Count the hours between a start and end time, minus breaks.
The arithmetic is subtraction, with two complications: unpaid breaks and shifts crossing midnight. This calculator handles the first directly — enter start and end times, then deduct break minutes.
For overnight shifts, treat the end time as falling on the following day. A shift from 22:00 to 06:00 is eight hours, not a negative sixteen.
Decimal conversion trips people up. Payroll systems work in decimal hours, so 7 hours 30 minutes is 7.5, and 7 hours 45 minutes is 7.75. Entering 7.30 for seven and a half hours is a common and costly error.
| Minutes | Decimal | Minutes | Decimal |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10 | 0.17 | 35 | 0.58 |
| 15 | 0.25 | 40 | 0.67 |
| 20 | 0.33 | 45 | 0.75 |
| 30 | 0.50 | 50 | 0.83 |
Whether a break is paid depends on jurisdiction and its length. In many US states, short breaks of around five to twenty minutes are treated as paid working time, while genuine meal breaks of thirty minutes or more, during which the employee is fully relieved of duty, are unpaid.
The "fully relieved" condition matters. Eating at your desk while answering the phone is generally working time, even if it is labelled a lunch break. Similarly, time spent on required training, mandatory security screening, or waiting while on call at the employer's premises is frequently compensable.
Under US federal law, non-exempt employees receive at least 1.5 times their regular rate for hours beyond 40 in a workweek. The workweek is a fixed seven-day period; hours cannot be averaged across two weeks to avoid the threshold.
Some states add daily overtime — California, for instance, applies premium pay beyond eight hours in a day. Other countries structure this differently, with weekly caps and different multipliers.
Keeping your own record of hours worked is worth the small effort. Where a dispute arises and the employer's records are incomplete, a contemporaneous personal log carries real weight.