Free tool

Timesheet hours calculator

Enter a clock-in and clock-out time and any unpaid break to get paid hours, the decimal figure for payroll, and the pay. It even handles shifts past midnight.

Clock in

Clock out

Unpaid break: 30 min

Hourly rate (optional)

£/hr

Paid time

hours and minutes

As decimal

8.00

hours for payroll

Pay

£100.00

gross, at £12.50/hr

Stop adding up hours by hand

Indicative only. Subtracts the unpaid break from the gap between clock-in and clock-out; a clock-out before the clock-in is treated as an overnight shift. Gross pay before tax and National Insurance. WagePilot logs real clock-in and clock-out times and totals approved hours for payroll automatically.

Turning times into paid hours

Working out a shift is simple arithmetic until it isn’t. Take the gap between clock-in and clock-out, subtract the unpaid break, and convert to decimal hours for payroll (30 minutes is 0.5, not 0.30). For overnight shifts, where clock-out is earlier than clock-in, add 24 hours first — a 22:00–06:00 shift is 8 hours, not minus-16.

Doing this across a team, on paper, every week, is where money quietly leaks: times get rounded the generous way, breaks are forgotten, and “about nine-ish” becomes nine on the dot. Over a year, small recurring errors on each timesheet add up to a real number.

WagePilot skips the maths entirely. Staff clock in and out on their phone with a geofence or QR check, the app subtracts breaks and totals the approved hours, and you export them straight to payroll — no sheet to add up, no rounding to argue about.

Timesheet questions

How do I work out hours from a clock-in and clock-out time?

Find the gap between the two times, then subtract any unpaid break. For example, 09:00 to 17:30 is 8.5 hours; take off a 30-minute unpaid lunch and you have 8 hours of paid time. The calculator above does this and also shows the decimal figure (8.00) that payroll usually wants.

How do I calculate hours for an overnight shift?

When the clock-out time is earlier than the clock-in time — say 22:00 to 06:00 — the shift has crossed midnight, so you add 24 hours before subtracting. That night shift is 8 hours before breaks. The calculator detects this automatically.

What are decimal hours and why does payroll use them?

Decimal hours express minutes as a fraction of an hour: 30 minutes is 0.5, 15 minutes is 0.25, 10 minutes is 0.17. Payroll multiplies decimal hours by the hourly rate, so 8 hours 30 minutes becomes 8.5 × the rate. Mixing up "8.30" (meaning 8h 30m) with 8.30 decimal is a common payroll error.

Is adding up timesheets by hand a problem?

It is slow and it leaks money — rounded times, forgotten breaks and "I’m sure I started at nine" all add up. WagePilot records the real clock-in and clock-out for every shift, subtracts breaks, totals approved hours and exports them straight to payroll, so nobody is adding up a paper sheet at month-end.

Stop adding up timesheets

WagePilot records real clock-ins, subtracts breaks and totals approved hours for payroll automatically. From £10 a month per site — staff always free.

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