Finance & Payroll
Salary to Hourly Calculator
Convert an annual salary to an hourly rate, or an hourly wage into daily, weekly, monthly and annual pay, using your real schedule.
Open toolTime Duration Calculator
Two times go in, one honest duration comes out. This free time duration calculator answers the question every rota, timesheet and journey plan asks — how long is it from then to then? Enter a start time and an end time and you get the gap four ways: as a clock duration (8:30), as decimal hours (8.50) for payroll and timesheets, as total minutes, and as a plain-English breakdown. The part most calculators fumble is the night shift: if the end time is earlier than the start, this tool assumes the finish fell on the next day, so 9:00 PM to 5:30 AM is eight and a half hours, not a negative error. A second panel adds and subtracts durations, for totalling a week of split shifts or working out what is left of a time budget. Everything runs in your browser — shift patterns and timesheet figures are never uploaded. If you work with calendar dates rather than clock times, the Age Difference Calculator counts the days between two dates; if you need pay from the hours you total here, the Paycheck Calculator picks up where this one stops.
Hours between a start and end time
If the end time is earlier than the start time, the duration runs past midnight and finishes the next day — overnight shifts, night buses and red-eye flights all work.
Add or subtract durations
Totals can run past 24 hours — handy for adding a week of split shifts into one timesheet figure.
Decimal hours, rounding and overnight shifts — the payroll rules of thumb
Payroll systems rarely accept "8 hours 30 minutes". They want decimal hours: the same duration written as a single number, so 8 hours 30 minutes becomes 8.50, 15 minutes becomes 0.25 and 45 minutes becomes 0.75. The conversion is simply minutes divided by 60 — which is why the decimal figure above is the one to copy onto a timesheet or into the Paycheck Calculator. Many employers then round to a tidy step before paying: the commonest is the nearest quarter hour (0.25), and US payroll practice often uses the "7/8 rule" — 1–7 minutes past the quarter rounds down, 8–14 rounds up. Check your own employer's policy before relying on either; this tool shows the exact figure and leaves rounding to you.
Overnight work is the other classic trap. A shift from 10 PM to 6 AM crosses midnight, so naive subtraction produces a negative number. This calculator treats an end time earlier than the start time as belonging to the next day — the standard convention for rotas, care shifts, security work and overnight travel. If instead you are counting whole days between two calendar dates, use the Age Difference Calculator, which counts days between dates exactly.
Typical jobs for this tool: totalling weekly shift hours for a timesheet, checking whether a journey really takes as long as the timetable claims, timing a slow-cooked recipe or a render, and working out how much of a project's time budget is left after subtracting the blocks already used.
How to use this tool
- Enter the start time and the end time — when the shift, task or event began and finished.
- If the end time is earlier than the start, the tool assumes it finished the next day — overnight spans just work.
- Read the duration as hours and minutes, as decimal hours for payroll and timesheets, and as total minutes.
- Need to combine blocks of time instead? Use the add and subtract panel to total several durations.
Worked example
A shift from 9:00 PM to 5:30 AM is 8 hours 30 minutes — 8.50 decimal hours for a timesheet and 510 minutes in total. The overnight span is handled automatically, because the end time is earlier than the start time.
Frequently asked questions
How do I calculate the hours between two times?
Enter the start time and the end time and read the duration row. The maths is end minus start, with one correction: when the end is earlier than the start, a full day is added, because the period ran past midnight. 9:00 to 17:30 gives 8:30 — eight hours, thirty minutes.
What happens if a shift runs past midnight?
It is handled automatically. A shift from 10 PM to 6 AM is counted as 8 hours, not as a negative number, because an end time earlier than the start time is treated as belonging to the next day. That is the standard convention for night shifts, care rotas and overnight travel.
What are decimal hours, and why does payroll want them?
Decimal hours write a duration as one number: 30 minutes is 0.50, 15 minutes is 0.25, 45 minutes is 0.75. Payroll and invoicing systems multiply hours by a rate, and that only works cleanly with decimals — which is why timesheets ask for 8.50 instead of 8:30. The decimal figure in the results table is the one to copy across.
How do I add several blocks of time together?
Use the add and subtract panel: enter the first duration, choose Add, enter the second, and the total appears. To chain more blocks, note the result and use it as the first duration of the next addition. Totals can pass 24 hours — the breakdown row spells out the days when they do.
Can a duration be longer than a day?
Yes. The start-to-end panel is a clock, so it always lands within a single day, but the add and subtract panel totals whole blocks of time — a week of split shifts, a project's logged hours — and the breakdown row reports the answer in days, hours and minutes when it passes 24 hours.