Time Card Calculator with Lunch and Overtime

A time card calculator turns a list of punches into payable hours. For each day it subtracts clock-in from clock-out, removes the unpaid lunch and converts the result to decimal hours. It then adds the days, applies the overtime rule you choose and reports regular hours, overtime hours and, if you enter a rate, gross pay.

The daily arithmetic is hours worked = clock-out − clock-in − unpaid breaks. 8:00 AM to 4:30 PM (08:00 to 16:30) with a 30-minute lunch is 8 hours 30 minutes minus 30 minutes = 8.00 hours. 7:52 AM to 5:08 PM (07:52 to 17:08) with 45 minutes of lunch is 9 hours 16 minutes minus 45 minutes = 8 hours 31 minutes = 8.52 hours.

The work hours calculator is built around a single day; the time card is organized by pay period and is the one to use when you need a document to hand in or to check against a pay stub.

A weekly time card has 7 days and one overtime calculation. A biweekly time card has 14 days and two separate overtime calculations, because the federal threshold applies to each workweek on its own (29 U.S.C. 207(a)(1)). An employee who works 46 hours in week one and 34 in week two has 6 overtime hours. Averaging the two weeks to 40 is not permitted for non-exempt employees.

The workweek is a fixed, regularly recurring period of 168 hours. It can start on any day and hour, but once set it stays, so your time card should begin on the same weekday as your employer's workweek. Semi-monthly periods (1st to 15th, 16th to month end) always cut through a workweek; calculate overtime by workweek first and then allocate hours to the pay period.

Lunch can be entered as a number of minutes per day, which is adequate when the break is fixed, or as a second pair of punches, out and back. With punches, a lunch from 12:05 PM to 12:42 PM is deducted as 37 minutes, not the 30 minutes on the schedule.

Under 29 CFR 785.19 a bona fide meal period, ordinarily 30 minutes or more, is not hours worked when the employee is completely relieved from duty. Short rest breaks of about 5 to 20 minutes are hours worked under 29 CFR 785.18 and must not be deducted. A working lunch at the desk is hours worked. California Labor Code 512 requires a 30-minute meal period on days over 5 hours and a second one on days over 10 hours.

The FLSA regular rate is not always the base wage: non-discretionary bonuses must be included (29 CFR 778.107 and following). The time card uses the rate you enter; the overtime calculator shows how to fold a bonus into the regular rate.

The completed time card can be printed or saved as a PDF, and the daily rows can be exported as a CSV file that opens in Excel, Google Sheets or Numbers. The export has one row per day with clock-in, clock-out, break minutes, hours in hh:mm and decimal, followed by period totals, so a payroll clerk can verify each line. Keep the file with the pay stub for the same period; it is your evidence if a paycheck is short.

29 CFR 516.2 requires employers of non-exempt employees to record, among other things, hours worked each workday and total hours each workweek, the regular rate, straight-time earnings and overtime earnings; the Department of Labor summarizes the duties in Fact Sheet #21. Payroll records must be kept for 3 years, time cards and work schedules for 2 years.

No format is prescribed. A punch clock printout, a spreadsheet or a handwritten sheet is valid if accurate and complete. The exported CSV contains hours per day and per week; keeping it remains the employer's responsibility.

Five days of 9 to 5 with a 30-minute lunch make 37.5 hours a week, which is why 37.5 is such a common contracted figure. Five days of 8 to 5 with an hour's lunch make 40.