How to Use This Tool
Enter a start and an end time. Tick the midnight box for a night shift, put in any unpaid break, and you get both the clock form and the decimal form.
Decimal hours are not the clock reading
A timesheet asks for decimal hours; a human reads a clock. Those are different number systems and they happen to look alike, which is what makes the mistake so easy.
7 hours 45 minutes is 7.75 decimal hours, because 45 minutes is three quarters of an hour. Writing 7.45 — the clock reading with a decimal point dropped in — is 0.30 hours short, which is 18 minutes. On a five-day week that is an hour and a half unpaid, and it looks plausible enough that nobody queries it.
The conversion is just minutes divided by 60. The handful worth memorising: 15 minutes is 0.25, 20 is 0.33, 30 is 0.5, 45 is 0.75, 50 is 0.83.
Shifts that cross midnight
22:00 to 06:00 subtracts to minus 16 hours, because 6 is smaller than 22. The fix is to add 24 hours when the end is earlier than the start, giving the correct 8.
Software cannot decide that for you, because "end earlier than start" is equally consistent with someone typing the times the wrong way round. That is why the midnight box is a checkbox rather than an automatic guess — a payroll system that silently assumes a night shift will happily pay 8 hours for a typo.
Breaks, and which ones count
Whether a break is paid is a matter of local law and your contract, not arithmetic. What is fairly consistent across jurisdictions is the shape of the rule:
- Long meal breaks where you are free to leave are usually unpaid and get subtracted.
- Short rest breaks, often 20 minutes or less, are usually paid and do not.
- Time you are required to stay on the premises or on call is usually working time even if nothing happens.
Subtract only what your employer actually treats as unpaid. If you are not sure, that is a question for the contract or a local labour office rather than a calculator — the rules vary a lot and this is not legal advice.
Rounding
Some employers round each entry to the nearest quarter hour. Rounding is generally acceptable only if it is neutral — sometimes up, sometimes down — rather than always in the employer's favour. This tool does not round, so you can compare the exact figure against whatever appears on your payslip.
