The mistake that costs people money

Almost every timesheet error is the same one: treating 7:45 as 7.45. It is not. Time is base 60, decimal is base 10, so seven hours forty-five minutes is 7.75 hours. The gap is 0.30 of an hour — eighteen minutes — on a single shift, and it compounds every time you add.

The conversion is simply minutes divided by 60:

Payroll systems run on decimal hours because they multiply by an hourly rate. Clocks run on HH:MM. Convert once, deliberately, and never mix the two in the same column.

A worked week

A shift is end time minus start time, minus any unpaid break:

Adding the HH:MM column requires carrying at 60, not 100: the minutes are 0 + 0 + 0 + 15 + 0 = 15, so 39 hours 15 minutes. Someone adding the naive decimals — 8.00 + 8.00 + 9.00 + 7.15 + 7.00 — would report 39.15 hours and lose six minutes of pay. Small per week; roughly five hours a year.

Overtime, and which hours qualify

Overtime is normally paid at 1.5 times the base rate, sometimes 2 times on rest days or public holidays. The rule that matters is the threshold, and it differs by jurisdiction:

• United States: federal law requires overtime after 40 hours in a workweek for covered non-exempt employees. There is no federal daily threshold, though some states — California among them — add one after 8 hours in a day.
• European Union: the Working Time Directive caps average weekly hours at 48 including overtime, averaged over a reference period, with rest-break entitlements attached.
• Many other countries set a daily threshold, commonly 8 or 9 hours, with the weekly figure secondary.

Two consequences worth checking on your own payslip. First, in a weekly-threshold system, working 12 hours on Monday and 4 on Friday produces no overtime if the week totals 40 — the long day alone does not trigger it. Second, paid leave and public holidays usually do not count toward the overtime threshold even though they appear as hours on the timesheet, because the threshold applies to hours actually worked.

Breaks: paid or unpaid

This is where most disputes originate. A genuine meal break where you are free to leave is normally unpaid and deducted. Short rest breaks of five to twenty minutes are generally treated as paid working time in many systems. Critically, a break during which you are required to stay at your post, answer the phone, or remain on call is usually working time and must be paid, regardless of what the rota calls it.

Record breaks as they actually happened rather than as scheduled. A deducted 30-minute break you never took is unpaid work, and over a year it is a meaningful sum.

Honest limits

This calculator does arithmetic on the times you enter. It does not know your contract, your jurisdiction, your award or collective agreement, whether you are classified as exempt, or how your employer rounds. Some employers round to the nearest quarter hour, which is lawful in several countries only if it is neutral over time rather than consistently favouring the employer. Shifts crossing midnight need the end time treated as the next day, and shifts spanning a daylight-saving change are genuinely 23 or 25 hours long. For a pay dispute, your contract and your local labour authority are the authorities — not a web page. Nothing here is legal advice.

Questions people actually ask

How do I handle a night shift that crosses midnight?

Add 24 hours to the end time before subtracting. A shift from 22:00 to 06:00 becomes 30:00 minus 22:00, which is 8 hours.

What is the fastest way to convert minutes in my head?

Memorise the quarters — 15 is 0.25, 30 is 0.50, 45 is 0.75 — and for anything else divide by 6 and shift the decimal. 20 minutes gives 20 ÷ 6 = 3.33, so 0.33.

Should I keep my own record?

Yes. In most jurisdictions the employer must keep records, but a personal log of in and out times is what resolves a discrepancy quickly. A photo of the rota plus a note of actual times is enough.

Are my hours stored anywhere?

No. The times you enter are used only in your browser and nothing is transmitted or saved.