How do you convert minutes to decimal hours?

Divide by 60. 27 minutes is 27 ÷ 60 = 0.45 hours. The mistake to avoid is dividing by 100 — writing 7 h 27 m as 7.27 — which underpays that entry by 10.8 minutes because 0.27 hours is only 16.2 minutes.

What is 15 minutes in decimal?

0.25. The quarters are the four worth memorising: 15 minutes is 0.25, 30 is 0.5, 45 is 0.75, and 60 is 1.0. Everything else is division.

What is 20 minutes in decimal?

0.3333, repeating. A payroll field that takes two decimals stores 0.33, which is 19.8 minutes — twelve seconds short. Over 250 shifts that is 50 minutes of unpaid time, which is why some systems keep four places.

Is it legal for my employer to round my hours?

Under 29 CFR 785.48(b) yes, in increments up to fifteen minutes, provided the rounding is neutral over time — it must not systematically favour the employer. The common form is the 7-minute rule: minutes 1 to 7 past the quarter round down, 8 to 14 round up. A policy that only rounds down is unlawful regardless of the increment.

How do I convert decimal hours back to minutes?

Multiply the decimal part by 60. 8.45 hours is 8 hours plus 0.45 × 60 = 27 minutes. 7.9 hours is 7 hours 54 minutes, which is a common surprise — it is not 7 hours 90 minutes and it is not 7:09.

Why does my timesheet total differ from my paycheck?

Usually rounding applied per punch rather than per day. Four punches a day rounded separately can shift a shift by up to half an hour a week even when each rounding is neutral. Ask which the system rounds — the punches or the daily total.

Minutes to Decimal

With hours 7, minutes 27, hourly rate 20 USD, minutes to decimal comes to 7.45 h — decimal hours. It is reached in 5 steps, the last of which is 1 * 7.45 + 0 * round(7.45 * 4) / 4 + 0 * round(7.45 * 10) / 10 + 0 * round(7.45 * 12) / 12, 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 and minutes as the decimal a payroll system wants, with the quarter-hour rounding the FLSA allows and what it costs you over a year.

Formula and sources checked 16 August 2026 · How we check

Hours 7, Minutes 27, Hourly rate 20, Employer rounding None — paid to the minute

7.45 h

Decimal 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.

HoursMinutesHourly rateUSDOnly used to price the rounding difference.Employer rounding

Decimal hours

7.45 h

Exact decimal hours: 7 + 27 / 607.45 h
Decimal hours after rounding: 1 * 7.45 + 0 * round(7.45 * 4) / 4 + 0 * round(7.45 * 10) / 10 + 0 * round(7.45 * 12) / 127.45 h
Minutes gained or lost: (7.45 - 7.45) * 600 min
Pay for this entry: 7.45 * 20149 USD
If the same rounding fell the same way every shift, 250 shifts a year: 0 * 250 / 60 * 200 USD

Ask about this in the chat Minutes to Decimal Hours Chart

Worked example

7 hours 27 minutes is 7.45 hours, not 7.27. Typing the minutes straight into the decimal column costs 10.8 minutes of pay on this one entry — $3.60 at $20 an hour, and $900 over a year of it.

How to work it out yourself

1.Enter the hours and minutes exactly as the clock shows them. The conversion is minutes ÷ 60; the only reason it needs a page is that the answer looks wrong — 27 minutes is 0.45, and the digits share nothing.
2.Pick your employer’s rounding if they use any. Quarter-hour rounding is legal under 29 CFR 785.48(b), and it has to be neutral: sometimes up, sometimes down.
3.Watch the drift line. A rounding rule that always lands the same way is not neutral, and the yearly figure is what that is worth. Rounding that only ever goes down is a wage violation, not a rounding policy.
4.For decimal back to minutes, multiply the fraction by 60: 0.75 h is 45 minutes, 0.4 h is 24.