Accurately track your work week with our free weekly hours calculator. Easily sum hours across multiple shifts, deduct unpaid breaks, and calculate overtime pay to ensure your paycheck is correct.
How to Use This Weekly Hours Calculator
Tracking your weekly work hours shouldn't be a chore. Our calculator is designed to be simple yet powerful, handling everything from standard 9-to-5 schedules to complex shift work with varying breaks. Here is a step-by-step guide to getting the most out of it:
- Enter Start and End Times: For each day of the week (Monday through Sunday), input the time you clocked in and the time you clocked out. The calculator supports 24-hour time formats and automatically handles overnight shifts (e.g., starting at 10 PM and finishing at 6 AM).
- Deduct Breaks: If you took an unpaid lunch or rest break, enter the total duration in minutes in the "Break" field. This time will be subtracted from your daily total to give you your true "net" work hours.
- Set Your Hourly Rate (Optional): To estimate your gross pay, enter your current hourly wage. This allows the tool to calculate both your regular earnings and any overtime pay you may have accrued.
- Adjust Overtime Threshold: By default, overtime is calculated for any hours worked over 40 in a week. If your local labor laws or contract specify a different threshold (e.g., 44 hours), you can adjust this setting to match your situation.
- Review Your Summary: The calculator instantly updates to show your total hours, regular hours, overtime hours, and estimated gross pay.
Pro Tip: Overnight Shifts
If you work a shift that crosses midnight (e.g., 11:00 PM to 7:00 AM), simply enter the start and end times as they appear on the clock. Our calculator automatically detects that the end time is "smaller" than the start time and correctly calculates the duration as an overnight shift.
Understanding Weekly Hours & Overtime Rules
For most employees in the United States, the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) establishes the standard work week and overtime rules. Understanding these basics is crucial for ensuring you are paid fairly for your time.
The 40-Hour Work Week
The standard work week is defined as a fixed and recurring period of 168 hours—seven consecutive 24-hour periods. Under federal law, specifically the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), non-exempt employees are entitled to overtime pay for any hours worked in excess of 40 hours per work week.
It is important to note that this is a "hard" threshold. Even if you work 39.5 hours one week and 40.5 hours the next, you are only entitled to 0.5 hours of overtime pay for the second week. Averaging hours over two weeks is generally not permitted for standard non-exempt employees, though some exceptions exist for specific industries like healthcare.
Calculating Overtime Pay
Overtime pay is typically calculated at "time and a half", or 1.5 times your regular hourly rate.
- Regular Rate: Your standard hourly wage (e.g., $20.00/hr).
- Overtime Rate: $20.00 × 1.5 = $30.00/hr.
If you worked 45 hours in a week at a rate of $20/hr, your pay would be calculated as:
- 40 Regular Hours × $20 = $800
- 5 Overtime Hours × $30 = $150
- Total Gross Pay = $950
Why Accurate Time Tracking Matters
Whether you are an employee checking your pay stub or a freelancer billing a client, accurate time tracking is essential for financial health.
Prevent Underpayment
Small errors in tracking—like forgetting to log a 15-minute late stay—can add up to hundreds of dollars in lost wages over a year. Using a calculator ensures every minute is accounted for.
Verify Payroll Accuracy
Payroll systems are automated, but the data entry often isn't. Comparing your own records against your pay stub helps catch data entry errors before they become long-term problems.
Common Scenarios and Special Cases
Work schedules are rarely perfect, and real-life situations often require more than just a simple start and end time. Whether you are dealing with split shifts, unpaid breaks, or overnight work, here is how to handle some common complexities when calculating your weekly hours to ensure your records are 100% accurate.
Paid vs. Unpaid Breaks
Federal law does not require lunch or coffee breaks. However, when employers do offer short breaks (usually lasting about 5 to 20 minutes), federal law considers the breaks as compensable work hours that would be included in the sum of hours worked during the workweek and considered in determining if overtime was worked.
Bona fide meal periods (typically lasting at least 30 minutes), serve a different purpose than coffee or snack breaks and, thus, are not work time and are not compensable. This is why our calculator asks you to input "Break Minutes"—these are typically the unpaid meal periods that need to be deducted from your total time on site.
Split Shifts
If you work a split shift (e.g., 9 AM to 1 PM, then 5 PM to 9 PM), you can calculate the hours for each segment separately and add them together, or simply treat the gap as a very long unpaid break. For the most accurate results with our tool, you might calculate the daily total manually (4 hours + 4 hours = 8 hours) and enter 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM with no break, or enter the specific times if you are tracking just one continuous block.
The Health Impact of Shift Work
Working irregular hours, especially nights or rotating shifts, can take a toll on your body. This phenomenon, known as keeping "shift work hours," disrupts your body's natural circadian rhythm.
- Sleep Disorders: Shift workers are at higher risk for insomnia and excessive daytime sleepiness.
- Metabolic Health: Studies have shown links between night shift work and increased risks of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease.
- Social Isolation: Working while the rest of the world sleeps can make maintaining relationships and social obligations difficult.
Tracking your hours is the first step in managing this. By visualizing your schedule weeks in advance, you can better plan for rest and recovery.
Tips for Managing Irregular Schedules
If you work variable hours, these strategies can help you maintain balance:
- Prioritize Sleep Hygiene: Create a dark, quiet environment for sleeping during the day. Use blackout curtains and white noise machines.
- Meal Prep: Irregular hours often lead to poor eating habits. Preparing healthy meals in advance prevents reliance on fast food during late-night shifts.
- Communicate Boundaries: Let family and friends know your schedule in advance so they understand when you are unavailable (i.e., sleeping).
Analyzing Your Work-Life Balance
Use the data from this calculator not just for payroll, but for personal insight. Are you consistently working 50+ hours a week? Are your "off" days really off, or are you catching up on sleep?
Seeing the total hours in black and white can be a powerful wake-up call. If you are exempt (salaried) and working 60 hours a week, calculate your effective hourly rate. You might be surprised to find you are earning less per hour than you thought.
To calculate your effective hourly rate as a salaried employee, divide your annual salary by the total hours you actually work in a year. For example, if you earn $65,000 annually and work an average of 50 hours per week, your effective hourly rate is $65,000 ÷ (50 hours × 52 weeks) = $25.00 per hour. Compare this to someone making $55,000 who works exactly 40 hours: their effective rate is $26.44 per hour. Sometimes less salary is actually more value for your time.
Consider tracking your hours for a full month to identify patterns. You may discover that certain days of the week are consistently longer, or that specific projects or clients demand disproportionate amounts of your time. This data empowers you to have informed conversations with your manager about workload distribution or to simply make better decisions about how you invest your most valuable resource: your time.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Need more specific calculations?
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