Calculate hours worked. This free hours calculator finds the time between a start and end clock time, handles overnight shifts, subtracts unpaid breaks, and shows decimal hours for pay.
Enter a start and end time to get the hours in between. If the end time is earlier than the start, it’s treated as overnight (crossing midnight). Subtract any unpaid break in minutes.
Useful for timesheets and shift pay: the calculator finds the gap between two clock times, handles shifts that run past midnight, and subtracts unpaid breaks. Multiply the decimal hours by your hourly rate for pay.
What This Hours Calculator Does
Enter a start and end clock time, and this calculator finds the total time between them, automatically detecting an overnight shift if the end time is earlier than the start. Subtract any unpaid break minutes to get your net hours worked, shown both as hours-and-minutes and as decimal hours for payroll.
How Overnight Shifts Are Handled
If the end time is numerically earlier than the start time (like starting at 22:00 and ending at 06:00), the calculator assumes the shift crossed midnight and adds 24 hours to the calculation rather than returning a negative or nonsensical result.
For example, a shift from 22:00 to 06:00 spans 8 hours, correctly calculated as an overnight shift.
Subtracting Unpaid Breaks
Enter any unpaid break time in minutes, and the calculator subtracts it from the gross shift length to give your actual net hours worked – the figure that should be used for pay calculations.
Why Decimal Hours Matter for Payroll
Most payroll systems calculate pay using decimal hours rather than hours-and-minutes, since decimal hours multiply cleanly by an hourly rate. This calculator shows both formats so you can cross-check a timesheet entry or a paycheck calculation.
Common Uses for This Calculator
This calculator is useful for hourly employees checking a shift’s pay, employers building timesheets, freelancers logging billable hours, and anyone verifying that a payroll system correctly handled an overnight or split shift.
How to Use the Hours Calculator
- Enter your start time and end time.
- Enter any unpaid break in minutes, if applicable.
- Review your net hours worked, shown as both hours-and-minutes and decimal hours.
Need to add or subtract time from a specific date instead? See our Date Calculator.
Tips for Accurate Timesheets with the Hours Calculator
An hours calculator removes the arithmetic, but a timesheet is only as good as the times recorded in the first place.
- Record times as they happen. Rebuilding a whole week from memory on Friday afternoon is where most discrepancies creep in.
- Watch AM and PM. A 9:00 to 5:00 shift with the wrong period set can come out as 20 hours instead of 8, and the hours calculator can only use what you type.
- Separate paid and unpaid breaks. Subtract a break only if your employer doesn’t pay for it; in many workplaces short rest breaks are paid time.
Payroll works in decimal hours, so 7 hours 45 minutes is 7.75, not 7.45. Copy the decimal figure from the hours calculator into pay software rather than retyping hours and minutes.
Overtime rules differ by country, state and contract, so an hours calculator tells you the hours, not your entitlement. In the US, the Department of Labor overtime pay guidance explains how weekly hours are counted, which pairs well with the totals from an hours calculator.