Time card calculator

How to fill in the time card

1. Pick the week: the first day of your employer’s workweek (often Sunday or Monday). Overtime is counted from that day. The card shows it and the six days after it (or thirteen with two weeks on the card).
2. Type your in and out times for each day you worked: 8, 8:30a, 4:45 pm or 16:45. Leave days off empty.
3. Breaks: type unpaid break minutes (30) or hours and minutes (0:45); a small decimal such as 0.5 is read as hours. Or switch Breaks to Lunch out / in to punch out and back in for lunch; leave the lunch boxes empty on a day without one.
4. Overtime and pay: pick the overtime rule that applies to you and, if you want the pay worked out, your hourly rate.
5. Download the card as a PDF (with lines for signatures) or a CSV for a spreadsheet, or print it.

The card is saved in this browser as you type, so you can fill it in day by day through the week.

Example: a week with overtime

Here is a five-day week with 30-minute unpaid lunches, at $20 an hour under the US federal rule:

That is 44.75 hours: 40 regular hours and 4.75 overtime hours. Pay is 40 × $20 = $800, plus 4.75 × $30 (time and a half) = $142.50, so $942.50 before tax. Under California’s rule the same week has 2 hours of daily overtime on Wednesday and 1 hour each on Monday and Tuesday, 0.75 hours on Friday, and no weekly overtime on top, because only 40 of the hours were regular: 4.75 overtime hours either way in this example, but the days they fall on differ.

Overtime rules you can choose

• US federal (FLSA): time and a half for hours over 40 in the workweek. There is no daily overtime under federal law, and no double time (US Department of Labor Fact Sheet 23).
• California: time and a half after 8 hours in a day and after 40 in the week; double time after 12 hours in a day; on the seventh day in a row worked in the workweek, the first 8 hours at time and a half and the rest at double time (California Labor Commissioner’s overtime FAQ). Hours already paid as daily overtime are not counted again toward the weekly 40 (DLSE opinion letter of 19 January 2000).
• Over 8 a day or 40 a week: a daily and weekly rule used by some employers and union contracts, without double time.
• Custom: set your own daily and weekly limits, double-time limit and pay multipliers, for example Ontario’s 44-hour week or a contract that pays double time after 10 hours.

Overtime is worked out for each workweek on its own. With two weeks on the card, 45 hours one week and 35 the next is still 5 hours of overtime: the law does not let hours be averaged across weeks.

Rounding punches

Under More settings you can round each punch to the nearest 5, 6 or 15 minutes, as many time clocks do. With 15-minute rounding (the “7-minute rule”), 7:07 counts as 7:00 and 7:08 as 7:15. US federal rules (29 CFR 785.48) allow rounding like this only if, over time, it does not shortchange employees; California courts have restricted it further, especially for meal breaks. The times you typed stay as they are; the hours use the rounded times, and the note under the row shows both the rounded and the exact hours.

Overnight shifts on a time card

Type an overnight shift on the day it starts: in at 10 PM, out at 6 (AM). The calculator counts it on that day, as most payroll systems do. If your employer splits night shifts at midnight, or at the start of its workday, the overtime for long nights can differ slightly from what this card shows.

Outside the US

In the UK there is no legal right to overtime pay; your contract decides it, and your average pay must not fall below the minimum wage (gov.uk: overtime, your rights). In Canada each province sets its own rule; Ontario pays overtime after 44 hours a week (ontario.ca: overtime pay). In Australia, awards and agreements set overtime and penalty rates (Fair Work Ombudsman). Pick Custom and enter the limits from your contract.