Payroll tool
Payroll Time Clock Conversion
Turn a shift's hours and minutes into the decimal hours payroll pays on, with or without the rounding rule your time clock applies.
- ScalesHundredths, tenths, quarters
- Rounding ruleSelectable
- Source29 CFR 785.48
Payroll hours
8.50
507 minutes → nearest 15 min = 510 minutes → 510 ÷ 60 = 8.5000 hours
Payroll conversion chart with rounding columns
Teal circle: nearest tenth. Orange circle: nearest quarter. The slider highlights the chart row.
The hundredths column is the exact two-decimal value a time card or timesheet total carries. The other two columns show what the same minutes become under the two rounding rules most time clocks offer. Notice that every value ending in a 7 or 8 is where quarter-hour rounding changes direction.
| Minutes | Hundredths | Tenth hour | Quarter hour |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 0.02 | 0.0 | 0.00 |
| 2 | 0.03 | 0.0 | 0.00 |
| 3 | 0.05 | 0.1 | 0.00 |
| 4 | 0.07 | 0.1 | 0.00 |
| 5 | 0.08 | 0.1 | 0.00 |
| 6 | 0.10 | 0.1 | 0.00 |
| 7 | 0.12 | 0.1 | 0.00 |
| 8 | 0.13 | 0.1 | 0.25 |
| 9 | 0.15 | 0.2 | 0.25 |
| 10 | 0.17 | 0.2 | 0.25 |
| 11 | 0.18 | 0.2 | 0.25 |
| 12 | 0.20 | 0.2 | 0.25 |
| 13 | 0.22 | 0.2 | 0.25 |
| 14 | 0.23 | 0.2 | 0.25 |
| 15 | 0.25 | 0.3 | 0.25 |
| 16 | 0.27 | 0.3 | 0.25 |
| 17 | 0.28 | 0.3 | 0.25 |
| 18 | 0.30 | 0.3 | 0.25 |
| 19 | 0.32 | 0.3 | 0.25 |
| 20 | 0.33 | 0.3 | 0.25 |
| 21 | 0.35 | 0.4 | 0.25 |
| 22 | 0.37 | 0.4 | 0.25 |
| 23 | 0.38 | 0.4 | 0.50 |
| 24 | 0.40 | 0.4 | 0.50 |
| 25 | 0.42 | 0.4 | 0.50 |
| 26 | 0.43 | 0.4 | 0.50 |
| 27 | 0.45 | 0.5 | 0.50 |
| 28 | 0.47 | 0.5 | 0.50 |
| 29 | 0.48 | 0.5 | 0.50 |
| 30 | 0.50 | 0.5 | 0.50 |
| Minutes | Hundredths | Tenth hour | Quarter hour |
|---|---|---|---|
| 31 | 0.52 | 0.5 | 0.50 |
| 32 | 0.53 | 0.5 | 0.50 |
| 33 | 0.55 | 0.6 | 0.50 |
| 34 | 0.57 | 0.6 | 0.50 |
| 35 | 0.58 | 0.6 | 0.50 |
| 36 | 0.60 | 0.6 | 0.50 |
| 37 | 0.62 | 0.6 | 0.50 |
| 38 | 0.63 | 0.6 | 0.75 |
| 39 | 0.65 | 0.7 | 0.75 |
| 40 | 0.67 | 0.7 | 0.75 |
| 41 | 0.68 | 0.7 | 0.75 |
| 42 | 0.70 | 0.7 | 0.75 |
| 43 | 0.72 | 0.7 | 0.75 |
| 44 | 0.73 | 0.7 | 0.75 |
| 45 | 0.75 | 0.8 | 0.75 |
| 46 | 0.77 | 0.8 | 0.75 |
| 47 | 0.78 | 0.8 | 0.75 |
| 48 | 0.80 | 0.8 | 0.75 |
| 49 | 0.82 | 0.8 | 0.75 |
| 50 | 0.83 | 0.8 | 0.75 |
| 51 | 0.85 | 0.9 | 0.75 |
| 52 | 0.87 | 0.9 | 0.75 |
| 53 | 0.88 | 0.9 | 1.00 |
| 54 | 0.90 | 0.9 | 1.00 |
| 55 | 0.92 | 0.9 | 1.00 |
| 56 | 0.93 | 0.9 | 1.00 |
| 57 | 0.95 | 1.0 | 1.00 |
| 58 | 0.97 | 1.0 | 1.00 |
| 59 | 0.98 | 1.0 | 1.00 |
| 60 | 1.00 | 1.0 | 1.00 |
How a time clock turns punches into decimal hours
27 min → 0.45: cell 45 of 100, each cell 36 seconds. Grey cells are hundredths no whole minute ever produces.
An electronic time clock keeps the clock-in and clock-out as minutes, subtracts them, removes unpaid breaks and then stores the shift as hours and hundredths, because a pay rate multiplies against a decimal. A paper time card goes through the same step by hand: 8 hours 27 minutes becomes 8.45. ADP's published Minutes to Hundredths Chart for hourly employees uses exactly these values, 1 minute = 0.02 up to 60 minutes = 1.00, so a chart from one payroll provider reads the same as any other. QuickBooks Desktop Payroll goes a step further with a preference that sets how a typed entry is read: in decimal format 4:30 is interpreted as 4.5 hours, and in minutes format 4.5 is interpreted as 4 hours 30 minutes, so check which one is switched on before typing either.
Whether a company says timesheet conversion, time card conversion or time clock conversion, this minutes-to-hundredths step is the thing being described. The plain lookup without rounding columns is on the minutes to decimal chart.
Quarter-hour, tenth-hour and 5-minute rounding
One block of the rule chosen above, enlarged. The dashed line is the break point; the circle is where the minutes land.
The U.S. wage-and-hour regulation on time clocks, 29 CFR 785.48(b), describes “the practice for many years of recording the employees' starting time and stopping time to the nearest 5 minutes, or to the nearest one-tenth or quarter of an hour” and accepts it for enforcement purposes provided that, over a period of time, it does not fail to compensate employees for all the time they have actually worked. Rounding, in other words, has to cut both ways.
Under quarter-hour rounding the break point is 7½ minutes into each block, so 7 minutes past the quarter rounds down and 8 minutes rounds up: 8:07 is treated as 8:00 and 8:08 as 8:15. Tenth-hour rounding works in 6-minute blocks with the break at 3 minutes, and 5-minute rounding at 2½ minutes. The calculator above applies the rule to the shift total; a clock that rounds each punch separately can land a hundredth away from that.
What the rounding rule does to the pay
Top bar: the shift's exact hundredths at the rate. Bottom bar: the same shift after the rule chosen above. Move the rate to see the difference in dollars.
Payroll multiplies the stored hours by the hourly rate, so a rounding rule changes pay by exactly the minutes it adds to or removes from the shift. The comparison above uses the hours and rule entered in the calculator.