A 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM day with a 30-minute unpaid break is 7.5 hours worked, which payroll systems read as 7.50 decimal hours.
Results computed in your browser.
Almost every timesheet error traces back to one habit: treating minutes like cents. Someone works from 9:00 to 5:15, sees "15 minutes," and types 8.15 into a spreadsheet instead of 8.25. It looks close enough to be invisible and wrong enough to shortchange every paycheck it touches.
Turn both clock times into minutes since midnight first. A 9:00 AM start is 540 minutes. A 5:00 PM finish is 1,020 minutes. Subtract for 480 minutes gross. Pull out a 30-minute unpaid break and you have 450 minutes left, which is 7.5 hours, or 7 hours and 30 minutes if you'd rather read it that way. Working in minutes the whole time is what keeps the clock from lying to you.
| Minutes | Decimal hours | Hours and minutes |
|---|---|---|
| 450 | 7.50 | 7h 30m |
| 465 | 7.75 | 7h 45m |
| 500 | 8.33 | 8h 20m |
| 510 | 8.50 | 8h 30m |
Start at 10:00 PM, finish at 6:00 AM, and a plain subtraction gives you a negative number, because 6:00 AM looks earlier than 10:00 PM on the clock. The calculator adds 24 hours to the end time whenever this happens, which turns the math into 480 minutes, or 8 hours, before the break comes out. You never have to notice or fix this yourself; it happens automatically the moment the end time reads earlier than the start.
Payroll multiplies decimal hours by a rate, which is the whole reason decimal hours exist. A 7.5-hour shift at $16 an hour is 7.5 times $16, or $120 gross, before taxes and anything else withholding takes out. Enter a rate above to see your own figure. What this tool will not do is separate out overtime, because overtime only makes sense measured across a full workweek, not a single shift; the hours or time card calculator handles that comparison.
Rounded punches. If your employer rounds clock-ins and clock-outs to the nearest quarter hour, the number this tool gives you from your actual times may not match your pay stub exactly. The Department of Labor allows that kind of rounding under the FLSA, as long as it is applied evenly and does not consistently work against employees over time. If yours seems to always round down, that is worth raising with payroll.
Sources: DOL Fact Sheet 22, Hours Worked under the FLSA, U.S. Department of Labor, Overtime Pay.
Reading minutes as if they were cents. 8:15 gets typed as 8.15 hours when it is actually 8.25. The fix is always the same: divide the minutes by 60 before you do anything else with the number.
Because that is how most people remember a lunch break, as 30 or 45 minutes, not as 0.5 or 0.75 of an hour. The tool does the minutes-to-decimal conversion for you internally.
Yes. Whenever the end time reads earlier than the start time, the calculator assumes the shift crossed midnight and adds 24 hours before subtracting, so the total comes out correct without any extra input from you.
No. This tool works from the exact times you enter. If your employer rounds punches to the nearest quarter hour, your pay stub may differ slightly from this result; the FLSA permits that kind of rounding as long as it does not consistently shortchange workers.
No, it totals one span of time only. Overtime is a weekly calculation, so add up several shifts with the hours calculator or time card calculator to see whether you crossed 40 hours.