logged or stored, there is no account and no cookie is needed to use the tool. Once the page has loaded it keeps working with the connection off, which also means you need to save or print your own copy of the result before closing the tab.
Buddy punching is one employee clocking in or out on behalf of another who is not actually present. It is the most common form of deliberate time card fraud. Typical signs are two employees whose punches land within seconds of each other every day, or in punches that are identical to the minute while out punches vary. Biometric and photo-verified clocks exist mainly to prevent it.