Time Card Calculator — Hours, Overtime and Pay

Your Time Card

Add up a week of clock-in and clock-out times, with lunch breaks, overnight and split shifts, and see regular hours, overtime and gross pay.

Enter your hourly rate

Choose one or two weeks

Fill in each day

Copy a regular schedule

This estimates gross pay from the hours and pay rules you enter. Your employer’s workweek, rounding policy and break rules, and the law where you work, decide the real figure, and tax and deductions are not included, so check your paystub before relying on it.

Quick Start Guide

  1. Enter your hourly rate: Or leave it blank to total the hours only.
  2. Choose one or two weeks: And the day your workweek starts, or the date of the card’s first day.
  3. Fill in each day: Clock in, clock out and any unpaid meal break. Add a period for a split shift.
  4. Copy a regular schedule: Fill the first day, then copy it to the next four. On two weeks, copy week 1 to week 2.
  5. Check the pay rules: Weekly overtime by default; turn on daily overtime or rounding if your employer uses them.
  6. Copy or export: Copy the totals or export the card as a PDF, CSV or JSON report.

Understanding Time Cards and Overtime

How the hours are counted

Each day’s hours are the clock-out time minus the clock-in time, less the unpaid meal break. A clock-out earlier than the clock-in means the shift ran past midnight: 11:00 PM to 7:30 AM is 8.5 hours, counted on the day the shift started. A split shift, such as 10:00 to 2:00 and again 5:00 to 9:30, is entered as two periods on the same day, and the gap between them is unpaid. The total is shown both as hours and minutes and as decimal hours, the form payroll systems and timesheets take: 38:45 is 38.75 hours, not 38.45.

Weekly overtime, the federal rule

Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, hours over 40 in a workweek are paid at least one and a half times the regular rate. The workweek is a fixed seven days that can start on any day, so the card starts on the day your employer’s week does. Each workweek stands on its own: on a two-week card, 45 hours and then 35 hours give 5 hours of overtime, because the two weeks are never averaged into 80. Federal law has no daily overtime and does not require breaks.

Daily overtime and double time

California and a few other places also pay overtime by the day. With the daily rule on, hours over 8 in a day are paid at 1.5 times the rate and hours over 12 at twice the rate. Hours already paid as daily overtime do not count again toward the weekly 40, so four 12-hour days come to 32 regular hours and 16 hours of overtime, with no weekly overtime on top. California’s seventh-day rule, which applies only when all seven days of the workweek are worked, is not modelled. The thresholds can be changed for other rules, such as Alaska’s 8 hours or Oregon’s 10 in manufacturing.

Rounding clock-in and clock-out times

Some employers round each punch to the nearest 5 minutes, 6 minutes (a tenth of an hour) or 15 minutes, the steps federal rules allow when rounding evens out over time. With 15-minute rounding, 7:56 becomes 8:00 and 4:04 becomes 4:00. The calculator shows the paid hours beside the hours as punched, so the difference is visible. Breaks are never rounded: California does not allow meal periods to be rounded, and whether rounding punches is allowed there at all is still before its Supreme Court.

Breaks: paid and unpaid

Only an unpaid meal break belongs in the break field. Under federal rules, short rest breaks of about 5 to 20 minutes are paid time and count as hours worked, while a meal break of usually 30 minutes or more, with no work during it, is not. If your break is short and paid, leave it out.

What your hours come to per month and per year

The per-month and per-year figures assume the same hours every week: the average week’s gross pay times 52 and divided by 12, and times 52. They are before tax and deductions, so a paycheck will be smaller, and a semimonthly or monthly paycheck will not match a weekly figure exactly. Paid time off, holidays and tips are not included: time off is not hours worked and does not count toward overtime.

Features

Weekly Time Card: seven days, or fourteen for a two-week pay period, with overnight shifts and up to three periods a day for split shifts.

Overtime Rules: weekly overtime over 40 hours, or daily and weekly overtime with double time, counted the way California counts it.

Gross Pay: regular, overtime and double-time pay from your hourly rate, and the total for the card.

Per Month and Per Year: what the week’s pay comes to at the same hours every week, before tax.

Punch Rounding: to 5, 6 or 15 minutes, with the paid hours shown beside the hours as punched.

Decimal Hours: every total in hours and minutes and in decimal hours for payroll.

Dates and a Label: an optional first-day date puts the real date on every day and on the report, to match a pay stub, and a label names the job or the person.

Continue With Your Income: the monthly gross goes to the Debt-to-Income or Mortgage Calculator, the yearly gross to the 401(k) Calculator.

Common Use Cases

Checking a paycheck: enter the week’s punches from your time clock or app and compare the hours, overtime and gross pay with your pay stub.

Running payroll from paper time cards: total each employee’s week in decimal hours, with overtime split out.

Shift work: overnight shifts, 12-hour shifts and split shifts, entered as they were worked.

Planning a budget or a loan application: see what your hourly pay comes to per month and per year before tax.

Contractors and freelancers: total billable hours at one rate with overtime switched off.

Frequently Asked Questions

Whether the times come from a time clock, an app or a paper timesheet, the method is the same: for each day, subtract the clock-in time from the clock-out time and take off any unpaid meal break, then add the days together for the week’s work hours. Monday to Friday from 9:00 to 5:30 with a 30-minute lunch is 8 hours a day and 40 hours for the week. The calculator does this for every day, handles shifts that cross midnight, and shows the total in hours and minutes and in decimal hours.
Under the federal rule, hours over 40 in a workweek are paid at 1.5 times the regular rate. Five 10-hour days at $18 an hour are 40 regular hours ($720) and 10 overtime hours at $27 ($270), $990 in all. Each week counts on its own, even on a two-week pay period.
California pays 1.5 times the rate for hours over 8 in a day and twice the rate for hours over 12, as well as overtime over 40 a week. Hours already paid as daily overtime are not counted again toward the 40, so four 12-hour days are 32 regular hours and 16 overtime hours, with no weekly overtime. Turn on Daily + weekly in the pay rules to use it. The seventh-day rule and alternative workweek schedules are not modelled.
Short rest breaks, about 5 to 20 minutes, are paid time under federal rules and count as hours worked, so they do not go in the break field. An unpaid meal break, usually 30 minutes or more with no work during it, does, and it is taken off the day’s hours.
Some employers round each clock-in and clock-out to the nearest 5 minutes, 6 minutes or 15 minutes. Federal rules allow it only when it evens out over time. With 15-minute rounding, the Department of Labor’s guidance rounds 1 to 7 minutes down and 8 to 14 minutes up, so 7:56 becomes 8:00. The calculator shows the paid hours next to the hours as punched, and never rounds the break.
Divide the minutes by 60: 45 minutes is 0.75 hours, 30 minutes is 0.5 and 15 minutes is 0.25. So 7 hours 30 minutes is 7.5 hours, not 7.30. The calculator shows every total both ways, and takes the decimal from the exact total rather than adding up rounded daily figures.
Overtime is counted for each workweek on its own; the two weeks are never averaged. 45 hours in the first week and 35 in the second give 5 hours of overtime, not zero from an 80-hour average. Choose 2 weeks and the calculator keeps the count for each week separately.
Take the week’s gross pay, multiply by 52 and divide by 12 for a month, or multiply by 52 for a year. A 40-hour week at $20 an hour is $800, about $3,466.67 a month and $41,600 a year before tax. The calculator shows both from the hours you enter, assuming the same hours every week, and Continue in another calculator takes the monthly figure to the Debt-to-Income or Mortgage Calculator and the yearly one to the 401(k) Calculator.
The calculator shows gross pay, before tax and deductions, from the one rate you enter. Your overtime rate can be higher: it is one and a half times your regular rate, and the regular rate includes night-shift differentials and production or attendance bonuses, and with two jobs at different rates for the same employer it is their weighted average. Overtime is paid on the payday for the period in which the workweek ends, so a week that spans two pay periods can show up on the next check. Your employer’s workweek and rounding policy decide which hours fall where, and paid time off is not hours worked. Hospitals on the 8/80 system, California’s seventh-day rule and Nevada’s daily overtime for lower-paid workers are not modelled.

Last updated