Time to Decimal Calculator

The formula

An hour has 60 minutes, so a minute is one sixtieth of an hour. That single division is the whole conversion.

The mistake this page exists to prevent is reading the clock as if it were decimal. 7:20 on a timesheet means 7 hours and 20 minutes, and 20 minutes is 0.33 of an hour — not 0.20. If a payroll field interprets an entry as decimal hours, writing 7.20 represents 7 hours 12 minutes instead, because 0.20 × 60 = 12. Over a two-week card that gap adds up.

Worked example

Going the other way is the same division in reverse: multiply the decimal part by 60 to get minutes back. The decimal to time calculator does that.

Conversion examples

Each row is the same arithmetic at three precisions. The last column says whether the time converts exactly or has to be rounded.

There is a simple test for the last column: a minute value divides into 60 cleanly only when it is a multiple of 3. Minutes such as 15, 30, 45 and 48 land on a terminating decimal, so two places hold the exact value. Minutes such as 5, 7, 10 and 20 produce a repeating decimal that no number of places can hold exactly. The minutes to decimal chart lists every value from 0 through 60 on one page.

Rounding, and whose decision it is

This converter rounds to the nearest value at the precision you choose, and it tells you how far that rounded figure sits from the real time. That is a display choice made here, on this page. It is not a claim about how your hours will actually be paid.

How small is the gap?

When the time you start from is a whole number of minutes, the largest gap two decimals can produce is 12 seconds — that is what happens to every minute value that does not divide into 60 cleanly. Three decimals narrows the worst case to 1.2 seconds, and four decimals to 0.12 seconds. The result panel shows the actual gap for whatever you entered. What that gap is worth in dollars depends on the pay rate it is multiplied by, and on whether each entry is rounded separately or only the total is. It compounds when many entries are each rounded and then added: fourteen daily entries all rounded the same direction can drift by nearly three minutes across a pay period. If you are summing a lot of rows, either keep more decimals through the addition or add the minutes first and convert once at the end — the add time calculator takes that second approach.

Rounding the time, not the decimal

Decimal rounding is a different thing from timesheet rounding. An employer may record worked time in fixed increments — a tenth of an hour, a quarter of an hour, the nearest five minutes — before any conversion happens. Under federal rules at 29 CFR 785.48, that practice is accepted where it is applied neutrally and does not, over time, fail to pay employees for all the time they actually worked. A quarter-hour system turns 7 h 20 m into 7.25 hours; a tenth-hour system turns it into 7.3. Neither is what this page returns, because this page converts the time you type instead of re-recording it.

Where decimal hours are used

• Payroll entry, where a field asks for hours as a decimal number: there, 7 h 20 m has to be typed as 7.33 rather than 7:20.
• Overtime math. Pay formulas multiply hours by a rate, and that only works with decimal hours: 7.33 × $22.00 is meaningful, 7:20 × $22.00 is not. The overtime pay calculator expects decimal hours in both hour fields.
• Invoices and client billing, where a line item reads “3.5 hours” rather than “3 hours 30 minutes”.
• Weekly totals compared against the 40-hour federal overtime threshold, so you can see how far past 40 a week actually ran.
• Spreadsheets, which add and multiply decimal numbers directly but need special handling for clock-style time values.

Common questions

What is 20 minutes in decimal hours?

0.333333…, which is 0.33 at two decimals. So 7 hours 20 minutes is 7.33 decimal hours. It is not 7.20 — that value would mean 7 hours 12 minutes.

What is 45 minutes in decimal hours?

Exactly 0.75, because 45 ÷ 60 = 0.75. Quarter-hour minute values — 15, 30 and 45 — convert exactly at two decimals: 0.25, 0.5 and 0.75.

Why does the page show 7.333333… instead of a clean number?

Because 20 ÷ 60 is a repeating decimal. The exact value line shows the first six digits followed by an ellipsis to make clear the digits continue; it is truncated there rather than rounded, so nothing above it is overstated. The rounded lines below it are the values to use wherever a fixed number of decimal places is required.

Should I choose 2, 3 or 4 decimals?

Match the format your own payroll system or client documents; if you are unsure, ask your payroll department rather than guessing. The smallest difference two decimals can express is a hundredth of an hour, which is 36 seconds; three decimals gets down to 3.6 seconds, four to 0.36 seconds. Choose more places only if you are converting several entries and adding the results yourself, since rounding each entry early is what lets small errors accumulate.

Can I enter more than 59 minutes?

No. The minutes field takes 0 to 59 and shows an error otherwise, so a stray 90 cannot quietly become an hour and a half. Carry the extra hour yourself: 90 minutes is 1 hour and 30 minutes.

Can I enter zero?

Yes. 0 hours 0 minutes converts to 0.00, which is a real answer. What gets rejected is a blank box, text that is not a number, a negative value, or a fraction of a minute.

Is anything I type sent to a server?

No. The conversion runs in your browser on this page. This site's scripts do not upload or deliberately store what you enter, though your browser may restore form values according to its own settings.

Related calculators

• Decimal to Time CalculatorThe reverse conversion: decimal hours back into hours and minutes.
• Minutes to Decimal ChartEvery value from 0 through 60 and its decimal equivalent in one table.
• Add Time CalculatorAdd several hour-and-minute entries into one total before converting.
• Time Card CalculatorTwo weeks of clock-in and clock-out times, breaks and weekly overtime.
• Overtime Pay CalculatorTurn decimal hours and a rate into regular pay, overtime pay and the gross total.
• Time and a Half CalculatorQuick 1.5× overtime pay from a rate and overtime hours.