How this calculator works
How many hours did you work today, and what is that number in the decimal your payroll system wants? That is the whole job of this page. It takes your clock-in and clock-out times, subtracts any unpaid break, and hands the answer back two ways: as hours and minutes (8h 00m) and as a payroll decimal (8.00). If your clock-out time is earlier than your clock-in time, it assumes you worked past midnight and counts the shift into the next day, with a note saying so. If you add an hourly rate, it multiplies the decimal by the rate for your gross pay.
This page handles one day. If you want to add up a whole week of punches, with the overtime split past 40 hours, use the time card calculator instead; it is built exactly for that.
The formula
Clock out and clock in are your punch times, the unpaid break is lunch or any other time you were off the clock, and the decimal is rounded to two places because that is what payroll software expects.
Minutes to decimal hours: the table people actually need
The math trips people up in one specific spot: 7 hours and 31 minutes is not 7.31 hours. Minutes run to 60, decimals run to 100, so you divide the minutes by 60. Here is every 5-minute step, plus the reminder that odd minute counts work the same way (42 minutes is 42 ÷ 60 = 0.70).
| Minutes | Decimal hours | Minutes | Decimal hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | 0.08 | 35 | 0.58 |
| 10 | 0.17 | 40 | 0.67 |
| 15 | 0.25 | 45 | 0.75 |
| 20 | 0.33 | 50 | 0.83 |
| 25 | 0.42 | 55 | 0.92 |
| 30 | 0.50 | 60 | 1.00 |
Worked example
You clock in at 8:15 AM, clock out at 4:45 PM, and take a 30-minute unpaid lunch. Clock in to clock out is 8 hours 30 minutes on the clock (510 minutes). Subtract the 30-minute break: 510 − 30 = 480 minutes, which is 8h 00m, or 8.00 in payroll decimal.
At $22 an hour, that is 8.00 × $22 = $176.00 gross for the day. Repeat it five days and you are at 40h 00m and $880.00 for the week, right at the federal overtime line.
Rounding: the part your employer should be honest about
Many employers round punches to the nearest quarter hour, so an 8:07 clock-in becomes 8:00 and an 8:08 becomes 8:15. That is generally legal in the U.S., with one condition that matters: federal guidance requires rounding to be neutral over time. It has to cut both ways, sometimes in your favor and sometimes in the employer's, and average out over many punches. A system that always rounds your time down is not a rounding policy, it is a payroll problem. Timesheet apps differ too; some round each punch, some round the daily total, and some do not round at all. Check what yours actually does before you compare its number to this one.
Split shifts and overnight shifts
If you work a split shift (a morning block and an evening block on the same day), flip the toggle above and enter both pairs; the calculator adds the two blocks together and shows the combined total. The unpaid gap between the blocks is not work time and is never counted. For overnight shifts, just enter the real times: clock in 10:00 PM, clock out 6:00 AM. When the out time is earlier than the in time, the calculator rolls the clock-out to the next day and tells you it did.
Overtime: daily vs weekly, and why this page will not guess
A long day does not automatically mean overtime pay. Under the federal FLSA, overtime is at least 1.5 times your regular rate for hours over 40 in a workweek; a single 12-hour day inside a 38-hour week earns straight time under federal rules. Some states add daily overtime on top: California, for example, pays 1.5× after 8 hours in a day and 2× after 12. Because the daily rule depends on your state, this calculator will not silently apply it. For the weekly picture, including the split past 40 hours, run your punches through the time card calculator. If you are planning shift end times rather than adding up finished ones, the shift calculator works forward from a start time, and if you are wondering what your hourly rate means over a year, the hourly to salary calculator does that conversion.