Free Payroll Tool
Time Card Calculator: Weekly Hours With Breaks, Overtime, Rounding and Gross Pay
Enter each day's start time, end time and unpaid break. The calculator totals the week in decimal hours and hours:minutes, splits regular from overtime under the federal 40-hour rule or a daily threshold, applies optional 5, 6 or 15-minute rounding, and multiplies by your rate for gross pay. Nothing you type leaves your browser.
How Time Card Math Works
A time card is a record of the hours an employee worked in a pay period, built from the times they started and stopped each day. Turning it into pay takes four steps, and the calculator above performs each of them.
1. Daily elapsed time. End time minus start time. A shift from 8:30 to 17:15 is 8 hours 45 minutes. If the end time is earlier than the start time, the shift crossed midnight and 24 hours is added: 22:00 to 06:00 is 8 hours.
2. Unpaid breaks. Subtract meal periods of 30 minutes or more during which the employee was completely relieved of duty. Do not subtract short rest breaks; under the Fair Labor Standards Act breaks of 5 to 20 minutes are paid working time. Our guide to tracking employee breaks explains why automatic lunch deductions are the most common source of wage claims.
3. Decimal conversion. Payroll multiplies hours by a rate, so minutes must become decimals: divide by 60. 8 hours 45 minutes is 8.75 hours, not 8.45. The chart below covers every minute.
4. Regular and overtime split. Under federal law, hours over 40 in a fixed workweek are overtime at 1.5 times the regular rate. Some states add a daily threshold. The calculator applies whichever rules you select and multiplies by the rate for gross pay.
Minutes to Decimal Hours Conversion Chart
Divide minutes by 60 to get the decimal. The values below are rounded to two places, which is the precision most payroll systems accept.
Worked example: an employee clocks 8:52 to 17:31 with a 30-minute unpaid lunch. Elapsed time is 8 hours 39 minutes; minus 30 minutes is 8 hours 9 minutes; 9 minutes is 0.15, so the day is 8.15 decimal hours. Over five such days the week is 40.75 hours: 40 regular and 0.75 overtime under the federal rule.
Overtime Rules the Calculator Applies
The FLSA measures overtime on a fixed, recurring 168-hour workweek, not on the pay period and not on an average across weeks. Hours over 40 in that week are paid at 1.5 times the employee's regular rate, which includes shift differentials and nondiscretionary bonuses. The rule applies to non-exempt employees; salaried staff who pass the exemption tests are outside it. Our guides to what overtime is and exempt vs non-exempt employees cover the detail.
A handful of states add daily overtime. The calculator's daily-threshold option covers the common cases; it does not model every state nuance.
| Jurisdiction | Weekly overtime | Daily overtime | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Federal (FLSA) | Over 40 hours at 1.5× | None | Applies in every state as the floor |
| California | Over 40 at 1.5× | Over 8 at 1.5×; over 12 at 2×; seventh consecutive day rules | Alternative workweek elections can allow 10-hour days; see compressed workweeks |
| Alaska | Over 40 at 1.5× | Over 8 at 1.5× | Flexible work plans need state approval |
| Nevada | Over 40 at 1.5× | Over 8 in a 24-hour period at 1.5× for employees earning under 1.5× minimum wage | Agreed 4/10 schedules exempt |
| Colorado | Over 40 at 1.5× | Over 12 at 1.5× | Also 12 consecutive hours |
| Most other states | Over 40 at 1.5× | None | Follow the federal rule |
Biweekly and semi-monthly payroll: overtime is still calculated per workweek. On a semi-monthly schedule a workweek often straddles two pay periods, so hours must be recorded by week, not just by period. Our guide to biweekly vs semi-monthly pay explains the carry-over.
Rounding and the 7-Minute Rule
Employers may round punch times to the nearest 5, 6 or 15 minutes, provided the rounding is neutral over time and does not systematically shave the employee's hours. The Department of Labor's regulation at 29 CFR 785.48(b) accepts quarter-hour rounding under what is usually called the 7-minute rule: minutes 1 to 7 past the quarter round down, minutes 8 to 14 round up. A punch at 8:07 becomes 8:00; a punch at 8:08 becomes 8:15.
Three cautions. Rounding only start times down and end times down is unlawful because it always favours the employer. Several states, including California following recent appellate decisions, now treat rounding with suspicion where the employer's system records exact minutes, on the reasoning that there is no longer any administrative need for it. And rounding each punch is different from rounding the daily total; this calculator rounds the daily total, which is the more conservative method. Our guide to timesheet rounding rules covers the case law. The safest policy in 2026 is to pay actual minutes, which is what automatic time tracking records anyway.
Common Time Card Mistakes
Deducting breaks that were not taken. An automatic 30-minute lunch deduction applied to a day when the employee worked through lunch underpays them and, repeated across a workforce, becomes a class action.
Entering 8.30 for 8 hours 30 minutes. The decimal is 8.50. This single error is responsible for a large share of timesheet corrections.
Averaging overtime across two weeks. A 44-hour week and a 36-hour week are 4 hours of overtime, not zero, even on biweekly pay.
Treating exempt salaried staff as overtime-eligible, or the reverse. Classification decides who the rules apply to; a salary alone does not.
Reconstructing the week on Friday. Hours remembered at the end of the week are systematically wrong. Under the FLSA the employer must keep accurate daily and weekly records, and a reconstructed timesheet is not one.
From calculator to automatic records
A calculator helps when the start and end times are already known. The harder problem is capturing them accurately every day without punches, rounding or memory. E-Monitor's time tracking records when work starts, pauses and stops on each employee's computer, separates active from idle time, applies your overtime, break and workweek rules automatically, and produces the daily and weekly record the FLSA requires, with payroll export at the end of the period. For the annual figures behind hourly-to-salary conversions, see how many work hours are in a year.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you calculate hours on a time card?
For each day, subtract the start time from the end time and then subtract unpaid break minutes. Convert the result to decimal hours by dividing the minutes by 60 (8 hours 15 minutes is 8.25, not 8.15). Add the days to get the weekly total, then split it into regular and overtime hours according to the rules that apply to the employee. The calculator above does each step automatically.
How does the calculator handle overtime?
By default it applies the federal FLSA rule: hours over 40 in the workweek are overtime at 1.5 times the regular rate. You can change the weekly threshold and switch on a daily threshold (for example 8 hours in California, Alaska and Nevada, or 12 in Colorado) so that long days are counted as overtime even inside a 40-hour week.
What is the 7-minute rule for time clock rounding?
Under the Department of Labor's rounding regulation (29 CFR 785.48), employers that round to the nearest quarter hour must round time from 1 to 7 minutes down and 8 to 14 minutes up, so that rounding averages out and does not favour the employer. The calculator's 15-minute option applies that rule to each day's total. Rounding is optional; recording actual minutes is always compliant.
Should lunch breaks be deducted from time card hours?
Only unpaid meal periods of 30 minutes or more during which the employee is completely relieved of duty. Short rest breaks of 5 to 20 minutes are paid working time under federal law and must not be deducted. Automatically deducting a lunch that was not actually taken is one of the most common sources of wage claims.
How do I convert minutes to decimal hours for payroll?
Divide the minutes by 60. 15 minutes is 0.25, 30 minutes is 0.50, 45 minutes is 0.75, and 20 minutes is 0.33. Payroll systems need decimal hours because they multiply hours by a rate; the conversion chart on this page lists every minute from 1 to 59.
Does the calculator work for overnight shifts?
Yes. If the end time is earlier than the start time, the calculator assumes the shift crossed midnight and adds 24 hours. The hours are credited to the day the shift started.
Is this time card calculator free, and does it store my data?
It is free with no sign-up. Everything is calculated in your browser; nothing you enter is sent to or stored by E-Monitor. Use the copy button to paste the results into a timesheet or email.
What is the difference between a time card calculator and time tracking software?
A time card calculator totals hours you already know. Time tracking software records them in the first place, from actual activity on the employee's computer, and applies overtime, break and rounding rules automatically for every pay period, so there is nothing to reconstruct or retype.