How a time card turns into a pay period
A time card is a week's worth of the same small sum, repeated once per day and then split according to a rule about how many hours count as ordinary time. Each day worked reduces to the gap between clock-in and clock-out, minus whatever unpaid break came out of the middle. Add every worked day together and that is the week's total; measure that total against a threshold and the part above the line becomes overtime rather than ordinary pay.
Five days of 09:00 to 17:30 with a 30-minute break each come to 8 hours a day, 40 hours across the five days. Add a Saturday shift of 09:00 to 15:00 with no break, 6 more hours, and the week comes to 46 hours. Against the common 40-hour threshold, that is 40 hours of regular time and 6 hours of overtime, and it is that split, not just the week's raw total, that a payslip actually needs.
The weekly overtime threshold, and why it resets each week
In the United States, the Fair Labor Standards Act sets overtime at time-and-a-half for hours worked beyond 40 in a single workweek, and that 40-hour line is counted week by week rather than averaged over a pay period, however often the payslip is actually cut (29 U.S.C. §207). That distinction matters most for a fortnightly time card: a week of 44 hours and a week of 36 hours add up to 80 hours over the fortnight, the same as two ordinary 40-hour weeks, yet the first week still owes 4 hours of overtime on its own, because its own 44 hours crossed the line before the second week's lighter hours could average it back down. This calculator applies the threshold to each week separately for exactly that reason, then adds the two weeks' regular and overtime hours together for the combined total.
Outside the United States, overtime rules vary a great deal, by country and often by sector or union agreement, covering everything from a lower weekly threshold to daily overtime rules that a purely weekly view like this one does not model. The 40-hour threshold and 1.5× multiplier here are defaults worth changing to whatever actually applies; both fields are editable for that reason.
Rounding: what real payroll clocks do that this calculator does not
Plenty of real time-clock systems do not use the clock-in and clock-out times exactly as punched. US federal rules permit rounding a punch to the nearest 5 minutes, tenth of an hour, or quarter hour, provided the rounding stays neutral over time rather than consistently shaving time off the employee's side; the well-known version is the quarter-hour or "7-minute" rule, where a punch up to 7 minutes 59 seconds past the mark rounds back and one at 8 minutes or later rounds forward (29 CFR §785.48). This calculator applies no such rounding: every time entered is used exactly as typed, to the minute. A payslip that looks slightly different from this page most likely reflects a rounding policy, not an error in either sum.
Unpaid breaks and the law
Whether and when an unpaid break is legally required at all varies widely by state and by country, and it is not something a single page can state as a table without misleading someone somewhere, so the honest position here is that the break field simply takes off whatever unpaid minutes are entered and leaves the legal question to a local labour authority or an employer's own policy.
Decimal hours vs h:mm: the 7:30 trap
A clock reads in hours and minutes, but a rate per hour multiplies against decimal hours, and the two do not convert by simply moving a colon to a decimal point. Seven hours and thirty minutes is not 7.30 on a payslip; it is 7.5, because 30 minutes is half of 60, not thirty hundredths of an hour. Treating 7:30 as 7.30 in a pay calculation overpays by a fraction of an hour on every single shift it touches, quietly, in a way that is easy to miss until the totals stop matching. This page shows every hours figure both ways for exactly that reason: h:mm to read at a glance, and decimal hours ready to multiply against a rate without any further conversion.
The conversion itself is just minutes divided by 60: 15 minutes is a quarter of an hour, 0.25; 30 minutes is half, 0.50; 45 minutes is three-quarters, 0.75. A day of 7 hours 50 minutes is 470 minutes, and 470 divided by 60 is 7.8333 recurring, rounded to 7.83 for a payslip, which is the two-decimal-place convention used throughout this page.
Overnight shifts and unusually long rows
A night shift breaks the ordinary assumption that clock-out falls later the same day than clock-in. Whenever a row's clock-out time is earlier than its clock-in time, this calculator adds 24 hours to the clock-out side before subtracting, the standard way a shift crossing midnight is worked out; 22:00 in and 06:00 out nets 8 hours this way, not a negative 16. That same rule means a badly mistyped pair of times can occasionally produce a very long row rather than an error, so any day that nets more than 16 hours is flagged with a gentle note rather than blocked; it still counts toward the total, but it is worth a second look in case a clock-out time was meant to read differently. A break typed in as longer than the shift itself is treated differently again: that row is excluded from the total entirely until the times or the break are corrected, since there is no honest hours figure to show for it.
Choosing your inputs well
The 12-hour and 24-hour toggle only changes how each clock-in and clock-out is entered, never the arithmetic underneath, so pick whichever matches a workplace's own clock or rota. The break field wants unpaid time only; a paid break an employer already counts toward hours worked should be left out, since including it would undercount the day. The overtime threshold and multiplier are typed values rather than fixed defaults precisely because they are not the same everywhere, so confirm both against a contract or a local wage authority before relying on the pay figures beyond a quick estimate.
Reading your results
The headline figure is the pay period's total hours in decimal form, with the same total in h:mm beside it and the regular/overtime split directly under both. The donut chart shows that same split as a proportion, the bar chart lines every worked day up against the others so a long day or a short one stands out, and the pay breakdown table turns the hours split into money once an hourly rate is entered: regular pay is regular hours times the rate, overtime pay is overtime hours times the rate times the multiplier, and the total is simply the two added together, before tax or any other deduction. If a single week's hours without any overtime rule is all that is needed, the Hours Calculator covers a plain week of clock-in, clock-out and break with a straightforward hourly rate.
Questions people ask
Why does the overtime threshold apply to each week separately, even in a two-week pay period?
Overtime under the US Fair Labor Standards Act is counted per workweek, not averaged over however long a pay period happens to be. A 44-hour week followed by a 36-hour week still owes 4 hours of overtime for the first week on its own, even though the fortnight totals 80 hours, the same as two ordinary 40-hour weeks. This calculator applies the threshold to each week and then adds both weeks' hours together.
Why does 7:30 on the clock show as a decimal of 7.5 rather than 7.30?
An hour has 60 minutes, not 100, so 30 minutes is half an hour, 0.5, not three-tenths. Reading 7:30 as 7.30 and multiplying it by an hourly rate overpays slightly on every shift it touches. This page shows both h:mm and decimal hours so the conversion never has to be done by eye.
Does this calculator round clock-in and clock-out times to the nearest quarter hour?
No. Many real payroll clocks are allowed to round a punch to the nearest 5 minutes, tenth of an hour or quarter hour under US federal rules, but this calculator uses every time exactly as entered, to the minute. A payslip built on a rounding policy can come out slightly different from this page for that reason alone.
Should a paid lunch break go in the break field?
No, the break field is for unpaid time only, minutes that come off the hours actually worked. A break an employer already pays for and counts toward hours worked should be left out, since adding it here would undercount the day.
What happens if a shift works out to more than 16 hours?
That row is flagged with a gentle note rather than blocked, since it still counts toward the total; a shift genuinely can run that long, but it is also the shape a mistyped clock-out time tends to take, so it is worth a second look at the times entered for that day.
Is time-and-a-half always the right overtime multiplier?
It is the common default in the United States, but not universal even there, and plenty of other countries and union agreements use a different figure or a different structure entirely, sometimes double time after a further threshold. The multiplier field is editable so it can be set to whatever actually applies.
Is the pay figure shown here what actually lands in a bank account?
No, it is a gross figure only: regular hours times the rate, plus overtime hours times the rate and the multiplier, before tax, social insurance or any other deduction. Treat it as a starting point for a pay period rather than a take-home amount.
This calculator totals the clock-in, clock-out and break times entered, splits the total into regular and overtime hours at the threshold and multiplier given, and reports a gross pay figure when a rate is entered. It does not apply tax, statutory deductions or any workplace-specific policy, and the overtime rule it uses is a common default rather than a guarantee of what applies in any particular workplace or jurisdiction; check a payslip or an employer's own timesheet for anything that needs to be exact for pay purposes.