Time Card Calculator
A week of clock-in and clock-out times turned into hours: unpaid breaks deducted, shifts that cross midnight handled properly, and the total split into regular and overtime under both the 40-hour weekly rule and a daily rule such as California’s.
One workweek of punches
Optional. Leave it blank for hours only. Gross pay before tax and every other deduction.
Federal law has no daily rule — it pays overtime past 40 hours in a week however those hours fell. Several states add one. Hours taken here are not counted again by the weekly rule.
40 under the Fair Labor Standards Act. Set it to 0 to switch the weekly rule off entirely.
5 worked days, with 2.50 hours of unpaid break already taken out — 37.50 regular and 0.00 overtime. That is $937.50 gross at $25.00 an hour, before tax.
- Total paid hours
- 37.50
- Regular hours
- 37.50
- Overtime hours
- 0.00
- From the daily rule
- 0.00
- From the weekly rule
- 0.00
- Unpaid break
- 2.50
- Regular pay
- $937.50
- Overtime pay
- $0.00
- Gross pay
- $937.50
| Day | In | Out | Break | Paid hours | Of which overtime |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monday | 09:00 | 17:00 | 0.50 | 7.50 | 0.00 |
| Tuesday | 09:00 | 17:00 | 0.50 | 7.50 | 0.00 |
| Wednesday | 09:00 | 17:00 | 0.50 | 7.50 | 0.00 |
| Thursday | 09:00 | 17:00 | 0.50 | 7.50 | 0.00 |
| Friday | 09:00 | 17:00 | 0.50 | 7.50 | 0.00 |
| Saturday | 00:00 | 00:00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Sunday | 00:00 | 00:00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
From two punches to paid hours, and why the order of the overtime rules matters
A day’s hours look like one subtraction, and for a shift that starts and ends on the same date they are. The difficulty is in the two cases that are not that.
shift = out − in (+ 24 h if out < in) • paid = shift − break • OTₕ = max(0, paid − daily) • OT₣ = max(0, Σ(paid − OTₕ) − weekly)- out < in
- The shift crossed midnight. Add a day rather than returning a negative — 22:00 to 06:00 is eight hours, not minus sixteen
- break
- The unpaid meal period only. Paid rest breaks stay inside the shift
- OTₕ
- Daily overtime — hours past the daily threshold, taken out day by day. Zero when no daily rule applies
- OT₣
- Weekly overtime — applied to what is left after the daily rule, so no hour is counted in both
The overnight case is where most time card calculators fail. A clock-out earlier than the clock-in has exactly one sensible reading, because nobody records a shift longer than twenty-four hours on a single line. Tools that subtract naively either report a negative day, quietly clamp it to zero, or — worst — carry the negative into the weekly total and shorten the whole card. The one case this convention cannot express is a genuine 24-hour shift: identical punches are read here as a day nobody worked, which is what they almost always mean.
The ordering of the two overtime rules is the other place answers diverge. Run them independently and a twelve-hour Monday is counted twice — once as four hours of daily overtime, and again inside the weekly total. Taking daily overtime out first and applying the weekly threshold only to the remainder is the treatment used by California’s Division of Labor Standards Enforcement, and it is what this calculator does.
A 9-to-5 week, and the same 48 hours paid two different ways
Five days of 09:00 to 17:00 is eight hours on the clock each day. Take out a 30-minute unpaid lunch and the paid figure is 7.50 hours a day, so the week is 37.50 hours and 2.50 hours of unpaid break. At $25.00 an hour that is $937.50 gross — no overtime, because 37.50 never reaches 40.
Now compress the same work into four twelve-hour days: 07:00 to 19:00, Monday through Thursday, no unpaid break. That is 48 paid hours either way, and the two rule sets disagree about what they cost.
Federal only. There is no daily rule, so all 48 hours go to the weekly test: 40 regular and 8 overtime. At $30.00 an hour that is 40 × $30.00 = $1,200.00 plus 8 × $45.00 = $360.00, a gross of $1,560.00.
With a California-style eight-hour day. Each day gives up four overtime hours first — 16 in the week — leaving 32 straight-time hours, which never reach the weekly threshold of 40, so the weekly rule adds nothing. That is 32 × $30.00 = $960.00 plus 16 × $45.00 = $720.00, a gross of $1,680.00.
The same punches, the same 48 hours, $120 apart. Notice also what would happen if the rules were simply added together: 16 daily overtime hours plus 8 weekly ones would be 24, and the week would be paid for more overtime than it contains.
This page stops at gross pay for hours worked. For what a paycheck actually looks like once overtime is priced, blended rates are applied, and deductions come out, see the overtime pay calculator — that tool starts from a number of hours and works out the money. This one starts from the punches and works out the hours.
What this calculator assumes
- One workweek per card. The weekly overtime threshold resets with the workweek and does not accumulate, so a fortnightly period is two cards added together.
- A clock-out earlier than the clock-in crossed midnight. Identical punches are a day off, not a 24-hour shift.
- The break box is unpaid time only. Paid rest breaks, and any meal period you were made to work through, stay in the paid total.
- No rounding of punches. Times are used to the minute; hours are reported to two decimal places.
- Overtime is paid at 1.5× the hourly rate. Double time — which California pays past twelve hours in a day, and past eight on a seventh consecutive day — is not modelled, nor is the seventh-day rule itself.
- Shift differentials, on-call pay, tips, commissions, and bonuses are not included, and none of them is in the hourly rate used to price overtime here. A non-discretionary bonus can raise the regular rate of pay under the FLSA.
- Gross pay only. Nothing is withheld — no federal or state tax, no FICA, no benefits, no garnishments.
- Hourly, non-exempt work. Salaried and exempt employees are not owed overtime under the same rules, and this card does not try to decide which you are.
Time card calculator FAQ
How do I calculate hours for a shift that goes past midnight?
Add 24 hours to the clock-out before subtracting. A shift from 22:00 to 06:00 is minus sixteen hours by plain subtraction and eight hours in reality, because the clock-out belongs to the next day. This calculator does that automatically: when the clock-out reads earlier than the clock-in it treats the shift as having crossed midnight and marks the row “+1 day”. It is the single most common bug in time card tools, and it shows up as a negative day, a day silently clamped to zero, or a whole week that comes out short.
Should the lunch break be subtracted from my hours?
An unpaid meal break is subtracted; a paid rest break is not. Under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act a bona fide meal period, ordinarily 30 minutes or more, during which you are fully relieved of duty, is not working time and is not paid. Short rest breaks of roughly 5 to 20 minutes are compensable and stay in the total. So enter the meal break in the break box and leave the coffee breaks alone — and if you were interrupted and had to work through lunch, that time is paid and does not belong in the box either.
Is overtime worked out daily or weekly?
Federal law is weekly only: time and a half past 40 hours in a workweek, however those hours fell. Several states add a daily rule — California, Alaska, and Nevada at eight hours a day, Colorado at twelve. When both apply, daily overtime comes out of each day first and the weekly threshold is applied only to the hours that are left, so no hour is paid twice. That ordering is not cosmetic: four twelve-hour days is 48 hours either way, but 16 overtime hours under a daily rule and 8 under the weekly rule alone.
Can my employer round my punches to the nearest quarter hour?
Under 29 CFR § 785.48(b) an employer may round to the nearest 5, 10, or 15 minutes, but only if the rounding is neutral over time — it has to work in the employee's favour as often as against. Rounding that always goes down is not permitted. This calculator deliberately does not round punches at all: it uses the times you enter to the minute and reports hours to two decimal places, so you can compare its figure with whatever your employer's system produced and see exactly where the difference is.
Why is my week reported in decimal hours rather than hours and minutes?
Because payroll multiplies. A rate is dollars per hour, so 7 hours 30 minutes has to become 7.50 before it can be multiplied by anything, and 7.30 is a common and expensive typo. Decimal hours are what timesheets, payroll systems, and invoices use. To convert back, multiply the decimal part by 60: 0.25 is 15 minutes, 0.50 is 30, and 0.75 is 45.
Can I use this for a two-week pay period?
Not as one card. Overtime is calculated per workweek, and a fixed, recurring 168-hour week is what the FLSA requires an employer to establish. Two weeks totalling 80 hours can still contain overtime — 48 hours in the first week and 32 in the second is eight overtime hours, not zero — so averaging a fortnight into one card would hide it. Fill in one card per week and add the results.
Sources and review notes
- US Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division — overtime under the Fair Labor Standards Act: time and a half past 40 hours in a workweek, and no daily requirement
- 29 CFR Part 785, Hours Worked — § 785.19 on bona fide meal periods, § 785.18 on short rest breaks, and § 785.48(b) on neutral rounding of punches
- California Division of Labor Standards Enforcement, Overtime FAQ — the eight-hour day, and how daily and weekly overtime are combined without counting an hour twice
- WHD Fact Sheet #23 — the fixed and recurring 168-hour workweek, and why overtime cannot be averaged across two weeks
Nothing on this page is a rate that goes stale — no tax table, no minimum wage, no contribution limit. The arithmetic is subtraction and two thresholds you set yourself. State overtime rules do change; the daily thresholds offered above are starting points, and your own state labor department is the authority on yours.