Time Card Calculator with Lunch Break

Worked examples: hours with lunch breaks and overtime

Every number below was worked out with the same code that runs this calculator, at $22 per hour with overtime after 40 hours in a week.

The 2 week example shows why overtime is counted per week. Week 1 has 48 hours and week 2 has 32 hours. That is 80 hours in total, but it is not 40 plus 40: week 1 still has 8 overtime hours, because US federal law does not let an employer average hours across two weeks. Use Different hours each day and pick 2 weeks (bi-weekly) to check your own time sheet this way.

How to calculate hours worked with a lunch break

1. Find the time between clock in and clock out. 8:00 to 16:30 is 8 hours 30 minutes.
2. Take off the unpaid break. 8:30 minus 30 minutes is 8:00.
3. Change minutes to decimal hours for payroll: divide the minutes by 60. 7 hours 45 minutes is 7 + 45 ÷ 60 = 7.75 hours.
4. Add up the days for each week, then pay anything over 40 hours in that week at 1.5 times the rate.

Minutes to decimal hours chart

By Toolsque Team. Rules checked against the U.S. Department of Labor: Fact Sheet 22, hours worked and meal periods and Fact Sheet 23, overtime pay, September 2026. Some states have their own daily overtime and break rules.

Time card math that gets lunch right

Most disputes on hourly paychecks trace to one line: the lunch deduction. An 8-to-5 shift is nine clock hours but 8.5 paid hours with a 30-minute unpaid lunch, and over a week that half hour is 2.5 hours, a full quarter-day of pay. This calculator subtracts the break, splits regular from overtime at your threshold, and prices OT at time-and-a-half automatically.

Time and a half, actually computed

Overtime pays 1.5× your rate for hours past the weekly threshold (40 federally). At $22/hour, OT hours pay $33. The calculator shows the split and the premium, the extra half-rate, separately, because that's the number that tells you whether extra shifts are worth it. Ten OT hours at $22 base is $330 of pay, $110 of which is the overtime bonus.

Writing hours as decimals for payroll

Payroll systems want hours as decimals, not hours and minutes. Divide the minutes by 60: 7 hours 50 minutes is 7.83 hours, and 8 hours 15 minutes is 8.25.

The common slip is writing 7:50 as 7.50. That is really 7 hours 30 minutes, so at $22 an hour it drops $7.33 from the day, or about $36.67 across a five-day week.

Unpaid lunch rules, briefly

Federal law doesn't require lunch breaks, but if a break of 30+ minutes is truly duty-free, it can be unpaid. Short breaks (5 to 20 minutes) must be paid. If you work through an "unpaid" lunch, answering phones, watching a counter, that time is legally payable. If your time cards auto-deduct lunch you didn't take, that's wage theft with a paper trail.

Overtime counts per week, not per pay period

Under the FLSA each workweek stands on its own. A workweek is any fixed run of seven days in a row, so it doesn't have to start on Monday, but it can't move around to dodge overtime. Say someone works 45 hours in week one and 35 in week two. The two-week pay period adds up to 80 hours, which looks like two normal weeks, yet week one still has 5 overtime hours. Averaging them away is not allowed. At $22 an hour those 5 hours carry $55 of overtime premium on top of regular pay.

This calculator works one week at a time for that reason, so for a two-week pay period, run each week separately. To price overtime on its own, use the overtime pay calculator.

How hours and overtime are calculated

Split shifts and multiple breaks

A single lunch deduction covers most schedules, but split shifts complicate the math. If an employee works 6:00 to 10:00, takes 30 minutes, resumes 10:30 to 14:00, takes another 15 minutes, then finishes 14:15 to 18:00, that is 12.00 hours on the clock before any deduction. Subtract only the unpaid portions. If both breaks are unpaid, net hours are 11.25. If the morning break is paid and only the 15-minute afternoon break is unpaid, net is 11.75. Tracking which breaks are paid vs. unpaid is a payroll obligation, not an optional refinement. The FLSA requires records of all deductions; misclassifying a paid break as unpaid is a wage theft violation subject to back pay plus an equal amount in liquidated damages.

Some states require paid rest breaks. California requires a paid 10-minute rest for every four hours worked. Those 10 minutes never come off the time card, because they are paid time. Mixing up a paid rest break with an unpaid meal break is an easy and costly payroll mistake.

Rounding practices and their legal limits

Many employers round punch times to the nearest 5, 6, or 15 minutes. The FLSA allows rounding only when it is neutral over time, meaning it must not keep favoring the employer. The 7-minute rule rounds 1 to 7 minutes down to the quarter hour and 8 to 14 minutes up, and it passes that test. A policy that always rounds clock-out times down does not, and courts have ordered back pay where rounding kept shaving time off. If a worker clocks out at 17:07 under a nearest-15 policy, the recorded time is 17:00, a loss of 7 minutes. If that happens every day for 250 workdays, it adds up to 29.2 hours, roughly $570 at $19.50 an hour.

What this calculator does not cover

The tool computes gross hours, overtime at 1.5×, and pay from a single rate. It does not handle shift differentials, blended rates for people working two jobs at different wages, or prevailing wage rules under the Davis-Bacon Act (federal construction contracts over $2,000). It also leaves out employer costs: FICA at 7.65%, FUTA at up to 6% on the first $7,000 of wages, and state unemployment tax. Contractors billing clients rather than paying staff should use the billable hours calculator. If you are self-employed, the 1099 tax calculator covers self-employment tax at 15.3%, where the Social Security part stops once earnings pass $184,500 in 2026.

Related tools

Freelancing instead of W-2? Convert with the day rate to hourly calculator and estimate taxes with the 1099 tax calculator. Billing clients by the hour? Track value with the billable hours calculator and send the bill with the free invoice generator. Pricing overtime on its own: the overtime pay calculator.