How to Calculate Hours Worked

Step 1: List every punch for the week

Start with the clock-in and clock-out time for each day, and the length of any unpaid meal break. This week is used in every step that follows.

Step 2: Turn each time into minutes after midnight

Counting minutes is easier than subtracting clock times directly. Multiply the hour by 60 and add the minutes. For an afternoon time, add 12 to the hour first: 5:00 pm is hour 17, so 17 × 60 = 1,020 minutes. Monday's start of 8:30 am is 8 × 60 + 30 = 510 minutes.

A shift that ends after midnight has a smaller end number than its start. Add 1,440, the minutes in a day, to the end before subtracting. For one shift at a time, the clock-in and clock-out calculator handles that for you.

Step 3: Subtract, then take off the unpaid break

Subtract the start from the end to get the minutes on the clock, then remove the unpaid meal break.

Only an unpaid meal break comes off. The federal rule on rest periods, 29 CFR 785.18, says short breaks "running from 5 minutes to about 20 minutes" "must be counted as hours worked". How meal breaks are handled is covered in the guide to lunch breaks on a timesheet.

Step 4: Add up the week, then convert once

Add the minutes worked for every day: 480 + 480 + 465 + 465 + 255 = 2,145 minutes. Divide by 60 once to get hours: 2,145 ÷ 60 = 35.75, which is 35 h 45 min.

Keeping the whole week in minutes until the end means only one conversion. To write a total that is already split into hours and minutes as a decimal, enter the hours and minutes separately. A single day works too: Wednesday's 465 minutes become 7.75 hours when you divide the minutes by 60 on the homepage.

What counts as a workweek

For federal wage-and-hour purposes a workweek is not necessarily Monday to Sunday. The regulation on determining the workweek, 29 CFR 778.105, defines it as "a fixed and regularly recurring period of 168 hours" made of seven consecutive 24-hour periods, which "need not coincide with the calendar week but may begin on any day and at any hour of the day." Weekly totals are added over that workweek.

For employees covered by the federal minimum wage and overtime provisions, the records an employer keeps under 29 CFR 516.2 include the "Time of day and day of week on which the employee's workweek begins" and "Hours worked each workday and total hours worked each workweek".

From the weekly total to payroll hours

A total of 35.75 is the figure a payroll system multiplies by the hourly rate. If the time clock rounds each shift, the payroll figure can differ from the exact total; the payroll page shows how a rounding rule changes a shift, minute by minute.