Time card calculator

How to use the time card

1. Enter the start and end time for each day you worked. Leave a day blank if you were off.
2. Put your unpaid break in minutes. A typical unpaid lunch is 30 or 60 minutes.
3. Add your hourly rate if you want an estimate of gross pay for the week.
4. Change the overtime threshold if your state uses something other than 40 hours a week.

Overnight shifts are handled automatically: if the end time is earlier than the start time, the calculator counts the shift as crossing midnight.

The math behind it

Worked example

You work 9:00 to 17:30 Monday through Thursday with a 30-minute unpaid lunch, which is 8 hours a day, and 9:00 to 16:00 on Friday with the same lunch, which is 6.5 hours. Your week totals 38.5 hours, or 38 hours and 30 minutes. At $22 an hour, gross pay is $847. Work one more hour on Saturday and you reach 39.5 hours, still below the 40-hour overtime threshold.

Decimal hours versus hours and minutes

Payroll systems use decimal hours, which is where confusion starts. Eight hours and 30 minutes is 8.5 hours, not 8.30. The conversion is simply minutes divided by 60: 15 minutes is 0.25, 20 minutes is 0.33, and 45 minutes is 0.75. The calculator shows both formats so you can check your time sheet against your pay stub.

Unpaid lunches and paid short breaks

Under federal rules, a genuine meal period of 30 minutes or more is normally unpaid, as long as you are fully relieved of duty. Eating at your desk while still answering calls is generally working time. Short breaks of about 5 to 20 minutes are usually treated as paid work time. Some states add their own meal and rest break requirements, so check your state labor department if your employer's practice looks different.

Time rounding

Employers are allowed to round clock times to the nearest quarter hour, as long as the rounding is neutral over time and does not systematically favor the employer. This is often called the seven-minute rule: punches within seven minutes of a quarter-hour mark round to that mark. Rounding that always goes against the employee is not permitted. If you want to see the effect, enter your exact punches here and compare the total with your pay stub.

Keeping your own record

Your employer is required to keep accurate records of hours worked, but keeping your own copy protects you if something is disputed. Note your start and end times each day, along with breaks, and keep it somewhere outside your work account. If a week ever looks wrong, you will have contemporaneous notes rather than trying to reconstruct it months later.

Semi-monthly pay periods and workweeks

Overtime is based on a fixed seven-day workweek, not on your pay period. If you are paid semi-monthly, a pay period can contain parts of three different workweeks, and each one is tested separately against the 40-hour threshold. Run the calculator once per workweek rather than for the whole pay period to see what your overtime should be.

Who this helps

Hourly employees checking a paycheck, small business owners running payroll without software, freelancers billing by the hour, and shift workers with variable schedules. If you bill clients, the per-day table below the results makes it easy to copy hours into an invoice. This page explains general rules and is not legal or payroll advice.

Last reviewed on September 15, 2026 by the Dailycaltor team.