Hours Calculator
Enter a start time and an end time to see exactly how long that is, with any break subtracted. The result appears both as hours and minutes and as decimal hours, which is the format most payroll and invoicing systems expect.
Hours Calculator tool
How to use it
- Set the start and end time of the shift.
- Enter any unpaid break in minutes.
- Read the total in hours and minutes, or in decimal hours for a timesheet.
Worked example
Hours and minutes versus decimal hours
Timesheets and payroll rarely use hours and minutes. They use decimal hours, where the minutes become a fraction of an hour: 30 minutes is 0.5, 15 minutes is 0.25 and 20 minutes is 0.33. Writing 8.30 when you mean 8 hours 30 minutes is a common and expensive mistake, because 8.30 hours is 8 hours 18 minutes.
Shifts that cross midnight break naive subtraction, since the end time is numerically smaller than the start. This calculator detects that and adds a day, so a 22:00 to 06:00 shift correctly reports 8 hours rather than a negative number.
Common uses
- Filling in a weekly timesheet
- Invoicing a client for hours worked
- Checking a paycheck against hours
- Planning shifts that run past midnight