Minutes to decimals is the small piece of arithmetic that stands between a written card and a paid week. A rate buys one whole hour, so a figure like 6 hours 50 minutes cannot be multiplied until the 50 is expressed as part of an hour. Divide the minutes by 60 and you get hundredths: 50 divided by 60 is 0.83, so the line is 6.83 hours. That is all a payroll minute conversion is, and it runs the other way just as simply, because multiplying a decimal by 60 gives the minutes back. The traps are the ones that look right: 0.30 is not thirty minutes, and 0.15 is not a quarter of an hour. The free minute-to-decimal conversion chart on this site lists all fifty nine minutes against their hundredths so nobody has to divide under time pressure, and the paid product does the payroll minutes conversion on every line as the sheet is filled in, then keeps the sheet against the employee and the pay period.
Minutes to hundredths, six minutes at a time
Divide the minutes by 60 and round to two places. Six minutes is 0.1, twelve is 0.2, eighteen is 0.3, and the pattern holds all the way up because every six minutes is a tenth of an hour. Off the tenths it is the same division: 37 divided by 60 is 0.6166, which is written as 0.62, and 5 divided by 60 is 0.08. Nothing about the whole hours changes while this is done, so 9 hours 37 minutes is 9.62 hours and 9 hours 5 minutes is 9.08 hours.
Hundredths to minutes: a decimal to minutes conversion
A decimal to minutes conversion is the same sum reversed: multiply the part after the point by 60. A saved total of 7.25 hours is 0.25 multiplied by 60, which is 15 minutes, so the entry stands for 7 hours 15 minutes. A total of 7.62 hours is 0.62 multiplied by 60, which is 37.2, and the card said 37 minutes. This is the check to run when a total looks wrong: read the decimal back into minutes and compare it against what the person actually wrote in the box.
The 100 minute clock
Some payroll sheets and some older stamping machines print an hour divided into hundredths rather than into sixty minutes, and that is what people mean by a 100 minute clock. There are still sixty minutes in the hour; only the notation has changed. Half past reads 0.50 instead of 30, a quarter past reads 0.25 instead of 15, and a card printed that way needs no conversion at all before the rate is applied. A card written in ordinary minutes always does.
A payroll minute conversion on a crew card, worked through
A laborer writes 6:50, 7:40, 8:05, 7:20 and 6:35 for the week. Converted line by line those become 6.83, 7.67, 8.08, 7.33 and 6.58, and the column adds to 36.49 hours. At 18 dollars an hour the week is 656.82 dollars, all of it regular pay, because 36.49 sits under the 40 hour line where the federal overtime rule cited below starts. Convert each day and add the converted figures. Adding 6:50 and 7:40 as though they were 6.50 and 7.40 would have shortened that first pair by nearly half an hour.
Payroll minutes conversion and rounding to the quarter hour
Many small crews round each entry to the nearest quarter of an hour, which is 0.25, 0.5 and 0.75 in hundredths. The federal rounding rule cited below allows it where the practice does not systematically shave time from the worker over a period, and the usual way to keep it neutral is the seven minute split: seven minutes or fewer past a quarter rounds back, eight or more rounds forward. So 8:07 is recorded as 8.0 and 8:08 as 8.25. Round first, convert second, and apply the same rule to everyone on the sheet.
Questions people ask about minutes to decimals
What is 45 minutes in decimals?
It is 0.75, because 45 divided by 60 is 0.75. A line reading 7 hours 45 minutes is therefore 7.75 hours, and at 24 dollars an hour that day pays 186 dollars.
How to convert minutes to decimal without a calculator
Read the chart. Every minute from one to fifty nine is printed beside its hundredths, so the conversion is a lookup rather than a division, and a printed sheet does not run out of battery on a job site.
Is 0.30 the same as 30 minutes?
No. Thirty minutes is 0.5 of an hour. The figure 0.30 is 18 minutes, because 0.30 multiplied by 60 is 18, so treating one as the other loses twelve minutes on every half hour recorded.
Should I convert each day or the weekly total?
Convert each day and add the converted figures. Adding written times as if they were decimals first carries the error into the total, and a total that was never right cannot be fixed by rounding it afterwards.