Hours Calculator

How to calculate hours worked

1. Enter the start and end time. The fields use your phone’s time picker; on a computer, type the hour, minutes and AM or PM.
2. Add breaks. Mark each one Unpaid (a meal break, taken off the hours) or Paid (a short rest break, which stays in the hours).
3. Optional: round the times to 5, 6 or 15 minutes, and enter your hourly rate to see the pay for the shift.
4. Read the answer: hours worked as 8:00 and as 8 decimal hours, the minutes, the time on the clock before breaks, and the pay.

Common shifts with a 30-minute unpaid lunch:

Paid and unpaid breaks

Federal wage rules separate two kinds of breaks:

• Rest breaks of about 5 to 20 minutes “must be counted as hours worked” (29 CFR 785.18). A 15-minute coffee break is paid time.
• Meal periods of ordinarily 30 minutes or more, when you are completely relieved from duty, are not worktime (29 CFR 785.19). A 30-minute lunch away from your desk is usually unpaid.

The calculator subtracts only the breaks you mark Unpaid. If you mark a break of under 20 minutes as unpaid, it reminds you of the rest-break rule. Employers have paid large settlements for deducting short breaks as unpaid lunches, so it is worth checking a pay stub. Some states, such as California, have their own meal and rest break rules; this calculator does not apply state rules or give legal advice — the U.S. Department of Labor’s breaks page links to the federal rules.

Night shifts and 12 AM vs 12 PM

• 12:00 AM is midnight — the start of a new day. 12:00 PM is noon. NIST notes that “a.m.” and “p.m.” are ambiguous at exactly 12, so the calculator writes “12:00 AM (midnight)” and “12:00 PM (noon)” next to the answer. To read or write shift times as 0730 and 1915, use the military time converter.
• Shifts that cross midnight: when the end time is earlier than the start time, the shift ends the next day. 10:00 PM to 6:30 AM is 8 hours 30 minutes on the clock.
• The nights the clocks change — in March and November — a night shift is an hour shorter or longer than the clock says. For those, use the time duration calculator, which takes dates and time zones into account.

Hours and minutes to decimal hours

Multiply decimal hours by your rate for the pay: 7.75 hours × $18 = $139.50. To total a week of shifts day by day, with hours over 40, use the work hours calculator; to add up a list of durations — 7:45 + 8:15 + 6:30 + 8:00 + 5:50 = 36:20 — the time calculator. The pay shown here is gross pay for one shift at one rate — no overtime, taxes or deductions. To work out a raise or a share of your pay, the percentage calculator shows each step.

Rounding time to the nearest 5, 6 or 15 minutes

Many time clocks round punches. Federal rules accept rounding start and stop times “to the nearest 5 minutes, or to the nearest one-tenth or quarter of an hour”, provided it averages out so employees are paid for all the time they actually work (29 CFR 785.48).

Choose Round to to see the times your time clock would record; the card shows the original times next to the rounded ones.

Hours in Excel and Google Sheets

Excel shows #### for a night shift if you subtract times that cross midnight without MOD. To count whole days between dates, use the days between dates calculator.