How to use the time card calculator
- Pick the pay period: weekly, biweekly (every two weeks) or semi-monthly (the 1st to the 15th and the 16th to the end of the month), then the week or date. Under More settings, set the day your workweek starts (Sunday unless your employer chose another).
- Type each day’s In and Out times. 9, 9:30, 930p and 21:30 all work. A time without AM or PM takes whichever comes next after the punch before it, so an Out of 5 after an In of 8 AM is 5:00 PM. Enter moves to the next box and the arrow keys jump between days. Use + In/Out for a split shift or a punched lunch, and Same as Mon to repeat a day.
- Enter an unpaid meal break in minutes if you don’t punch out for it. Rest breaks of 5 to 20 minutes are paid time, so leave them in.
- Choose the overtime rules for your state and, if you like, your hourly rate. The card is saved in your browser as you type. Print it with signature lines, download a PDF or CSV for payroll, or copy a link to open it on another device.
How overtime is counted
Federal law counts overtime per workweek, a fixed 168-hour period that stands on its own. A biweekly card with 50 hours in the first week and 30 in the second has 10 hours of overtime even though the total is exactly 80, and the calculator shows each workweek’s subtotal so you can see where it came from. Overtime goes to the hours after the 40th of the week, in the order you worked them, so a daily rule and the weekly rule never pay the same hour twice.
California adds daily overtime after 8 hours, double time after 12, and a seventh-day rule that applies only when you work all seven days of one workweek. Alaska (employers with 4 or more employees) pays overtime after 8 hours a day, Nevada after 8 hours in a 24-hour workday for employees earning under $18.00 an hour, and Colorado after 12 hours a day or 12 consecutive hours. Overtime rules, conditions and sources, under the calculator, lists each rule’s conditions and the official text it follows. Exempt employees, union contracts and California alternative workweek schedules follow their own rules.
Semi-monthly periods cut workweeks
A period like September 16 to 30 starts and ends in the middle of workweeks. The calculator shows the whole workweeks, with the days from the neighbouring periods shaded. Fill in the shaded days before the period starts so the first week’s overtime is right: they count toward the workweek, not this period’s totals. The general federal rule is that overtime earned in a workweek is paid on the regular payday for the period in which that workweek ends (29 CFR 778.106). The calculator counts overtime in the period in which the hours past 40 were worked, so it can show overtime one period earlier than your paycheck does.
Overnight shifts and daylight saving time
Enter a night shift on the day it starts: an Out earlier than its In ends the next morning. Hours count on the workday in which they’re worked, so 10 PM to 6 AM puts 2 hours on the first day and 6 on the next. A Saturday night shift that runs past the start of a new workweek puts the hours after midnight in the next workweek, the way the Department of Labor splits it in opinion letter FLSA2005-17; each card starts with the day before, shaded, so that shift counts where it belongs. If your employer’s workday starts at, say, 6 PM, set that under More settings and each night shift stays in one workday. Across a daylight saving change the calculator counts the hours actually worked: 9 on the November night the clocks fall back, 7 in March.
Rounding and the 7-minute rule
Employers may round punches to the nearest 5 minutes, tenth of an hour (6 minutes) or quarter hour, as long as it averages out and doesn’t underpay over time (29 CFR 785.48(b)). With quarter hours, 1 to 7 minutes past rounds down and 8 to 14 rounds up: the 7-minute rule. The calculator rounds each punch and shows the punched total next to the rounded one. In California, punches around a meal break may not be rounded (Donohue v. AMN Services, 2021), so there only the day’s first In and last Out are rounded.
Reading the results
Hours appear as hours and minutes (40:30) and as decimal hours in hundredths (40.50), which is what payroll multiplies by the rate. To convert minutes yourself, divide by 60: 45 minutes is 0.75 hours. Pay uses the exact minutes and rounds each line to the cent, so hours × rate on a pay stub can differ by a cent. The no-tax-on-overtime box shows the half-time premium on hours over 40 in each workweek, the part the IRS counts toward the 2025–2028 deduction; it’s information, not tax advice.
Planning around paydays? The pay period calendar shows every payday of the year, and the printable calendar gives you a month to mark shifts on.