Minutes are base 60, and payroll is base 10
This mismatch is the single largest source of timesheet errors. Half an hour written as 0.30 instead of 0.50 underpays by twelve minutes on every shift it appears in. Over a year of five-day weeks that is more than twenty-five hours of unpaid work from one recurring typo.
The conversion is simply minutes ÷ 60. The four that come up constantly are worth committing to memory: 15 minutes is 0.25, 20 minutes is 0.33, 30 minutes is 0.5, and 45 minutes is 0.75. This calculator shows both formats side by side so you never have to convert by hand before multiplying by a rate.
Entering a shift
Enter your start time and end time, then add any unpaid break in minutes. The calculator returns the worked duration both as hours and minutes and as a decimal number of hours, which is the format payroll and timesheet systems usually require.
Overnight and multi-part shifts
Shifts that cross midnight confuse simple subtraction, because the end time appears “before” the start. The calculator detects this and wraps the time correctly, so a night shift is measured properly. For a day split into several sessions, run each block separately and add the decimal totals. Everything is computed in your browser with nothing stored.