A 9:00 AM to 5:30 PM shift with a 30-minute unpaid break comes to exactly 8 hours, which is 8.00 decimal hours on a timesheet.
Estimates only.
Most elapsed-time confusion isn't the subtraction, it's the break. Whether a break comes out of your total depends on whether it was paid, and the Fair Labor Standards Act draws that line by length and by duty, not by what your shift schedule calls it.
Enter only unpaid time in the break field. If you put a paid 10-minute break in there by mistake, the net hours this tool reports will run short of what you are actually owed, since that time was worked and payable. A 30-minute unpaid lunch is the deduction this tool is built for; a 10-minute paid break should not be subtracted at all.
Start at 9:00 AM, finish at 5:30 PM, with a 30-minute unpaid lunch. Converting to minutes since midnight: 540 for the start, 1,050 for the end, a gross span of 510 minutes. Take out the 30-minute lunch and 480 minutes remain, which is exactly 8.00 hours. Skip the lunch deduction and the same shift reads 8.5 hours instead, the difference the break field exists to catch.
| Start | End | Break | Net hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| 9:00 AM | 5:00 PM | 30 m | 7.50 |
| 9:00 AM | 5:30 PM | 30 m | 8.00 |
| 7:00 AM | 3:30 PM | 0 m | 8.50 |
| 10:00 PM | 6:30 AM | 30 m | 8.00 |
A clock-out earlier than the clock-in is the tell that a shift crossed into the next day. This tool adds a full 24 hours to the end time whenever that happens, so 10:00 PM to 6:30 AM resolves to 510 minutes, or 8.5 hours, before any break comes out, rather than returning a negative number.
Some payroll systems dock a fixed 30 or 60 minutes from every shift over a set length, whether or not the employee actually stepped away. That practice is permitted under the FLSA only if the employer actively monitors it and restores the time on any day the break was skipped or interrupted. If you regularly work through a lunch that still gets deducted on your pay stub, this tool is a fast way to check your real hours against what payroll shows.
Round-number examples flatter every calculator, so here is a lopsided one. Clock in at 6:45 AM, out at 4:10 PM, with a 45-minute unpaid lunch. In minutes since midnight that is 405 and 970, a gross span of 565 minutes; removing the 45-minute lunch leaves 520. The tool reports it both ways at once: 8h 40m, and 8.67 decimal hours. Both describe the same 520 minutes, and having the pair on screen together is the point, because the h:mm figure is what you remember about the day while the decimal is what payroll multiplies. When those two get confused, 8.40 standing in for 8h 40m, the shift silently loses 16 minutes.
Federal law is quieter on breaks than most people expect: the FLSA sets pay rules for breaks that happen but does not require an employer to provide a meal period at all. States fill that gap, and unevenly. California is the strictest of the large states: a 30-minute meal period must begin before the end of the fifth hour of work, with a second one due before the end of the tenth hour on longer days, and a missed or interrupted meal owes the employee an extra hour of premium pay. If your break field on this page is routinely empty on 9-hour California days, that is not just a timesheet quirk; it is a number your employer owes money on. Check your own state's rules before assuming the federal silence is the whole story.
A lunch only counts as unpaid, deductible time when you are genuinely relieved of work. Eating at your desk while answering the phone is worked time under the FLSA no matter what the schedule calls it, and it belongs in your total, not in the break field. The practical test is simple: if you could not leave the work behind for the full stretch, the stretch was work.
On Sunday, March 8, 2026, US clocks jump from 2:00 straight to 3:00 AM. Work 11:00 PM to 7:00 AM across that night and you were on duty for 7 hours, even though the punches subtract to 8. The mirror image arrives November 1, 2026, when 2:00 AM snaps back to 1:00: the same punches now hold 9 real hours, and the Department of Labor's position is that all 9 count as hours worked, including toward the 40-hour overtime threshold. This calculator, like most time clocks, does wall-clock subtraction. On those two nights, and only those, adjust the result by an hour yourself, in the right direction, or the error rides straight through to the paycheck.
Many employers round punches before the math ever happens, and the federal regulation at 29 CFR 785.48 blesses quarter-hour rounding as long as it washes out fairly over time. Under the common version of that scheme, a punch 1 to 7 minutes past a quarter-hour mark rounds back, and 8 to 14 minutes rounds forward. Systems that round to a tenth of an hour use 6-minute blocks and split at 3 minutes instead. The same four punches come out differently under each scheme:
| Actual punch | Quarter-hour | Tenth-hour |
|---|---|---|
| 8:53 AM in | 9:00 AM | 8:54 AM |
| 9:07 AM in | 9:00 AM | 9:06 AM |
| 4:52 PM out | 4:45 PM | 4:54 PM |
| 5:08 PM out | 5:15 PM | 5:06 PM |
Notice the 4:52 punch loses 7 minutes under one scheme and gains 2 under the other. Courts have repeatedly held that rounding must be neutral in practice, not just on paper; a system that only ever rounds against the employee is a wage claim waiting for a lawyer. This tool works from the exact punches you type, which makes it a clean baseline for spotting what rounding did to a pay stub.
One near-relative worth keeping separate: a grace period. Plenty of clocks accept a punch up to 5 minutes after the scheduled start without marking the shift late, but that is an attendance policy, a question of who gets a warning. Rounding is a pay policy, a question of which minutes get paid. An employer can run either, both, or neither, and confusing the two is how a "my clock-in was fine" argument and a "my check is short" problem end up talking past each other.
For overtime purposes the FLSA carves time into a fixed, recurring 168-hour workweek that each employer declares, and it does not have to start at midnight or on a Monday. That matters for overnight shifts. If the workweek boundary is midnight Saturday, a 10:00 PM Saturday to 6:30 AM Sunday shift splits: two hours belong to the closing week and the rest to the new one, and the split can decide whether either week crosses 40 hours. Most timekeeping software labels the whole shift with the day it started, which is fine as a label, but the legal overtime math runs on the declared week boundary, and the employer has to apply the same boundary every single week rather than moving it to dodge overtime.
One honest limit: this tool assumes the end time follows the start by less than 24 hours. It adds a single day when the end reads earlier than the start, so a genuine 25-hour stretch entered as 9:00 to 10:00 comes out as 1 hour. For an on-call block or travel stretch longer than a day, split it into daily segments here, or count whole days with the date calculator and let this page handle the leftover hours.
Sources: DOL Fact Sheet 22, Hours Worked under the FLSA, California DIR, Meal Periods FAQ, 29 CFR 785.48, Use of time clocks.
Last updated July 18, 2026.
Only if the deduction is reversed on the days you actually work through it. Automatic break deductions are allowed under the FLSA only when the employer has a real process for crediting back time on days the break was interrupted or skipped.
No. Short breaks of roughly 20 minutes or less are treated as paid working time under the FLSA and should not be entered in this tool's break field. A genuine meal period of 30 minutes or more, where you are fully off duty, is the kind of break meant to be deducted.
Your net hours will come out lower than what you are actually owed. Only enter break time that your employer does not pay you for; a paid rest break should stay counted as worked time.
No. It reports the exact decimal figure down to two places. Any rounding your employer applies to punches happens on their end, before or after this calculation, not inside this tool.
This tool measures one span between a start and end time. The hours calculator adds up a full week of separate daily totals and splits them into regular and overtime hours.
Nine. On November 1, 2026 the 1:00 AM hour repeats, so those punches contain 9 real hours of work even though subtracting them gives 8. The reverse happens on March 8, 2026, when the same punches hold only 7. This tool subtracts wall-clock times, so adjust by an hour on those two nights.
Tenth-hour systems work in 6-minute blocks, splitting 3 minutes either side of each mark. A 9:02 punch becomes 9:00, while 9:04 becomes 9:06. Quarter-hour systems use 15-minute blocks with the split at 7 and 8 minutes, so the same 9:04 punch would become 9:00 instead.
For pay and overtime, the hours belong to whichever declared workweek they actually fall in, not to a calendar day. Most systems display the shift under its start date, which is only a label. If your employer's week boundary cuts through your shift, the hours split at that boundary.
Not in one pass. The tool adds a single day when the end time reads earlier than the start, so a 25-hour stretch entered directly shows 1 hour. Split anything longer than a day into segments, or pair the date calculator with this one.