Time Card Calculator
Values
Fill in the values and click Calculate to see results
Example 1
An office worker clocks in at 9:00 and out at 17:30 on Monday, with an unpaid 30-minute lunch break. How many hours go on the time card?
Solution
The elapsed time from 9:00 to 17:30 is
Converting to minutes:
Removing the unpaid lunch leaves
In decimal hours:
Answer
Monday earns 8.00 hours – the standard full-time day, and the arithmetic every payroll run starts from.
Source: US Department of Labor, hours worked guidance
Example 2
A security guard clocks in at 22:00 on Friday and clocks out at 06:00 on Saturday. No break is taken. How many hours does the shift record?
Solution
Raw subtraction gives a negative number:
The shift crossed midnight, so add a full day:
In decimal hours:
Answer
The overnight shift records 8.00 hours – the wrap rule turns the negative subtraction into the true worked time with no special night-rate entry needed.
Source: US Department of Labor, hours worked guidance
Example 3
A warehouse worker logs five days: Monday through Friday at 8.5 hours per day after breaks, except Wednesday at 8.75 hours. The hourly rate is 18.50 and overtime applies after 40 hours. What are the weekly hours, the overtime split, and the gross pay?
Solution
The weekly total is
Hours past the 40-hour threshold:
Regular pay:
Overtime pay at 1.5×:
The gross total is
Answer
The week records 42.75 hours – 40 regular plus 2.75 overtime – for a gross pay of 816.31 at 18.50 per hour.
Source: Fair Labor Standards Act overtime provisions
Example 4
A freelancer bills a client engagement in a single session: clock in at 9:15, clock out at 17:00, with a 30-minute unpaid lunch. What goes on the invoice in decimal hours, and what is the total at a rate of 45 per hour?
Solution
Elapsed time from 9:15 to 17:00:
Converting to minutes:
Removing the unpaid lunch leaves
In decimal hours:
At 45 per hour, the session bills
Answer
The session bills 7.25 decimal hours for a total of 326.25 – the 45 minutes past 7:00 becoming a clean 0.25 through the conversion table’s anchor points.
Source: Standard billing-time conventions
Published:
Updated:
References
- [1]US Department of Labor, Overtime Pay (FLSA overtime provisions, 29 CFR part 778). https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/overtime
- [2]US Department of Labor, Hours Worked guidance (rest and meal periods). https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/22-flsa-hours-worked
- [3]NIST, Time and Frequency: from ancient sundials to modern atomic clocks. https://www.nist.gov/pml/noaw/nist-time-and-frequency
- [4]American Payroll Association, The Payroll Source, timesheet and hours-worked chapters.
- [5]Society for Human Resource Management, Timesheets and work-hour recording guidance. https://www.shrm.org
Glossary
- Time card – The record of a worker’s clock-in and clock-out times for a pay period, and the basis on which worked hours and pay are computed.
- Clock in / clock out – The punch timestamps marking the start and end of a work period, recorded by a time clock, app, or web system.
- Break deduction – Unpaid break time, typically a meal period, subtracted from a shift’s elapsed time before hours and pay are computed.
- Decimal hours – Worked time as a single decimal, minutes divided by 60: 7 hours 45 minutes is 7.75. The format payroll systems multiply by rates.
- Overtime – Hours worked beyond the applicable threshold in a workweek, paid at a premium – conventionally 1.5 times the regular rate beyond 40 hours under US federal law.
- FLSA – The Fair Labor Standards Act, the US federal law setting the 40-hour overtime threshold and the 1.5× premium for covered non-exempt employees.
- Split shift – One workday divided into two blocks with an unpaid gap between, such as a lunch-and-dinner double in hospitality.
- Overnight shift – A shift crossing midnight, where clock-out falls on the day after clock-in and the duration requires the 1440-minute wrap.
- Timesheet – The document or system where worked hours are reported per day, normally in decimal hours, feeding payroll and invoicing.
- Gross pay – Earnings before deductions: regular hours at the rate plus overtime at the premium. Net pay is what remains after taxes and withholding.
- Workweek – The fixed 168-hour period an employer defines for overtime purposes – the unit the 40-hour threshold is measured over, not the individual day.
- Regular hours – Worked hours up to the overtime threshold, paid at straight time, as distinct from the premium hours beyond it.
How to Use?
- 1.
Choose the scope: Select Weekly Time Card to enter a full week of punches, or Single Shift to measure one work session on its own.
- 2.
Set the days and shifts: In weekly mode, pick 5, 6, or 7 days to control how many day rows appear, and choose 1, 2, or 3 shifts per day to add a second or third punch grid in the same form. A day whose times are left blank counts as a rest day with zero hours.
- 3.
Enter the punches: Fill each worked day’s clock in and clock out times in the Shift 1 grid, using the time pickers. Split shifts enter their blocks in the Shift 2 and Shift 3 grids that the shift selector reveals.
- 4.
Set breaks and overtime days: Enter the unpaid meal minutes for each day that had one, typically 30, and enter the overtime hours for any day under a daily-premium rule in the OT (hrs) column. Set a shift’s Off? column to Yes to omit that shift from the day – leave, a public holiday, or a block you want counted as zero – even if times are entered; the day keeps its other shifts. Paid short breaks stay out of the break field – they are already worked time.
- 5.
Add the rate and overtime rule: Enter an hourly rate to see gross pay, and choose the overtime threshold that matches your situation – 40 hours is the standard US convention, and No overtime split suits contract and freelance billing.
- 6.
Read both forms of the total: The result shows decimal hours for the timesheet and hours-and-minutes for conversation, plus the regular and overtime split and gross pay when a rate is set.
- 7.
Audit the week in the daily table: The breakdown table lists each day’s per-shift hours, total hours, break minutes, overtime, and pay – the same audit trail payroll uses, so any discrepancy shows up day by day. A shift marked Off? shows as a dash in its column.
Frequently Asked Questions
Subtract the clock-in time from the clock-out time, subtract any unpaid break, and divide the minutes by 60 for decimal hours. A shift from 9:00 to 17:30 with a 30-minute lunch is 510 minutes minus 30, which is 480 minutes, or 8.00 hours. This calculator runs the same subtraction for every day of the week and totals the result.
When clock-out is earlier than clock-in, the shift crossed midnight, so a full day of 1440 minutes is added to the subtraction. A 22:00 to 06:00 shift computes as negative 960 minutes, plus 1440, which is 480 minutes or 8.00 hours. The wrap happens automatically – enter the times exactly as punched and the result is the true worked time.
Decimal hours express worked time as a single number with the minutes as a fraction: 7 hours 45 minutes becomes 7.75 because 45 minutes is 0.75 of an hour. Payroll systems use decimal hours because they multiply cleanly by a rate – 7.75 × an hourly rate is pay, while 7:45 × a rate is nonsense. The conversion is always minutes divided by 60.
0.50. Thirty minutes is half of a 60-minute hour, so it converts to exactly 0.50 decimal hours. The other common anchors are 15 minutes at 0.25, 45 minutes at 0.75, and a full hour at 1.00 – the quarter-hour values most punch systems round to.
An unpaid meal break is not worked time, so it is subtracted from the shift before anything else: 8 hours 30 minutes of elapsed time with a 30-minute lunch records as 8.00 hours. Paid short breaks, by the common convention, stay in the count. Enter only the unpaid portion in the break field – the deduction is applied per day before the weekly total and overtime are computed.
A split shift is one workday broken into two blocks, like a restaurant shift from 8:00 to 12:00 and again from 16:00 to 20:00. Set shifts per day to 2, enter the morning block in the Shift 1 grid and the evening block in the Shift 2 grid; the day’s total is the sum of both blocks. Each block has its own break field – enter the meal in the first block and leave the second block at 0, and the deduction applies once.
Under the standard US rule, hours worked beyond 40 in a workweek are paid at one and a half times the regular rate. The workweek is the unit, not the day: five 9-hour days produce 2.75 overtime hours even though no single day reached double digits, and the premium applies only to the hours past the threshold. The calculator splits your weekly total automatically when you select the 40-hour threshold.
One and a half times is the standard US federal multiplier, and this calculator applies it to hours beyond the selected threshold. Some contracts and jurisdictions use different multipliers or thresholds – daily overtime, double time past certain limits, or thresholds other than 40 – and local law or your contract overrides any calculator convention. The 45-hour setting covers the most common non-40 threshold.
Keep the 7 as the whole part and convert the minutes: 45 divided by 60 is 0.75, so 7 hours 45 minutes is 7.75 decimal hours. The same method converts any time – the minutes are always a fraction of 60, which is why the reference table on this page carries every 5-minute step.
Report what your payroll system asks for, which is nearly always decimal hours – the single value it can multiply by a rate. The trap is writing the minutes as the decimal: 8:30 is 8.50 decimal hours, not 8.30. This calculator shows both forms side by side, decimal for the timesheet and hours-and-minutes for people, so the correct version is always on screen.
The time fields use your device’s clock picker, which is typically 12-hour AM/PM on US-English systems and 24-hour elsewhere. The arithmetic underneath is minutes past midnight in either dialect: 9:00 PM and 21:00 are the same 1260th minute, and an overnight shift is detected purely by the out-time being earlier than the in-time.
The calculator cannot know an end time that was never recorded, so a missing punch produces an incomplete day rather than a guess. Reconstruct the day from memory or a schedule – the sooner after the event the better – and enter the corrected out-time. Missing punches are the single most common source of paycheck disputes, which is why catching them same-day is the most valuable time-card habit.
Yes – some jurisdictions and contracts pay a premium past a daily hour count. The OT (hrs) column lets you enter the overtime hours for any shift directly, which serves daily-premium schedules exactly; the weekly threshold you select handles the standard rule, and the two compose when both apply. The Regular/Overtime breakdown shows in the results when you also select a weekly threshold.
This page does clock arithmetic – durations within days, measured in hours and minutes across a workweek. The Days Between Dates Calculator does calendar arithmetic – whole dates and the days between them, including working-day questions. A time card asks "how long between 9:00 and 17:30 today"; a date question asks "how many days from the 3rd to the 28th". Same subtraction idea, different units and different pages.
Decimal hours multiply by the rate: 8.00 hours at 18.50 is 148.00. With overtime, the split does the work – regular hours at the rate plus overtime hours at 1.5 times the rate – so a 42.75-hour week at 18.50 pays 740.00 regular plus 76.31 overtime for 816.31 gross. Leave the rate blank and the calculator reports hours only; the Take Home Pay Calculator on this site carries the gross figure further.
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