Time Card Calculator
A time card totals the hours between clock-in and clock-out across a week, minus unpaid breaks, split into regular and overtime. The arithmetic is simple and the errors are consistent: minutes recorded in decimal rather than sixtieths, breaks counted twice or not at all, and shifts crossing midnight coming out negative.
The calculator below handles all three. Enter each day's start, end and unpaid break, set the overtime threshold and multiplier that apply to you, and it produces weekly hours and gross pay.
Total a week of shifts
A shift ending earlier than it started is treated as crossing midnight rather than as an error. Leave a day blank if you did not work it.
Minutes are sixtieths, not hundredths
The most common time card error is treating 7 hours 30 minutes as 7.30 hours. It is 7.5, because minutes divide by sixty rather than a hundred, and the mistake compounds across a week into a real amount of money.
Payroll systems generally work in decimal hours, which is why the conversion has to happen somewhere. Doing it once, correctly, at the end is safer than converting each day by eye.
| Minutes | Decimal hours | Minutes | Decimal hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | 0.083 | 35 | 0.583 |
| 10 | 0.167 | 40 | 0.667 |
| 15 | 0.25 | 45 | 0.75 |
| 20 | 0.333 | 50 | 0.833 |
| 25 | 0.417 | 55 | 0.917 |
| 30 | 0.5 | 60 | 1 |
A worked week, and where the premium starts
Below is one week entered as daily totals, converted to decimal hours and accumulated. The running column is the one that decides pay, because the federal threshold applies to the week rather than to any individual day.
Notice which row crosses the line. Nothing about that day is unusual — it is an ordinary shift that happens to fall after the week has already used its straight-time allowance, and it is paid differently for that reason alone.
This is also why a long day early in a light week earns no premium while a short day late in a heavy one does. The schedule, not the shift, determines the rate.
| Day | Time worked | Decimal hours | Running total | Paid at |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monday | 8h 15m | 8.25 | 8.25 | Straight time |
| Tuesday | 9h 30m | 9.5 | 17.75 | Straight time |
| Wednesday | 7h 45m | 7.75 | 25.5 | Straight time |
| Thursday | 8h 50m | 8.83 | 34.33 | Straight time |
| Friday | 9h 10m | 9.17 | 43.5 | Straight time, then premium |
| Saturday | 4h 0m | 4 | 47.5 | Premium |
Illustrative hours at the federal forty-hour weekly threshold. Several states add a daily threshold on top of this — where one applies, a long single day can earn a premium even in a short week, and your state labor department is the authority.
Which breaks are paid
Federal wage and hour rules treat short rest breaks — commonly under twenty minutes — as compensable work time, so they are paid and count toward hours worked. Bona fide meal periods, typically thirty minutes or more during which the employee is relieved of duty, are not.
The condition that matters is being genuinely relieved. Eating at a desk while still answering calls is not a bona fide meal period, and time spent that way is working time regardless of what the schedule calls it.
Several states impose their own meal and rest break requirements that go beyond the federal floor, including mandatory paid rest periods and penalties for missed breaks. Where the two differ, the more protective rule applies — check your state labor department for the specifics.
General information about how these rules work, not legal advice. The US Department of Labor and your state labor department are the authorities on your situation.
The overtime threshold
Federal law requires overtime at not less than one and a half times the regular rate for hours worked over forty in a workweek, where a workweek is a fixed and regularly recurring period of 168 consecutive hours.
There is no federal requirement for daily overtime — working ten hours in a day and thirty in the week generally triggers nothing. Some states do impose a daily threshold, and some contracts and union agreements set their own, which is why the calculator lets you change both the threshold and the multiplier.
The forty hours are counted per workweek and cannot be averaged across two weeks, even where pay is issued fortnightly. Fifty hours followed by thirty is ten hours of overtime, not a balanced eighty.
Shifts that cross midnight
A shift from 22:00 to 06:00 produces a negative difference if the times are simply subtracted. The calculator adds a day when the end is earlier than the start, which is the correct handling for any overnight shift.
The related question is which workweek an overnight shift belongs to, and the answer follows the employer's defined workweek rather than the calendar. A shift beginning Friday night and ending Saturday morning is usually attributed to the day it began, but the policy should be written down and applied consistently.
Shift differentials — extra pay for nights or weekends — are generally part of the regular rate for overtime purposes, which means overtime on a differential shift is calculated on the higher rate rather than the base.
Rounding, and what is permitted
- Rounding to the nearest quarter hour is a long-accepted practice where it is neutral over time.
- Neutral means it must not consistently favor the employer — rounding down only is not permitted.
- Rounding cannot be used to avoid paying for time actually worked.
- Small amounts of time before and after a shift are generally compensable where the employee is under the employer's control.
- Where records are inaccurate, the employer bears the burden — accurate timekeeping is the employer's legal obligation, not the employee's.
Keeping your own record
Employers are required to keep accurate time records, and most do. Keeping your own alongside costs a few seconds a day and is the only thing that helps when a system fails, a manager edits an entry, or a paycheque is short.
Note start, end and breaks each day, and check the total against the paycheque rather than assuming. Discrepancies are far easier to resolve within a pay period than six months later.
If a paycheque is short, raise it in writing with the specific dates and hours. Most are genuine errors and are corrected immediately; the written record is what matters in the small number that are not.
Frequently asked questions
Divide by sixty. Thirty minutes is 0.5 hours, not 0.30 — treating minutes as hundredths is the most common time card error and it compounds across a week.
Short rest breaks, commonly under twenty minutes, are treated as compensable work time under federal rules. Bona fide meal periods of thirty minutes or more, where you are genuinely relieved of duty, are not. Several states go further than the federal floor.
Federally, weekly — over forty hours in a fixed workweek. There is no federal daily threshold, though some states and union agreements impose one, which is why the threshold is an input here.
Convert each day to decimal hours first — minutes divided by sixty, not by a hundred — then add the decimals. Adding 8:15 and 9:30 as "8.15 + 9.30" produces 17.45 instead of the correct 17.75, and that error repeats every week it goes unnoticed. The lookup table above covers the common five-minute increments.
Not under federal law by itself — the threshold is forty hours in a workweek, not eight in a day. The worked week above shows why the same shift can be paid differently depending on position: Friday crosses the line mid-shift and Saturday is entirely at the premium, while an identical Monday was straight time. Several states do add a daily threshold, and where one applies it governs.
Rounding to short increments is permitted provided it is neutral over time — it must not systematically favour the employer. Consistently rounding arrivals up and departures down is not neutral and is a common basis for wage claims. Keeping your own record of actual in and out times is the practical protection, because the dispute is otherwise your memory against their system.
Add twenty-four hours to the end time before subtracting. A 22:00 to 06:00 shift is eight hours, not negative sixteen — the calculator does this automatically when the end time is earlier than the start.