General
Hours Calculator
Totals hours, where decimal hours and hours and minutes are different formats.
Result
A finish time earlier than the start is treated as an overnight shift. Overtime rates are not applied. This is straight time at the rate entered.
Get a Free Business AuditHow the calculation works
Start and end times give a duration, less any break, totalled across entries. Converting to decimal hours for payroll means dividing minutes by sixty rather than treating them as a decimal, which is the conversion most often got wrong: forty-five minutes is 0.75 hours, not 0.45.
What moves the number
- Whether the output is hours and minutes or decimal hours.
- Breaks and whether they are paid.
- Shifts crossing midnight.
- Rounding practice.
Where this one goes wrong
Treating minutes as a decimal rather than converting them is a real payroll error, since 7.30 read as seven and a half hours when it means seven hours thirty minutes happens to be correct while 7.45 read the same way is not. Convert properly. Rounding time entries is permitted within limits under wage and hour rules and must not consistently favour the employer, which makes a rounding practice that always rounds down a compliance problem rather than an administrative convenience.
Before you quote
- Convert minutes to decimals by dividing by sixty.
- Handle shifts crossing midnight explicitly.
- Make sure any rounding practice does not systematically favour the employer.
Where the rules come from
Questions
About this calculator
How do I convert minutes to decimal hours?
Divide by sixty. Forty-five minutes is 0.75 hours, not 0.45. Treating minutes as a decimal is a real payroll error, and it happens to look correct at thirty minutes, which is why it survives undetected.
Can time entries be rounded?
Within limits under wage and hour rules, and the practice must not consistently favour the employer. A rounding rule that always rounds down is a compliance problem rather than an administrative convenience.
How are overnight shifts handled?
By treating the end time as being on the following day, which the calculation has to be told rather than inferring. A shift from ten at night to six in the morning is eight hours, and naive subtraction gives a negative figure.
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How to use this calculator
- Start time. Enter your own figure; the page starts at 07:30.
- Finish time. Enter your own figure; the page starts at 16:00.
- Unpaid break (minutes). Enter your own figure; the page starts at 30.
- Hourly rate ($). Enter your own figure; the page starts at $32.
- Days worked. Enter your own figure; the page starts at 5.
The result updates as you type, so you can try a figure, see what it does to hours per day, and change it back. Nothing you enter is sent anywhere or saved.
A worked example
These are the figures the calculator opens with. Every number in the results column below is produced by the same calculation the page runs, so you can follow it through before putting your own figures in.
What goes in
| Input | Value |
|---|---|
| Start time | 07:30 |
| Finish time | 16:00 |
| Unpaid break (minutes) | 30 |
| Hourly rate | $32 |
| Days worked | 5 |
What comes out
| Result | Value |
|---|---|
| Hours per day main result | 8.0 |
| Total hours | 40.0 |
| Total pay | $1,280 |
| Hours and minutes | 8h 0m |
That shift is 8h 0m of paid time. Over 5 days that is 40.0 hours and $1,280 in wages.
How sensitive the answer is
Holding everything else steady and changing only hourly rate, this is what happens to hours per day. It is worth knowing which of your inputs the answer actually hinges on, and which barely move it.
| Hourly rate ($) | Hours per day |
|---|---|
| $16 | 8.0 |
| $24 | 8.0 |
| $32 example above | 8.0 |
| $48 | 8.0 |
| $64 | 8.0 |
Every other input is held at the example value while this one changes, which is not how a real job behaves. Treat it as a guide to which number matters most, not as five separate quotes.
What each figure means
- Start time
- A number, starting at 07:30.
- Finish time
- A number, starting at 16:00.
- Unpaid break (minutes)
- A number, between 0 and 720, starting at 30.
- Hourly rate ($)
- A money amount, starting at $32.
- Days worked
- A number, between 0 and 366, starting at 5.
What the results tell you
| Result | What it is |
|---|---|
| Hours per day | The headline result. A decimal figure. |
| Total hours | A decimal figure. |
| Total pay | A money figure. |
| Hours and minutes | A category or planning selection, rather than a measured quantity. |
Keep going
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