Hours Calculator
With start — hour 8, start — minute 3, end — hour 16, end — minute 52 and 1 more field, hours comes to 8.32 hours — payroll hours. It is reached in 7 steps, the last of which is 499 / 60, and each one is printed on the page with its numbers filled in. The formula is the one published by 29 CFR 785.48(b), not an approximation fitted to it.
Hours worked between two times, less breaks, in decimal payroll hours — with what the federal rounding rules do to the total.
Formula and sources checked · How we check
Start — hour 8, Start — minute 3, End — hour 16, End — minute 52
8.32 hours
Payroll hours for the example below. Editing a field recomputes the calculator below; this figure holds the answer the page was loaded with.
It is written into the HTML rather than drawn by a script, so a search engine reading this page without running JavaScript still finds an answer.
- Time on the clock
1012 - 483 + (0)529 minutes- Minutes worked after the break
529 - 30499 minutes- Exact hours
499 / 608.317 hours- Minutes after rounding
round(499 / 1) * 1499 minutes- Payroll hours
499 / 608.317 hours- Minutes gained or lost to rounding
499 - 4990 minutes- Minutes a year if every shift rounds this way
0 * 2600 minutes
Several at once
A job is rarely one of anything. Work out the first, add it, change the figures and add the next — the list keeps what each line was, and totals them.
Worked example
Clocking in at 8:03 and out at 16:52 is 8 hours 49 minutes on the clock. Take off a 30-minute unpaid break and 8 hours 19 minutes are worked, which payroll reads as 8.32 hours rather than 8.19.
How to work it out yourself
- 1.Enter the clock-in and clock-out times on a 24-hour clock. A shift that ends before it starts is treated as crossing midnight.
- 2.Subtract the unpaid break. A break you were not free to leave is working time under the FLSA and should not be entered here.
- 3.Read the decimal hours. Payroll multiplies by the rate, so 8 hours 19 minutes is 8.32 hours, not 8.19 — the mistake that costs a day's pay a year.
- 4.If your employer rounds, pick the increment and look at the drift line. Rounding is allowed; rounding that always goes one way is not.
The formula
- Time on the clock
1012 - 483 + (0) - Minutes worked after the break
529 - 30 - Exact hours
499 / 60 - Minutes after rounding
round(499 / 1) * 1 - Payroll hours
499 / 60 - Minutes gained or lost to rounding
499 - 499 - Minutes a year if every shift rounds this way
0 * 260
Source: 29 CFR 785.48(b) — rounding practices in recording working time, US Department of Labor, Fact Sheet 22 — hours worked under the Fair Labor Standards Act
Questions people actually ask
- Why is 8 hours 19 minutes 8.32 and not 8.19?
- Because minutes are sixtieths of an hour, not hundredths. Nineteen minutes is 19/60 of an hour, which is 0.3166, so the shift is 8.32 hours to two places. Reading the clock time straight into a payroll field is the most common timesheet error there is, and it under-pays on every shift where the minutes exceed the decimal.
- Can an employer legally round my hours?
- Yes, within limits. 29 CFR 785.48(b) permits recording time to the nearest 5 minutes, tenth of an hour or quarter hour, but only if the practice "will not result, over a period of time, in failure to compensate the employees properly for all the time they have actually worked". Rounding that is neutral on average is lawful; rounding that always lands in the employer's favour is not, however small each instance is.
- What is the seven-minute rule?
- A quarter-hour rounding convention: minutes 1 to 7 past the quarter round down, 8 to 14 round up. It is neutral by construction, which is why it survives scrutiny. This calculator rounds to the nearest increment, which is the same rule stated arithmetically, and prints the resulting drift so you can see which way a given shift went.
- Does an unpaid break always come off?
- Only if it is a real break. Under the FLSA short breaks of about 20 minutes or less are paid working time, and any period where you are not completely relieved of duty — eating at your desk while covering the phone — counts as hours worked whatever it is called on the schedule.
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