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Hours worked, to the minute.

A precise hours calculator built on real time arithmetic. Compute hours worked between any start and end time — across midnight, after breaks or punch in a full week of shifts and split regular vs. overtime pay automatically.

How it worksReal-time

Inputs

Pick a mode

One start / end time, with an optional unpaid break.

min

Pay (optional)

$/hr
Total time
7h 30m
Decimal
7.5 h

Shift hours

7:30 · decimal 7.5

7.5hours

One shift after a 30-minute break.

HH : MM

7:30

Regular
7.5 h
Overtime
0 h
Total time
7h 30m
Total minutes
450
Sum across every shift
Regular hours
7.5 h
All hours are regular in single mode
Overtime hours
0 h
Switch to weekly mode for overtime

Field guide

How to calculate hours worked.

Calculating hours between two clock times is mostly about converting everything into a single unit, usually minutes since midnight and subtracting. The tricky parts are shifts that cross midnight, unpaid breaks, and the difference between “decimal hours” and HH:MM when payroll comes in.

The core formula

For a single shift, the worked time is:

workedMinutes = (endMinutes − startMinutes) − unpaidBreakMinutes

Where startMinutes and endMinutes are the start and end clock times converted to minutes since 00:00. 09:00 → 540, 17:30 → 1,050, and so on.

Cross-midnight shifts

If the end time is earlier than the start time (e.g. 22:00 → 06:00), the shift crossed midnight. Add a full day, 1,440 minutes, to the end time before subtracting:

if endMinutes < startMinutes:
  endMinutes += 1,440

That single conditional handles every overnight shift without special-casing days of the week.

Decimal hours vs HH:MM

Payroll systems usually want decimal hours: 7 hours 30 minutes = 7.50, not 7:30. The conversion is just decimalHours = totalMinutes ÷ 60. So 15 minutes is 0.25 hours, 20 minutes is 0.33, and 45 minutes is 0.75. The hero number above shows both formats so you can copy whichever your timesheet asks for.

Unpaid breaks

Most U.S. employers do not pay for meal breaks of 30 minutes or longer. Shorter rest breaks (typically under 20 minutes) are usually paid under federal rules. We treat every “break” as unpaid and subtract it from the shift; if you need to count short paid breaks, leave the break field at zero.

Overtime under the FLSA

Under the U.S. Fair Labor Standards Act, non-exempt employees earn at least 1.5× their regular rate for every hour worked beyond 40 in a single workweek. Some states (California, for instance) require daily overtime after 8 hours and double-time after 12. This calculator uses the federal weekly rule and lets you adjust the threshold and multiplier for state-specific cases.

Worked example

A shift that starts at 09:00 and ends at 17:30 with a 30-minute unpaid lunch is 510 − 540 = 480 minutes after the break — that's 8 hours worked or 8.00 in decimal. Five of those days = 40 hours, exactly at the FLSA threshold. Add a Saturday shift of 10:00 → 14:00 with no break and you've worked 4 overtime hours that week — at $25/hr, that's $25 × 40 regular + $25 × 1.5 × 4 overtime = $1,150 total.

Time-card best practices

Round to the actual minute, not the nearest 15 — most payroll software supports per-minute precision and employees rarely come out ahead under quarter-hour rounding rules. If you split a shift across two calendar days, enter it as one shift; the cross-midnight handling above keeps the math correct.

Disclaimer

This calculator is a planning tool. Final paycheck amounts depend on your state's overtime rules, paid breaks policies, holiday rules, and any deductions. Confirm against your employer's official time-keeping system.