Work Hours Calculator

This work hours calculator answers one question: how many hours did I work? It takes a single shift or a handful of separate work periods and gives the total in hours and minutes and in decimal hours.

1. Choose how to enter time. Clock times takes a start time, an end time and any unpaid break for each period. Hours & minutes takes a length of time you already know, such as 7 hours 45 minutes. Each mode keeps its own entries, and switching between them converts nothing.
2. Fill in Work period 1. A period you leave completely blank is ignored.
3. Press Add work period for each extra stretch of work, up to 20. Duplicate first period copies whatever is in work period 1 into a new period at the end — handy when you worked the same hours more than once.
4. To see what the time is worth before tax, tick Estimate gross pay and enter your hourly rate.
5. Press Calculate Work Hours. The result is not updated as you type; change anything and the old total is cleared until you calculate again.

Clear all leaves one blank period in the current mode and turns the pay estimate off. Reset to example puts back the 9:00 AM to 5:30 PM example. Copy summary and Print list each period, the total and, only if the estimate is on, the pay.

To calculate work hours by hand, find the length of each work period and take off the unpaid break time inside it:

1. Write the start and end times on a 24-hour clock: 5:30 PM is 17:30.
2. Subtract the start from the end: 17:30 − 9:00 = 8 hours 30 minutes.
3. Take off unpaid breaks: 8 hours 30 minutes − 30 minutes = 8 hours 0 minutes.
4. Add the periods together if there is more than one, then convert the minutes to decimal hours if you need them: 8 hours 0 minutes is 8.00.

The calculator does the same thing in whole minutes — 510 minutes less 30 is 480 — so no fraction of a minute is lost or rounded along the way. Hours and minutes and decimal hours are both worked out from that one minute count.

The hours between two times are simply the end time minus the start time. When the end has fewer minutes than the start, borrow an hour: from 7:50 AM to 4:10 PM is 16:10 − 7:50, which is 15:70 − 7:50 = 8 hours 20 minutes, or 8.33 decimal hours.

To use this page as an hours between times calculator, enter the two times in Clock times mode and leave the break blank. The answer is the plain gap between the times, shown in hours and minutes and as a decimal.

An unpaid break is time inside a work period that you do not want counted, such as a lunch when you were off duty. Enter it in minutes in that period’s Unpaid break box and it is subtracted from that period only. A break has to be shorter than the period it sits in.

If you clocked out for lunch and back in afterwards, enter the time before and after lunch as two work periods instead. Separate work periods already exclude the time between them, so adding the lunch as a break as well would take it off twice.

For U.S. employees, short rest breaks of about 5–20 minutes are generally counted as paid work time under federal rules, while bona fide meal periods—typically 30 minutes or more—generally do not have to be paid when the employee is completely relieved from duty. State rules may provide different or additional protections.

Source: U.S. Department of Labor, Fact Sheet #22: Hours Worked Under the Fair Labor Standards Act. The calculator never decides whether a break is paid or unpaid and never takes off a lunch on its own: it subtracts exactly the minutes you enter. This page is general information, not legal advice.

A shift that runs past midnight has an end time that looks earlier than its start time. The calculator reads that as finishing the next day and adds 24 hours to the end before subtracting: 10:00 PM to 6:00 AM is 2 hours before midnight plus 6 hours after it, which makes 8 hours. 11:00 PM to 7:30 AM with a 30-minute unpaid break is 8 hours 30 minutes less the break, or 8 hours 0 minutes.

Because of that rule, a clock-time period is always shorter than 24 hours. A start and end at the same time is not accepted, since it could mean no time at all or a full day. To total a stretch of 24 hours or more, enter it in Hours & minutes mode.

Each work period is worked out on its own and the periods are added together. A split shift of 8:00 AM to 12:00 PM and 1:00 PM to 5:15 PM is 4 hours plus 4 hours 15 minutes, which is 8 hours 15 minutes; the hour in between is never counted.

Periods are not tied to dates or days, so you can use them for two jobs on the same day, a few shifts from different weeks, or anything else you want added up. The calculator does not check whether periods overlap — it has no way of knowing which day each one fell on — so enter each stretch of time once. For a whole week laid out day by day, the Time Card Calculator is the better fit.

Hours and minutes is how a clock counts; decimal hours is how most payroll and invoicing counts. To turn minutes into a decimal, divide them by 60: 15 minutes is 0.25 of an hour, so 8 hours 15 minutes is 8.25 decimal hours. The result shows both, with decimal hours to two places.

Each period’s decimal is rounded to two places for display, but the total comes from the exact minutes. Three 20-minute periods each show 0.33, and 0.33 + 0.33 + 0.33 is 0.99 — yet together they are 60 minutes, which is 1h 00m and 1.00 decimal hours. The calculator always shows 1.00, never 0.99.

Use this chart to turn the minutes part of your hours into decimal hours, then add the whole hours in front: 7 hours 40 minutes is 7 + 0.67 = 7.67.

Going the other way, multiply the decimal part by 60 to get minutes. 7.75 hours is 7 hours plus 0.75 × 60 = 45 minutes, so 7h 45m. Watch out for 7.30: it is not 7 hours 30 minutes. The digits after the point are a fraction of an hour, so 0.30 × 60 = 18 minutes and 7.30 decimal hours is 7h 18m. Half an hour is 7.50.

Tick Estimate gross pay and enter your hourly rate, from $0.01 to $1,000,000.00 with up to two decimal places. The estimate is

Gross pay = Hourly rate × Minutes worked ÷ 60

rounded once to the nearest cent at the end. Working from the exact minutes matters: 20 minutes at $25.00 an hour is $8.33, while multiplying the rounded 0.33 hours by $25.00 would give $8.25. 30 minutes at the same rate is $12.50.

This is gross pay at one flat rate, before taxes and deductions, with no overtime. Need weekly overtime? Use the Time Card Calculator. For a week’s overtime pay, try the Overtime Pay Calculator, and to see take-home pay from an hourly wage, use the Hourly Paycheck Calculator.

These are examples of the subtraction, not a ruling on which breaks your employer must pay or how a particular shift is recorded.

Worked example 1: a day shift with lunch. 9:00 AM to 5:30 PM is 8 hours 30 minutes. Less a 30-minute unpaid break, that is 8h 00m, or 8.00 decimal hours.

Worked example 2: an overnight shift. 10:00 PM to 6:00 AM crosses midnight, so it is 8 hours. Less a 30-minute unpaid break, that is 7h 30m, or 7.50 decimal hours.

Worked example 3: two work periods and pay. 8:00 AM to 12:00 PM is 4 hours and 1:00 PM to 5:15 PM is 4 hours 15 minutes, so the total is 8h 15m — 495 minutes, or 8.25 decimal hours. At $25.00 an hour the gross pay is $25.00 × 495 ÷ 60 = $206.25.

A common full-time schedule is 40 hours a week, such as five 8-hour days. Over 52 weeks that is 40 × 52 = 2,080 hours a year before vacation, PTO, holidays, unpaid leave and other time off. A 37.5-hour week works out to 1,950 hours on the same basis.

Those are scheduling figures, not what any one person actually works: part-time schedules, overtime, unpaid leave and time off all move the real number. 2,080 is the figure often used to turn an annual salary into an hourly rate — the Salary to Hourly Calculator does that conversion and lets you change the hours.

Both pages count minutes the same way, but they are built for different jobs.

• Work Hours Calculator (this page): any number of separate work periods with no dates attached, entered as clock times or as hours and minutes, plus the decimal hours converter. Good for a single shift, the hours between two times, or a few periods you want added up.
• Time Card Calculator: a Monday-to-Sunday or Sunday-to-Saturday week laid out day by day, with weekly regular and overtime hours.

Need a full weekly time card with weekly overtime allocation? Use the Time Card Calculator.

The arithmetic is exact to the minute. What the calculator does not do matters as much:

• It is a calculation aid, not an official employer time record, payroll software or legal advice.
• There is no overtime of any kind — weekly, daily or state — and no tax. The pay estimate is gross pay only.
• It never decides whether a break is paid, and never takes off a meal break on its own.
• Work periods do not carry dates, and overlapping periods are not detected.
• Daylight saving time is not detected, because no dates or time zones are collected. 10:00 PM to 6:00 AM always counts as 8 hours, even on the night the clocks change.
• No rounding is applied to the times you enter. Employer time-rounding policies are not applied automatically.
• It does not track paid time off, holidays or sick time, and nothing you enter is stored.

• Time Card Calculator — a whole week of clock times, day by day, with weekly overtime.
• Hourly Paycheck Calculator — take-home pay from an hourly wage, after taxes.
• Overtime Pay Calculator — a week’s gross pay with time and a half or another overtime multiplier.
• Pay Stub Calculator — the earnings, taxes and deductions on one paycheck, line by line.
• Salary to Hourly Calculator — an annual salary as an hourly rate, or the other way round.
• US Paycheck Calculator — take-home pay from an annual salary after federal, state and payroll taxes.