Hours Calculator
Work out daily hours, weekly totals, and overtime from your shift schedule.
Work out your daily worked hours, weekly total, and overtime above 40 hours a week from a shift schedule, break time, and how many days you work.
How Hours Calculator Works
The calculator first finds your daily worked time the same way the Time Calculator does: it subtracts your shift start from your shift end (adding 24 hours if the shift crosses midnight), then subtracts your unpaid break minutes to get the true hours worked in a day.
That daily figure is then multiplied by the number of days you work per week to estimate your weekly total. Overtime is calculated as anything above 40 hours in that weekly total — the standard U.S. federal overtime threshold — so you can see at a glance how many hours would qualify for overtime pay.
See It In Action
Who Uses Hours Calculator and Why
- Projecting a weekly paycheck estimate from a consistent shift schedule before payday.
- Checking whether a planned schedule will trigger overtime pay under the standard 40-hour threshold.
- Comparing how a change in shift length or days worked per week affects total weekly hours.
- Estimating hours for a part-time schedule with a repeating daily shift.
Mistakes to Avoid
- Using this tool for a schedule where shift length varies day to day — it's built around one repeating shift, so a variable schedule will give an inaccurate weekly total; the time card calculator handles per-day variation instead.
- Assuming the 40-hour overtime threshold applies universally — it reflects the US Fair Labor Standards Act standard, but actual overtime rules vary by country, state, and contract.
- Forgetting to enter break minutes, which inflates the daily and weekly hour totals above what's actually worked.
Tips for Best Results
- If your schedule genuinely varies by day, run each distinct shift length through separately and add the daily totals, or switch to the time card calculator.
- Adjust the overtime threshold assumption for your own situation if your employer or jurisdiction uses a different cutoff than 40 hours.
Fixing Common Problems
My actual paycheck hours don't match this projection. — This tool assumes an identical shift every working day — if your real schedule varies, this projection will be off; use the time card calculator for a schedule with different hours on different days.
No overtime is showing even though I expected some. — Overtime here only triggers above the 40-hour weekly threshold — a schedule under that, even with long individual shifts, won't show overtime hours.
Terms Explained
Overtime threshold: The weekly hour total above which additional hours are classified as overtime, commonly 40 hours in the US under federal law.
Weekly total: Daily hours (after breaks) multiplied by the number of days worked per week, used to project a full week's hours from a single shift.