How do I calculate hours worked?

End time minus start time minus the break, for each day, then add the days up. 08:00 to 16:30 with a 30 minute break is 8 hours.

How do I calculate hours with a lunch break?

Enter the lunch break in minutes in the break field and the calculator takes it off the shift. By hand: work out the time from start to end, then subtract the break.

How do I convert minutes to decimal hours?

Divide the minutes by 60 and add the whole hours: 7 hours 45 minutes is 7 + 45 / 60 = 7.75 hours.

Is a break counted as working time in Sweden?

No. A break (rast) is an interruption during which the employee may leave the workplace, and it is not working time. Pauses, short interruptions in the work, are (Working Hours Act, sections 15 and 17). A collective agreement may have its own rules.

How do I calculate a night shift?

Enter the start and end as usual. When the end is earlier than the start, the calculator counts the shift as ending the next day: 22:00 to 06:00 is 8 hours before the break.

Work hours calculator

Work out hours worked per day or week: enter start, end and break and get the total straight away, in hours and minutes and as a decimal. The calculator is free with no account, and to keep the hours and let your staff see them, Klokka does that: free to use, open source (MIT), no limit on employees, on the web and in the Android app, in English and Swedish.

How to calculate hours worked by hand

The hours of a shift are the end time minus the start time minus the break. Start at 08:30, finish at 17:00 with a 45 minute lunch break, and that is 8 hours 30 minutes minus 45 minutes: 7 hours 45 minutes.

For a week, work out each day on its own and add the days up. Add the minutes first and convert to hours last, so no rounding creeps in along the way. That is what the calculator above does.

Write down the start and end time of the day.
Work out the time between them in hours and minutes.
Take off the break.
Convert to a decimal if pay is calculated that way: 7 hours 45 minutes is 7.75 hours.

Minutes as decimal hours

Payroll systems and spreadsheets usually count hours as decimals. Divide the minutes by 60: 45 minutes is 45 / 60 = 0.75 hours. The calculator shows both, with the decimal rounded to two places.

15 minutes = 0.25 hours
20 minutes = 0.33 hours
30 minutes = 0.5 hours
40 minutes = 0.67 hours
45 minutes = 0.75 hours
50 minutes = 0.83 hours

Shifts past midnight

When the end time is earlier than the start time, the calculator counts the shift into the next day. A night shift from 22:00 to 06:00 with a 30 minute break is 8 hours minus 30 minutes: 7.5 hours. By hand it is the same: the hours up to midnight (2) plus the hours after midnight (6), minus the break.

Is a break counted as working time?

Not in Sweden. Under the Working Hours Act a break (rast) is an interruption of the working day during which the employee does not have to stay at the workplace, and nobody should work more than five hours in a row without one (Arbetstidslagen, section 15, in Swedish). That is why the calculator subtracts it.

A pause is something else: short interruptions in the work, and pauses count as working time (section 17). So does a meal break taken at the workplace in place of a proper break (section 16). Check your collective agreement, which may set its own rules on breaks.

How many hours are in a working month?

Full time under the Swedish Working Hours Act is at most 40 hours a week (section 5). The hours in a month depend on how many weekdays and public holidays it has: 21 working days of 8 hours make 168 hours, 22 working days make 176 hours. Add up the weeks here, or log the hours in Klokka, which adds up the month for both sides.

Keep the hours instead

A calculator forgets everything when you close the tab. In Klokka the employer logs the hours per day and the employee sees the same day, week and month on their phone. Every change is kept with who and when, the month can be locked when it is done and exported as CSV for whoever runs the pay.

Klokka is made for time tracking in a small business. If you prefer paper, there is a timesheet template in Excel and PDF with the same columns as the calculator.