Timecard GuruPaid hours after lunch
A lunch break calculator answers one shift, not a whole week. First measure the time on the clock. From 9:00 to 17:00 that span is 8 hours, or 8.00 in decimal form. Then decide whether the meal comes out of pay. An unpaid 30-minute lunch is half an hour, 0.50, and paid time falls to 7 hours and 30 minutes, 7.50. Check the paid-lunch box and the 0.50 stays inside the 8.00, because you were paid while you ate.
The three numbers on the tool are the whole story. On the clock is the span. Lunch is the meal, labeled paid or unpaid so you can see which rule you selected. Paid hours are what you would write on the timesheet. Switching the box is the fastest way to compare the two policies on the same shift without doing the subtraction twice on paper.
30 minutes is 0.50, not 0.30
The expensive typo is writing a 30-minute lunch as 0.30. That is 18 minutes, not a half hour. Over a five-day week the typo is a full hour of pay: five real lunches are 2.50 hours, and five 0.30 entries are only 1.50. 30 minutes on a timesheet is the single-line version of this, and the minutes to decimal chart shows every other minute count the same way. 15 minutes of meal is 0.25. 45 minutes is 0.75. 20 minutes is about 0.33, not 0.20.
Short rest breaks are a different bucket from the meal. If a 10-minute rest is paid, do not put it in the lunch field or you will deduct time you should keep. Enter only the meal your workplace treats as unpaid. If both a meal and an unpaid errand have to come out, add those minutes together and enter the total. The field is a length, not a clock time of day, so 12:00 to 12:30 is 30, not 12.
One shift or the whole week
Overnight work still counts. If you clock in at 20:00 and out at 04:00, the span is 8 hours because the end is the next morning. An unpaid lunch on that shift subtracts the same way it does in the daytime. Identical clock-in and clock-out times are zero, not a 24-hour day.
For Monday through Friday, each with its own meal, use the weekly timesheet calculator or the weekly time card calculator. The weekly card repeats this lunch math on every row and shows the week's lunch total next to paid hours. The hours calculator is the same span without the paid-lunch switch, useful when you only want elapsed time. This page stays on the meal itself: whether it comes out, and what the paid hours are after it does.
Frequently Asked Questions
+How do I subtract a lunch break from my hours?
Measure the clock-in to clock-out span, then subtract the unpaid lunch. 9:00 to 17:00 is 8.00 hours. A 30-minute unpaid lunch is 0.50 hours, so paid time is 7.50.
+What if lunch is paid?
Check the paid-lunch box. The meal still shows as a length of time, but it stays inside the paid total. A paid 30-minute lunch on a 9:00 to 17:00 shift leaves the paid total at 8.00.
+Is 30 minutes 0.30 or 0.50?
30 minutes is 0.50 decimal hours. 0.30 hours would be 18 minutes. The half-hour lunch is the case people mistype most often.
+Should a short rest break go in the lunch field?
Only if that break is unpaid. Many short rest breaks are paid and should stay in the shift. Enter the meal you are actually supposed to deduct, not every time you stepped away.
+How do I do this for a whole week?
Use the weekly time card calculator. It has a lunch field on every day and totals lunch separately from paid hours.
+Are short rest breaks paid?
When the Fair Labor Standards Act applies, yes. 29 CFR 785.18 says rest periods of short duration, running from 5 minutes to about 20 minutes, must be counted as hours worked. That paid rest time may not be offset against other working time. A 10-minute rest break stays in the paid total. It is not a meal period. Source: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-29/subtitle-B/chapter-V/subchapter-B/part-785/subpart-C/section-785.18
+Is a 30-minute meal period unpaid?
A bona fide meal period is not hours worked. 29 CFR 785.19 says the employee must be completely relieved of duty for the purpose of eating a regular meal. Ordinarily 30 minutes or more is long enough. Coffee breaks and time for snacks are rest periods, not meal periods. If the employee has to perform any duties while eating, the time is hours worked. The employee does not have to be allowed to leave the premises if they are otherwise completely freed from duty. Source: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-29/subtitle-B/chapter-V/subchapter-B/part-785/subpart-C/section-785.19
+Can an employer round time clock punches?
29 CFR 785.48(b) describes rounding start and stop times to the nearest 5 minutes, the nearest tenth of an hour, or the nearest quarter of an hour. The practice is accepted for enforcement only when it averages out and does not, over a period of time, fail to pay for all the time actually worked. Rounding that always shortens the shift does not meet that test. The time clock rounding calculator at https://timecardguru.com/time-clock-rounding-calculator applies the quarter-hour practice and the nearest tenth of an hour. Source: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-29/subtitle-B/chapter-V/subchapter-B/part-785/subpart-D/section-785.48
+Is overtime calculated on the biweekly paycheck?
No. Each workweek stands alone. 29 CFR 778.104 says the Act does not permit averaging hours over two or more weeks, even when the employee is paid biweekly. Someone who works 30 hours one week and 50 the next is owed overtime for the hours past the weekly maximum in the second week, even though the two-week average is 40. 29 CFR 778.107 states the general standard: those overtime hours are paid at not less than 1.5 times the regular rate. Exemptions exist, and this is not a coverage decision. Sources: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-29/subtitle-B/chapter-V/subchapter-B/part-778/subpart-B/section-778.104 and https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-29/subtitle-B/chapter-V/subchapter-B/part-778/subpart-B/section-778.107