How a row turns into hours
Each time is converted to minutes after midnight, the start is subtracted from the end, and the break is taken off. A shift from 08:30 to 17:15 is 525 minutes. With a 45 minute break that leaves 480, shown as 8:00. Nothing is rounded: a clock-out at 17:07 counts as 17:07, and the decimal figure is the exact minutes divided by 60, displayed to two places.
If the end is the same as or earlier than the start, 24 hours are added, which is how night shifts work. Two side effects follow. Identical start and end times read as a 24 hour shift, so delete the row for a day off. A break longer than the shift gives 0:00, never a negative number. A row with a blank time shows a dash and adds nothing.
Breaks, split shifts and extra rows
The Break column holds one number per row, in minutes, and it is always subtracted. Put only unpaid time there. Under US federal rules a rest break of up to about 20 minutes counts as working time, while a meal break of 30 minutes or more with no duties does not. Other countries and many contracts draw the line elsewhere, so use what your employer applies.
For two unpaid breaks in a day, add them together. For a split shift, such as 07:00 to 11:00 and then 16:00 to 20:00, use two rows with the same name in the Day box. The label is free text, so a date works as well as a weekday. Add day appends a 09:00 to 17:00 row with a 30 minute break, with no cap on the number of rows.
Regular hours, overtime and gross pay
The overtime setting is a weekly threshold. All rows are summed, anything above the threshold becomes overtime, and the rest is regular time. With 46:30 worked and the default 40, that is 40:00 regular and 6:30 overtime. At an hourly rate of 20 and a multiplier of 1.5, gross pay is 40 x 20 plus 6.5 x 30, which comes to 995.00.
Because the threshold applies to the whole table, enter one pay week at a time. Fourteen rows covering a fortnight would be compared against a single 40. Set the threshold to 0 to switch overtime off, and leave the rate empty if you only want hours. The pay tile carries no currency symbol and is a gross figure, before tax, deductions, shift premiums or tips.
Mistakes this catches on a paper time card
The classic error is base-60 arithmetic done in base 10. Adding 7:45 and 8:30 by hand gives 15:75 before you carry, and the correct 16:15 is then easy to copy down as 16.15. The decimal value is 16.25: fifteen minutes is 0.25 of an hour, 20 minutes is 0.33 and 45 minutes is 0.75. The Total hours tile shows both forms.
The second is the forgotten break: hours that look too high by exactly the lunch you did not subtract. The third is the night shift entered as a negative or as zero. Check the Hours column against each day before trusting the total. An eight hour day that reads 7:30 or 8:30 usually points at the break field.
What it leaves out, and keeping a record
The calculator does not round to five, six or fifteen minute increments, which some employers apply to punches, so its total can differ slightly from a rounded payroll system. It has no daily overtime, no double time, no holiday or night premium and no tax calculation. California, for example, pays overtime after eight hours in a day, which a weekly threshold alone will miss.
Nothing is saved or sent anywhere. The rows live in the page, so a reload brings back the Monday to Friday example. Export CSV before you leave: the file lists day, start, end, break minutes and decimal hours per row plus a total line, but not the overtime split or pay. To jot down clock times during the week, the online notepad keeps them in your browser.