Free Timecard Calculator – Weekly Hours & Payroll Tool

To calculate total hours from a timecard, convert each day's start time and end time to decimal format, subtract the decimal equivalent of any unpaid break time to get that day's net hours, then sum the daily net hours across all days in the workweek. For example, a shift from 9:00 AM to 6:30 PM with a 30-minute unpaid break equals (9.5 − 0.5) = 9.0 hours. Adding five such days gives a weekly total of 45 hours. The first 40 are compensated at the regular rate; the remaining 5 are overtime at the applicable premium rate.

Under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, overtime begins when a non-exempt employee works more than 40 hours in a single workweek. A workweek is any fixed, regularly recurring 168-hour period (seven consecutive 24-hour periods). Overtime is calculated at a minimum of 1.5 times the employee's regular rate of pay. Some states apply additional overtime rules that trigger overtime on a daily basis at lower thresholds, but the federal 40-hour weekly rule is the baseline that applies across all states and industries unless a stricter state rule governs.

Overtime resets every workweek under the FLSA. It is never averaged across a biweekly, semimonthly, or monthly pay period. If you work 50 hours in week one and 30 hours in week two of a biweekly pay period, you are owed 10 hours of overtime for week one even though the combined total across both weeks is exactly 80 hours. An employer cannot offset a heavy week against a light one to avoid paying overtime — each workweek is evaluated independently.

Gross pay is the total amount you earned for a pay period before any deductions — it is what the timecard calculator computes. Net pay is the amount you actually receive after mandatory and voluntary deductions have been applied. Deductions that reduce gross to net include federal income tax withholding, state and local income taxes, Social Security tax (6.2%), Medicare tax (1.45%), health insurance premiums, retirement plan contributions (401(k), 403(b)), and any other payroll deductions specific to your benefit elections. The gap between gross and net varies significantly by individual based on tax filing status, benefit choices, and state of residence.

Divide the minute value by 60 to convert to a decimal fraction of an hour. Common conversions: 15 minutes = 0.25 hours, 20 minutes = 0.33 hours, 30 minutes = 0.50 hours, 45 minutes = 0.75 hours. For a shift that ran 8 hours and 20 minutes, the correct decimal total is 8 + (20 ÷ 60) = 8.33 hours, not 8.20. Using 8.20 in a calculation is one of the most frequent manual timecard errors and will understate pay for the employee.

Yes, the FLSA permits employers to use a rounding policy for recording work time, but only if the rounding is neutral over time — meaning the rounding must sometimes favor the employee and sometimes favor the employer, resulting in neither systematically losing time. The most common permissible rounding interval is the nearest 5-minute increment, the nearest 1/10th of an hour (6-minute increments), or the nearest quarter-hour (15-minute increments). However, rounding policies that consistently round down employee time — even if structured as a neutral policy on paper — are unlawful under the FLSA. If you suspect your employer's rounding consistently reduces your recorded time, maintaining your own independent time log provides evidence to support a wage claim.

Yes. If you work two different positions for the same employer — even at different pay rates — the hours from both positions are aggregated for the purposes of the 40-hour overtime threshold. If the combined hours exceed 40 in a workweek, overtime is owed. When the two positions pay different rates, the overtime pay calculation uses a blended regular rate derived from the total straight-time earnings divided by total hours worked, and the 0.5× overtime premium is then applied to that blended rate for all overtime hours. If the two jobs are for genuinely separate, unrelated employers, hours are not combined for FLSA overtime purposes.

Yes. The FLSA provides several exemptions from its overtime requirements, most notably the white-collar exemptions for executive, administrative, professional, computer, and outside sales employees. To qualify as exempt under the white-collar exemptions, an employee generally must be paid on a salary basis above a minimum salary threshold set by the Department of Labor and must perform job duties that meet the specific requirements of the applicable exemption category. Job title alone does not determine exempt status — the actual duties performed are what matters. There are also industry-specific and occupation-specific exemptions for certain transportation workers, agricultural workers, and others. A payroll or employment law professional can help determine whether a specific worker qualifies for any exemption.

Compensable work time under the FLSA includes all time an employee is required to be on duty at the employer's premises or at a prescribed workplace, as well as any time an employee is permitted to work even if not required to. Specific activities frequently overlooked as compensable include mandatory pre-shift safety briefings or equipment checks, time spent donning and doffing required protective gear or uniforms at the worksite, short rest breaks of 20 minutes or less (bona fide meal periods of 30 minutes or more where the employee is completely relieved of duties are generally not compensable), mandatory training sessions, and travel time between jobsites during the workday. Ordinary home-to-work commute time is not compensable.

A biweekly pay period covers two workweeks, and overtime must be calculated separately for each week — they cannot be blended. When you receive a biweekly paycheck, it should reflect the sum of your earnings from week one (regular hours at straight time plus overtime hours at 1.5× if total exceeded 40) and week two (calculated independently by the same logic). Using a timecard calculator for each week separately and then adding the two gross pay figures together gives you the correct biweekly gross pay expectation.

Working off the clock — performing work for your employer without recording it on your timecard — is illegal under the FLSA regardless of whether the employer or the employee initiates it. An employer cannot instruct, request, or permit a non-exempt employee to work unrecorded time and avoid paying for it. Even if an employee voluntarily works off the clock, the employer is still legally obligated to compensate that time if they knew or should have known the work was being performed. If off-the-clock work pushes a worker's total hours above 40 in a workweek, overtime is owed on those additional hours as well.

Irregular schedules — including on-call shifts, split shifts, or varying start times — require daily logging rather than relying on a weekly estimate. Keep a running log of your actual start time, end time, and break time each day as it happens, rather than trying to reconstruct it at the end of the week. A simple notes app on your phone, a small notebook kept at your workstation, or a printable timesheet works well. Once you have the daily records, a timecard calculator converts them into a weekly total in seconds. The key is contemporaneous recording — the moment you try to recall a week's worth of varied shift times from memory, errors multiply.

Salaried non-exempt employees — those paid a fixed salary but who are not classified as overtime-exempt — can and should use a timecard calculator to track their weekly hours. Despite receiving a fixed salary, these workers are entitled to overtime pay when their hours exceed the weekly threshold, and the calculation of that overtime is more complex than for purely hourly workers because it involves deriving the regular rate from the salary. Salaried exempt employees, by contrast, are not entitled to overtime regardless of hours worked, so a timecard calculator for payroll purposes is less applicable — though tracking hours for project management, client billing, or self-management purposes is still a productive practice.

The regular rate of pay is the legal benchmark from which overtime is calculated under the FLSA, and it is not always the same as a worker's stated hourly wage. The regular rate must include all remuneration for employment paid to or on behalf of the employee — which means non-discretionary bonuses, shift differentials, production bonuses, and certain other forms of compensation must be included in the calculation. If you receive a non-discretionary production bonus in a given workweek, the overtime rate owed on hours beyond 40 is based on a recalculated regular rate that incorporates that bonus, which can result in additional overtime liability beyond the simple base rate times 1.5 calculation most workers expect.

Under the FLSA, the statute of limitations for unpaid wage claims is two years from the date of the violation for non-willful violations and three years for willful violations. Many states have longer limitations periods under their own wage and hour statutes — California, for instance, allows three years for statutory claims and four years for claims under the Unfair Competition Law. Maintaining personal records of your hours and pay stubs from prior periods significantly strengthens any backdated claim, which is one more reason to keep copies of your timecards even after they have been processed by payroll.

Overnight shifts — where the end time falls on the next calendar day — require care when entering times into a timecard calculator. A shift that starts at 10:00 PM and ends at 6:00 AM the next morning is 8 hours long, but if the calculator uses simple clock arithmetic without accounting for the midnight crossing, it may calculate a negative result or an error. Most well-designed timecard calculators handle this automatically when you correctly specify the date as well as the time for each entry. If your calculator asks only for times without dates, you may need to express the end time as a 24-hour value — for example, entering 30:00 (representing 6:00 AM the next day on a 24-hour extended scale) to get a correct result.

A standard timecard calculator is designed to produce a total hours figure for a single work period rather than to allocate those hours across multiple projects or cost centers. For tracking time by project, you would typically use the calculator separately for each project to get a per-project total, then manually add those project totals together to verify that your full weekly hours match your total compensable time. Dedicated project management or time-tracking applications handle multi-project allocation automatically, which is more practical for freelancers or employees billing to multiple cost codes, while the timecard calculator remains the cleaner tool for pure payroll verification.

Start by confirming that you are comparing your gross pay calculation to the gross pay shown on the pay stub — not the net pay figure. If the gross figures differ, check whether your employer's timecard system uses a rounding policy that differs from the exact times you entered. Then verify whether any missed punches were corrected and how. If overtime hours are missing from your stub but you believe you exceeded 40 hours, confirm the exact workweek start date your employer uses. If after checking all of these factors a discrepancy remains, raise the issue directly with your payroll administrator or HR representative with your personal time records in hand. Written documentation of the discrepancy and a clear request for correction creates a record that is helpful if the issue is not resolved promptly.