The time desk
Free Online Time Calculator for Work
Built for a single work shift: clock-in to clock-out, minus the unpaid break, with the decimal hours payroll needs and the gross pay that follows from your hourly rate.
YOUR SHIFT
Start with one shift you remember clearly
Most pay problems are found by auditing a single day rather than a whole period. Pick a shift you can describe without guessing — one where you know when you arrived, when you left, and whether you actually got your break — and work out what it should have paid. If that one day reconciles, your schedule and your employer's system agree, and you can stop. If it does not, you now have a specific question instead of a feeling.
Enter the clock-in time, the clock-out time, and only the break minutes you were not paid for. Add your hourly rate and the tool shows gross pay for the day. The breakdown sentence under the result spells the shift back out in words, which is the fastest way to catch a PM typed as AM before you quote a figure to anybody.
Tuesday: badged in 7:52 AM, badged out 4:06 PM, clocked out 29 minutes for lunch, rate $19.40.
16:06 − 7:52 = 8 h 14 min − 29 min = 7 h 45 min = 7.75 h × $19.40 = $150.35
That is the figure to compare against the stub. If the stub says 7.50 for the same day, the gap is fifteen minutes — and fifteen minutes has a small number of likely explanations, which is the useful part.
WHERE THE MINUTES GO
Why the clock disagrees with you
Rounding to the nearest quarter hour
Many employers round punches to the nearest 15 minutes, with the breakpoint at 7 minutes 30 seconds either side. Badge in at 7:52 and you are recorded as 7:45; badge in at 7:53 and you are recorded as 8:00. Rounding is permissible under federal rules when it is applied neutrally and does not, over time, systematically underpay. It is not permissible as a one-way ratchet that always rounds in the employer's favour.
An automatic meal deduction
Some systems subtract a fixed meal period regardless of whether you clocked out for one. If you ate at your desk, covered the floor, or were called back after eleven minutes, that deduction may not reflect hours worked. This is the single most common source of a recurring half-hour gap.
Pre-shift and post-shift tasks
Time spent on activities integral to your principal job — starting equipment, donning required protective gear, a mandatory handover — can count as hours worked even if it happens before you reach the clock. Whether a specific task qualifies depends on the facts, and it is genuinely contested territory, so document what you do and when rather than arguing the doctrine.
Two different clocks
Your phone, the badge reader and the POS terminal are not necessarily synchronised. A consistent one- or two-minute offset across every punch usually means a clock drift, not a dispute.
A one-minute difference on a single day is noise. The same difference in the same direction every day for two weeks is a pattern, and a pattern is worth a written question.
TWO BLOCKS, ONE DAY
Split shifts, doubles and on-call call-backs
A split shift is two separated working blocks in one day with a long unpaid gap between them — typical in restaurants, transport and care work. The gap is not a break; it is time you were off the clock entirely, often long enough to go home. Do not try to model it as a single long shift with a four-hour break deduction, because the two are different things on a record and sometimes different things in pay.
Restaurant split shift: 10:00 AM–2:00 PM, then 5:00 PM–9:30 PM, 15 paid rest minutes in each block.
Block 1 = 4 h 00 min = 4.00 h; Block 2 = 4 h 30 min = 4.50 h; day total 8.50 h
Run each block separately and add the decimal results. Breaks that are paid are not deducted at all, so both blocks here are entered with a zero break. If you work splits regularly, the seven-day grid on the time card calculator lets you keep two rows per day by putting the second block on an unused row and labelling it in your own notes.
A double shift — two consecutive shifts with only a meal between them — is one continuous span and should be entered as one. Where a state has daily overtime, a double is the most common way an individual day generates premium pay on its own, and a few jurisdictions also require a separate split-shift premium; that is a local rule to check rather than something this tool applies.
AUDIT
Reconciling a paycheck against your own record
Work from the stub backwards. A stub normally shows hours and a rate per line, and the arithmetic should close exactly. Here is a fortnight that does not, and how to read it:
| Line | Stub hours | Your hours | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Week 1 regular | 38.25 | 38.25 | 0.00 |
| Week 2 regular | 40.00 | 40.00 | 0.00 |
| Week 2 overtime | 1.50 | 3.00 | 1.50 |
| Period total | 79.75 | 81.25 | 1.50 |
The missing 1.50 overtime hours at a $22.00 base rate:
1.50 × ($22.00 × 1.5) = 1.50 × $33.00 = $49.50 gross short
Notice where the gap is. Both regular lines agree, so the punches are not in dispute — only the overtime classification is. That points at a threshold or a workweek-boundary question rather than a missing shift, and it tells you who to ask. Our overtime rules explainer sets out what federal law requires and where state rules add to it.
The order to check things in
- Confirm the pay period dates on the stub, and which days fall inside them.
- Compare each day's hours, not the totals, against your own record.
- Check whether unpaid break deductions match breaks you actually took.
- Check the base rate itself, including any shift differential you are owed.
- Only then look at the overtime split and the multiplier applied.
Gross pay is where your checking ends. Taxes, Social Security and Medicare withholding, insurance premiums and retirement contributions all sit between gross and the amount that reaches your account, and none of them are errors.
NEXT STEP
What to do when your total and theirs disagree
Put it in writing, early, and keep it narrow. An email naming one date, your recorded times, the figure paid and the difference is far more likely to be fixed than a general complaint about a period. Attach your own record — print the result or export the week — so the person reading it can reproduce your number without re-interviewing you.
Ask for the policy as well as the correction: how punches are rounded, whether meal deductions are automatic, and which day the workweek starts. Those three answers usually explain every future discrepancy, and knowing them lets you check the next stub in two minutes. If the explanation does not add up and the amounts are material, your state labor agency and the federal Wage and Hour Division both accept wage complaints — but exhausting the internal route first is faster and almost always sufficient.
What this tool gives you is the arithmetic, computed the same way every time, with nothing uploaded and no account attached to it. What it cannot give you is a legal opinion on your situation: break entitlements, daily overtime, split-shift premiums and what counts as compensable time all vary by state and by country, and none of them are determined by this page.
RELIABILITY
How the shift maths is kept honest
Clock times are parsed into whole minutes and every step stays in integer minutes, so the figure you quote in an email will not differ by a hundredth from the figure you saw yesterday. Decimal hours appear only at the end, rounded to two places, which is the same precision a payroll system holds. A shift whose end time falls earlier than its start is read as crossing midnight, and a break longer than the shift is refused with an error rather than returned as a negative total. Fifty automated unit tests run against these formulas on every change to the code.
Everything is computed locally: no network request, no sign-in, no record of your rate on any server. You can type 9, 930, 9.30, 9:30pm or 21:30 and all of them parse, so punch-report values can go in as they appear. To convert a stray hours-and-minutes figure on its own, use the hours to decimal converter; to add up a full week before an approval deadline, the timesheet calculator is the right page.
Frequently asked questions
Common questions
How do I check my paycheck against the hours I worked?
Work backwards from the stub, day by day rather than total by total. Confirm the pay period dates first, then compare each shift's hours against your own record, then check the unpaid break deductions, then the base rate, and only last the overtime split. The gap almost always sits in one of those layers.
Remember that the figure you calculate is gross pay. Tax withholding, Social Security, Medicare, insurance premiums and retirement contributions all sit between gross and what lands in your account, and none of those are mistakes.
Can my employer round my clock-in time?
Rounding punches to the nearest quarter hour is permissible under federal rules when it is applied neutrally and does not systematically underpay employees over time. The usual breakpoint is 7 minutes 30 seconds, so a 7:52 punch records as 7:45 and a 7:53 punch records as 8:00.
What is not acceptable is one-way rounding that always favours the employer. If every punch of yours moves in the same direction week after week, that pattern is worth raising in writing.
How do I calculate hours for a split shift?
Treat each block as its own shift and add the decimal results. A 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM block is 4.00 hours and a 5:00 PM to 9:30 PM block is 4.50 hours, giving 8.50 hours for the day.
The long gap between blocks is not a break — you were off the clock entirely — so do not enter it in the break field. Some jurisdictions require an additional split-shift premium on top of the hours; that is a local rule to check with your employer or state labor agency.
Should my unpaid lunch be deducted if I worked through it?
Time you spend working is generally hours worked, so a meal period you did not actually get should not be deducted. Many time systems subtract a fixed 30 minutes automatically whether or not you clocked out, which is the most common cause of a recurring half-hour shortfall.
Report it the same week, in writing, naming the date. Short rest breaks of roughly five to twenty minutes are normally paid in any case, so only genuine relieved-of-duty meal periods belong in the break field.
What do I do if my hours total disagrees with my employer's?
Send one narrow written message naming a single date, your recorded in and out times, the hours paid and the difference. Attach your own printed or exported record so the reader can reproduce the figure without asking you questions.
Also ask for the three policies that explain most gaps: how punches are rounded, whether meal deductions are automatic, and which day the workweek starts. With those answers you can check future stubs in a couple of minutes.
Does time spent before clocking in count as work?
It can. Activities integral and indispensable to your main job — starting up required equipment, putting on mandatory protective gear, a required handover — may count as hours worked even when they happen before you reach the clock. Whether a particular task qualifies depends on the facts and is genuinely contested.
The practical step is to document what you do and how long it takes, with dates, rather than argue the legal test. Then ask your employer how that time is meant to be recorded.
How many hours is a 7:52 AM to 4:06 PM shift with a 29-minute lunch?
The span from 7:52 AM to 4:06 PM is 8 hours 14 minutes. Subtract the 29 unpaid minutes and you have 7 hours 45 minutes, which is 7.75 decimal hours. At $19.40 an hour that is $150.35 gross for the day.
Odd punch times like these are exactly where hand arithmetic goes wrong, because the minutes do not fall on a quarter hour. Converting to minutes first and only moving to decimals at the end avoids it.
Is a double shift calculated differently from a split shift?
Yes. A double shift is one continuous span with only a meal break inside it, so enter it as a single shift from the first clock-in to the final clock-out with the unpaid meal deducted. A split shift is two separate blocks with a long off-the-clock gap, entered separately.
In states that have daily overtime, a double is the most common way one day generates premium pay by itself. Federal law has no daily overtime rule, only the weekly 40-hour threshold.
Does this calculator work out my take-home pay?
No — it shows gross pay only, as hourly rate multiplied by the decimal hours worked. It does not model federal or state income tax, FICA withholding, benefit deductions, garnishments, shift differentials or overtime premiums on a single shift.
That is intentional: the purpose is to verify the hours and the base arithmetic, which is the part you can check yourself. Net pay depends on your W-4, your state and your benefit elections.
Can I keep a record of my shifts with this tool?
You can copy a result to the clipboard, share it, or print the page for a dated paper record. For an ongoing log, the weekly grid pages keep the week in your own browser's local storage so you can fill it in as the days pass.
Nothing is uploaded in either case. There is no account and no server-side copy, so the only record of your shifts and your rate is the one you keep yourself.
Read next
Guides that explain the numbers
Last reviewed 1 November 2026 by the Hours Calculator Online team. Spotted a problem? Tell us and we will fix it.