2026 time card calculator

How the hours are counted

Each day is the time between your start and end, less the unpaid break you enter. A 9:00 to 5:30 shift with a 30-minute lunch comes to 8.00 hours. We count in whole minutes and only convert at the end, so a few short days do not pick up rounding errors. Payroll systems usually want decimal hours, where 7 hours 45 minutes is 7.75, and the result shows both forms so you can match your pay stub.

Which breaks come off

Only enter time your employer does not pay for. Under Department of Labor rules, short rest periods, usually 20 minutes or less, count as hours worked. A real meal period, typically 30 minutes or more, generally does not, as long as you are completely relieved from duty. If you eat at your desk and keep answering the phone, that time counts as work, so leave the break at 0.

When overtime starts

Under federal law, covered workers earn at least 1.5 times their regular rate for hours over 40 in a workweek. A workweek is a fixed seven days, so enter one week at a time and do not average two weeks together. At $20 an hour, a 45-hour week pays $800 of regular pay and $150 of overtime, for $950 gross.

Some states add their own rules on top. California, for one, pays overtime after eight hours in a workday, and this calculator does not apply that rule. It also assumes one hourly rate for the whole week. If you are unsure whether overtime applies to your job, your state labor department can tell you.

Gross pay is before tax. To see what lands in your account, put the total into our paycheck calculator. Employers checking the cost of those hours can use the employer payroll tax calculator.