A time to decimal chart turns the hours and minutes written on a card into the decimal hours you can multiply by a rate. One division sits behind every line of it: the minutes divided by 60. Fifteen minutes is 0.25 of an hour, thirty minutes is 0.5, forty-five minutes is 0.75, and every other minute value falls between those on the same scale, so 8 hours 20 minutes is 8.33 hours and 7 hours 45 minutes is 7.75 hours. You read the chart down the minute column, write the decimal beside the day, add the days into one number, and multiply that number by the person's rate. That is the whole job on a Friday afternoon. The free timesheet conversion chart on this site prints the minute column and its decimal beside it, with no account, so the number you copy is the number payroll expects. Keep it next to the sheet and the conversion stops being arithmetic you have to think about: the card says 7:45, the chart says 7.75, and the week totals in one pass.
Why you convert hours and minutes to decimal before the rate
Hours and minutes are base 60 and money is base 10, so the two do not multiply together. Write 8:45 next to a rate and the arithmetic has nowhere to go, because 8:45 is not eight point forty-five of anything. Convert it first and the same day becomes 8.75, which multiplies by a rate the way any other number does. That is the only reason the chart exists: it moves the day out of clock time and into a number the rate can act on, before anyone reaches for a calculator.
How to convert time to decimal down the minute column
The chart has one row per minute from 1 to 59 and one decimal beside it. Find the minutes from the card, read across, and write the decimal after the whole hours. Six minutes is 0.1, twelve is 0.2, eighteen is 0.3, and the pattern holds every six minutes to the top of the hour, which is why a tenth of an hour is six minutes and not ten. Minutes that do not land on a tenth get two decimal places: 25 minutes is 0.42, 40 minutes is 0.67, 50 minutes is 0.83. The whole hours never change in the conversion, only the part after the point.
Time card decimal totals: a week converted and paid
Take one employee at 24 dollars an hour. The card reads Monday 8:45, Tuesday 8:15, Wednesday 9:30, Thursday 7:45, Friday 8:00. Down the chart those days are 8.75, 8.25, 9.5, 7.75 and 8, and they add to 42.25 hours for the week. Forty of those hours are regular: 40 times 24 is 960 dollars. The remaining 2.25 hours are over 40 in the workweek, so they are paid at time and a half, which is 24 times 1.5, or 36 dollars an hour. That is 2.25 times 36, or 81 dollars. The week comes to 1041 dollars gross, and every figure in it came out of the same minute column.
Timesheet decimal rounding, and where the quarter hour comes in
Two decimal places is enough for a payroll line, and rounding to two places is what the chart already does for you. Rounding the clock time itself is a separate decision made before the conversion. Federal rules on time clocks permit rounding to the nearest quarter of an hour so long as the practice does not, over time, work out in the employer's favor and fail to pay employees for all the time they actually worked, which is the source cited below. If you round, round both ways, apply it to everyone, and convert the rounded time, not the raw time and then the rounded decimal.
Keeping the decimal timesheet for the week
The decimal total is the figure the pay was built on, so it is the figure worth keeping. Save the card with its clock times, the converted decimals, the total, the rate and the pay period against the employee, because the question that arrives in March is always about a specific week and a specific person. TimeCardBook Pro stores each converted sheet against the employee and the pay period and exports the set, so the answer is a lookup rather than a search through paper.
Questions people ask about time to decimal chart
How do I convert 45 minutes to a decimal?
Divide 45 by 60, which gives 0.75. So 6 hours 45 minutes on the card is 6.75 hours, and the conversion chart shows that row without the division.
Why is 30 minutes 0.5 and not 0.30?
Because the decimal is a fraction of an hour, not the minutes copied across. Half an hour is half of 1, which is 0.5. Writing 0.30 would underpay the half hour by twelve minutes.
Should I turn time into decimals each day or only the weekly total?
Convert each day and add the decimals. Adding clock times first means carrying at 60 across seven lines, which is where most Friday errors come from.
Do payroll decimals from the chart handle overtime?
The chart converts time only. Once you have the weekly decimal total, the hours over 40 in that workweek are the ones paid at the higher multiplier, and the timesheet template on this site applies it.