Timesheet Guides
Plain-language guides to the math behind timesheets, rounding, and overtime. No jargon, worked examples throughout.
The converters on this site do the arithmetic; these guides explain what the arithmetic is for. Each one covers a single payroll topic with worked numbers, from how employers round clock times to how overtime is computed from decimal hours.
Time Card Rounding Rules
How the 15-minute and 7-minute rules work, what federal law allows employers to round, and how to check whether rounding is costing you pay.
Federal law lets employers round punch times to the nearest quarter hour, as long as the rounding is neutral over time — it must favor neither the employer nor the employee across a pay period. This guide walks through where the 7-minute boundary falls, why 8:07 rounds down but 8:08 rounds up, and how a two-week timesheet can quietly lose 20 to 40 minutes a period to one-sided rounding. You will also find a worked comparison: the same punch times converted exactly versus rounded, with the pay difference at $18 an hour.
Overtime in Decimal Hours
The 40-hour weekly rule, time-and-a-half math with worked pay examples, state daily-overtime rules, and four mistakes that cost real money.
Overtime is triggered by a plain comparison: total decimal hours in a workweek against 40.00. That is why the conversion matters — a week recorded as 39.50 in decimals is genuinely under the line, while the same hours written as 39:50 on a hand-converted sheet may actually be 40.33 and owed an overtime premium. The guide covers the federal time-and-a-half calculation with full numbers, the states that add daily overtime (California over 8 hours a day, for example), and four recurring mistakes: rounding before totaling, skipping the premium on the decimal portion, miscounting a shift that crosses midnight, and treating paid breaks as unpaid time.
Biweekly Timesheet Guide
A complete walkthrough: from clock times to decimal hours, week-by-week totals, overtime handling, and auditing the paycheck that follows.
A biweekly pay period is ten working days, and the arithmetic only stays honest if every day is converted to decimals before anything is added. This guide follows one real two-week timesheet from raw punch times to the paycheck that results: converting each day with the hours-plus-minutes formula, totaling each week separately (because overtime is weekly, not per-period), carrying the second week's total even when it crosses a month boundary, and then multiplying regular and overtime hours at their own rates. It ends with a short audit checklist you can run against your own pay stub — the three numbers that should match, and the two that commonly do not.
Military Time on Timesheets
Reading the 24-hour clock on punch records, converting to and from 12-hour time, night shifts across midnight, and why 1430 and 14.30 are not the same.
Time clocks in hospitals, factories, and transit often punch in 24-hour time: 0730 for 7:30 AM, 1745 for 5:45 PM. The notation is compact, but it collides badly with decimal hours — writing 14.30 when the punch said 1430 is the single most expensive notation error on a timesheet, because 14.30 decimal hours is 14 hours 18 minutes, not 14 hours 30 minutes. The guide covers converting 24-hour times to 12-hour times and back, handling night shifts that cross midnight (2200 to 0600 is 8 hours, not negative 16), and a conversion table of the most common punch times with their true decimal equivalents.