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Time math without the payroll headache.
Practical guides for adding hours and minutes, calculating a timesheet, converting decimal hours, and turning work time into pay.
Calculating work hours: the complete guide
Clock-in to clock-out, breaks, overnight shifts, weekly totals, decimal hours, and pay.
Start here — the end-to-end walkthrough with worked examples.
How to add hours and minutes correctly
Why 8:15 + 7:45 is 16:00, not 15.6, and how to avoid decimal-time mistakes.
Use H:MM math when you are totaling shifts, billable time, or time cards.
How to calculate a weekly timesheet
Add each day, subtract breaks, handle overnight shifts, and export a clean record.
Hours keeps totals, history, CSV export, and PDF export together.
Decimal hours for payroll
Convert 1:30 to 1.5, 8:15 to 8.25, and worked hours into pay.
Decimal hours are useful for payroll; H:MM is easier while entering time.
How to calculate hours between two times
Clock-in to clock-out, borrowing across the hour, and shifts that cross noon or midnight.
Includes a worked-example table and the minutes-since-midnight shortcut.
What are decimal hours?
What they are, how to convert with minutes ÷ 60, and when H:MM is the better format.
The plain-English definition plus a quick-reference conversion chart.
How to calculate overtime and time-and-a-half
The 40-hour weekly threshold, the 1.5× rate, unpaid breaks, and partial hours.
A full worked week, a rate table, and the mistakes that inflate a paycheck.
Best time card calculator apps (2026)
Calculator, tracker, or time clock? An honest side-by-side of Hours and four alternatives.
Includes the base-10 mistake that costs a typical week 48 minutes.
Timesheet management 101
Fields, cycles, rounding, approvals, and how long to keep the records.
For employees, contractors, and small teams — plus where systems usually break.
How to subtract time in hours and minutes
Borrowing 60 minutes from the hour, negative totals, and why 8:00 − 1:45 is 6:15.
Includes a worked-example table and the all-minutes shortcut.
How to convert minutes to decimal hours
Divide by 60 — 15 min is 0.25, 38 min is 0.63 — plus the mental shortcut and a reference table.
Why rounding each day instead of the total quietly loses time.
Hourly rate to pay: freelancers & contractors
Hours × rate, partial hours, billing increments, multiple rates, and what belongs on the invoice.
The same 3:22 session can pay $292.50 or $315.00 — here's why.
How to calculate pay from hours worked
Five steps from a time card to gross pay: breaks, partial hours, overtime, and two rates in one week.
A full 42:00 week at $18.50 an hour, checked two different ways.
Best apps to add hours and minutes
Phone calculators, spreadsheets, web time calculators, and trackers — which ones actually understand H:MM.
One week, five tools, and the 64 minutes a base-10 calculator loses.
Overnight & overtime hours, done right
Past-midnight totals, the 24-hour wrap, which workday a night shift belongs to, and where overtime starts.
A full night week: 44:00 elapsed, 41:30 paid, 1:30 of overtime.
How to export a timesheet to CSV or PDF
Which format goes to payroll, which goes to a human, and the columns a usable export needs.
Plus why Excel rewrites your times — and the one fix for it.
Best timesheet app for contractors
Trackers, invoicing suites, spreadsheets, or a calculator — which one matches how your day actually goes.
A two-client week, two rates, and what rounding does to the invoice.
Hours to decimal: every conversion
The formula, a full 1–59 minute table, the reverse conversion, seconds, and whole timesheets.
Why one week is 40:05, 40.08, or 40.00 depending on how you round.
How to read a timesheet
Every column explained, a full week checked line by line, and the errors that survive a quick glance.
Why 39:45 is 39.75 hours — and what reading it as 39.45 costs.
How freelancers can track billable hours
What to log, what counts as billable, and how to total two clients in one week without losing minutes.
A 23:15 week, two rates, and the rounding rule that adds $21.25.
Best time card app for nurses
Twelve-hour shifts, nights past midnight, automatic meal deductions, and where overtime actually starts.
A 14-day block: 72:57 worked, and 0:00 or 24:57 of overtime depending on the rule.
Why your phone's calculator can't add time
Base 10 versus base 60, the sums it gets wrong in both directions, and three fixes that work.
One week typed as decimals: 40.65 hours instead of 41:45 — and $24.20 gone.
Free hours calculator apps for iPhone & Android
Six different things “free” means — ads, free tiers, trials, accounts — and what each one actually costs you.
A 40:00 week that a phone calculator turns into 39.20 — 48 minutes and $17.60.
Timesheet rounding: the 15-minute rule
Where the 7-minute boundary falls, why you round punches and not totals, and what makes a rounding policy neutral.
A week that is really 38:10 — paid as 38:00 one way and 38:15 the other.
Part-time vs full-time hours
Why 30, 35 and 40 hours all get called the line, which threshold decides what, and how to total a scattered week.
A part-time week that is 27:15 — and the typing habit that turns it into 26.35.
Paid vs unpaid breaks on a timesheet
Which breaks come off the total, which stay paid, and how automatic lunch deductions go wrong.
A week that should be 41:30 recorded as 40:30 — and why that hour costs $33.00.
Military time on a timesheet
Reading the 24-hour clock, converting it back, subtracting two punches, and shifts that run past midnight.
Why 1445 is 2:45 pm — and never 14.45 hours.
Forgot to clock out? Fixing a missed punch
Rebuilding the real time from evidence, recalculating the day, and why auto clock-outs and guessed 8-hour days are wrong.
A week that shows 42:14 but was really 38:00.
How to calculate shift differential pay
Splitting a shift at the evening or night window, breaks in the right part, flat vs percentage premiums, and the overtime effect.
An 8:15 shift worth $173.50 — or $181.50.
How many work hours are in a month?
Why the average is 173.33 and not 160, real weekday hours for every month of 2026, other schedules, and totaling your own month.
40 hours a week is 173:20 a month.
How to calculate hours worked in Excel
The formulas and cell formats that hold up: MOD for overnight shifts, [h]:mm so totals don’t reset at 24 hours, and ×24 for decimal pay.
Why a 36:15 week shows as 12:15.
How to calculate average hours worked per week
Add the weeks, divide in minutes, and choose the number of weeks on purpose. A four-week example that averages 37:50.
Why averaging 38:30 as 38.30 comes out 14 minutes short.
4/10 and 9/80 schedules: how to total the hours
Compressed schedules compared, a real 4/10 week in H:MM and decimal, and how the split Friday turns a 44-hour 9/80 week into two 40s.
Why 10:04 + 10:08 + 9:40 + 10:15 is 40:07, not 39.67.
How to calculate PTO accrual from hours worked
Turn a yearly PTO policy into an hourly rate, total a real pay period in H:MM, and keep a running balance that matches your pay stub.
Why 80 hours a year means one hour of PTO for every 26 worked.
Billable hours chart: 6-minute increments explained
A minutes-to-tenths chart, round-up vs nearest-tenth rules, and a worked day of entries turned into an invoice total.
Why the same 5:29 of work can bill as 5.5 or 5.9 hours.
How to calculate a biweekly timesheet
Total each workweek on its own, add the two, check overtime week by week, and turn the hours into gross pay.
Why a 79:40 pay period can still hold 3:50 of overtime.
How to calculate man-hours for a job
Add each worker’s hours and minutes, convert once to decimal, price the labor, and estimate crew size and duration.
Why a four-person, three-day job is 93:10 and not 96 man-hours.
Best app for adding hours and minutes?
Hours: Time Card Calculator is built for H:MM math, overnight shifts, decimal hours, hourly pay, and timesheet export. It is free, works offline, and does not require an account.