Time Clock Conversion Calculator For Payroll

Running payroll is essential for your business. What’s one thing you absolutely need to get it right? Time clock conversion. 

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Time clock conversion means converting your employees’ work hours and minutes into decimals—in order to calculate their salaries. Here's an hours calculator you can use to do just that. Just enter times from your employees’ time cards on the left to get the decimal hours on the right.

Time Clock Conversion Calculator

Want to dive right into time clock conversions? Just type in the hours and minutes below and our free time card calculator will automatically convert that to decimals for you. Refresh the page to clear all.

Time Clock Conversion Basics

Wait…so why do I need time clock conversion? 

Usually you get records of employees’ time worked in hours and minutes. But hours and minutes aren’t directly equal to money owed. Why? Because one hour contains 60 minutes, and not 100. You need to convert time into decimal numbers to figure out your employees' exact pay rate.

This is crucial for hourly staff members, who are often non-exempt employees. It is also essential for keeping track of lunch breaks, general break time, overtime pay, and holidays. 

Let’s consider the case of Melanie. This week she has worked 37 hours and 42 minutes (and no overtime hours). The hourly rate that she receives is $15. 

First, you have to take the information from her weekly time card or timesheet that contains her clock-in and clock-out times (psssst....free timecard templates here). Then you need to multiply the number of hours she worked by her hourly rate to determine her weekly total pay.

However, if you take 37 hours and 42 minutes as they are, you would get 37.42. This is wrong since, once again, an hour is made up of 60 minutes, and not 100. You have to convert minutes into decimals.

The correct calculation is thus:

42 minutes/60 = 0.7

Then you have to add the converted minutes to the hours:

37 + 0.7 = 37.7 

This means that 37 hours and 42 minutes convert to 37.7 hours in decimal time. 

Melanie’s weekly pay based on her total hours is then:

37.7 hours x $15 = $565.50

Remember, this is Melanie's gross pay. To get her net pay, you'll have to factor in deductions and taxes.

Minutes to Decimals Time Conversion Chart

Manually converting employee hours and minutes to decimal values (hundredths) is time-consuming and prone to errors.

If you don't want to use a conversion calculator (like the one above), another basic tool is a decimal conversion chart. When you have to turn, say, 17 hours and 25 minutes in decimals, you can easily check the conversion table and see that this equals 17.42 hours. 

Military Time Conversion

Besides turning hours and minutes into decimal hours, you may also need to convert time from the 24-hour clock to the 12-hour format (am/pm). This is necessary if your employee time cards are set to the 24-hour format, for example. 

The 24-hour system is commonly known as military time. It’s often used by the military, governments, transportation services, hospitals, and similar organizations. 

Instead of having the hours in the day run from 1 to 12, the 24-hour clock starts at midnight and runs till midnight of the next day. It doesn’t use the am/pm designations that show whether an hour is in the morning or the afternoon. 

You can check out military time conversion here:

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Take Care of Payroll like a Pro

Business owners: tired of handling paper time cards or endless timesheets and making tedious conversion calculations for your payroll in Excel? 

With Hourly, you can handle all of your employee time tracking and payroll needs with one digital solution. 

Your employees can use our time tracking software to seamlessly log their hours. The data is then automatically fed to payroll, so you don’t need to worry about time clock conversion or timesheet calculators. 

Hourly’s software also comes with a ton of other useful features that make running a small business easier. Hourly can help you with workers’ comp, labor costs, overtime pay, and more. 

Download the Hourly app on your mobile device - and get started at once!