Time Card Calculator
Calculate weekly work hours and pay
How It Works
Overview
The Time Card Calculator totals weekly work hours, separates regular from overtime hours, and computes gross pay using a configurable hourly rate and overtime premium. It accepts a 5-day workweek with start time, end time, and unpaid-break minutes per day, handles shifts that cross midnight, and applies the standard FLSA 40-hour overtime trigger by default.
Use it as a quick weekly summary for hourly workers, contractors billing on a timesheet, or small-business owners running their own payroll. Once you know regular and overtime hours, plugging them into ADP, Gusto, QuickBooks, or a paper paycheck calculation takes a single line.
The Formula
The weekly aggregation works in three steps:
- Daily hours = (end − start) − break_minutes / 60. Negative results add 24 hours to handle overnight shifts.
- Total hours = sum of daily hours across all days entered.
- Overtime hours = max(0, total − threshold). Regular hours = min(total, threshold).
The default threshold is 40 hours/week and the default multiplier is 1.5 (time-and-a-half), matching FLSA. Some states (Alaska, California, Colorado, Nevada) require daily overtime after 8 hours; some union contracts pay 2x (double time) for Sundays or holidays. Adjust the threshold and multiplier to match your situation.
Worked Example
Suppose you worked the following week at $20/hour with a 30-minute lunch each day:
- Mon: 8:00 AM – 5:30 PM, 30-min break = 9.0 hours
- Tue: 8:00 AM – 5:30 PM, 30-min break = 9.0 hours
- Wed: 8:00 AM – 5:30 PM, 30-min break = 9.0 hours
- Thu: 8:00 AM – 5:30 PM, 30-min break = 9.0 hours
- Fri: 8:00 AM – 5:00 PM, 30-min break = 8.5 hours
- Total: 44.5 hours
Regular: 40 × $20 = $800. Overtime: 4.5 × $20 × 1.5 = $135. Gross weekly pay: $935. Notice the 4.5 overtime hours earn a $135 premium versus $90 at straight time — the extra $45 is exactly what the FLSA 1.5x rule provides.
When to Use This
- Hourly employees verifying paychecks. Catch missing breaks, wrong rates, or unpaid overtime before payday.
- Small businesses doing payroll manually. Generate weekly totals to feed into payroll software or paper checks.
- Freelancers billing by the hour. Quickly compute the total to invoice a client at the end of a sprint.
- Tracking comp time. See exactly how many overtime hours have accumulated for a flex schedule.
- Negotiating shifts. Compare gross pay across schedules — five 9-hour days versus four 10-hour days produces different overtime totals.
- Wage claims. Reconstruct historical timecards from text messages, photos, or memory to support a Department of Labor complaint.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
- Including paid rest breaks in the break field. US rest breaks under 20 minutes are paid; only deduct unpaid meal breaks (typically 30+ minutes).
- Assuming all overtime is weekly. California, Alaska, and a few other states have daily 8-hour and 12-hour overtime triggers — handle those manually.
- Rounding clock-ins. Some employers round to the nearest 15 minutes; the FLSA permits this only if it's neutral over time. Track exact times for disputes.
- Mixing workweeks. Overtime resets weekly. Hours from Sunday cannot offset overtime accrued the previous Saturday.
- Forgetting that bonuses bump the regular rate. Non-discretionary bonuses must be folded into the regular rate before the overtime premium is computed — a common compliance miss.
Frequently Asked Questions
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