Time to Decimal Hours Converter
Time to Decimal Hours Converter
Hours and minutes to decimal hours and back, in any increment — with the US Department of Labor’s rounding rule quoted in full from 29 CFR 785.48, the 7-minute rule derived from it rather than asserted, and the weekly and annual cost of each rounding scheme worked out.
Decimal hours
7 hours 47 minutes, rounded to the nearest quarter hour
Two lines, and then the rounding
- 60 and 3600
- the only two constants in the conversion. Seven hours forty-five minutes is 7 + 45/60 = 7.75 exactly
- increment
- in minutes. 29 CFR 785.48(b) names 5, a tenth of an hour (6) and a quarter of an hour (15). It does not name 1, 10 or 30
- round vs ceil vs floor
- the regulation says “nearest”. Always-up and always-down are offered here so you can see what they cost, not because they are permitted
- 7½ minutes
- half a quarter hour, and therefore the boundary. That is the whole content of the “7-minute rule”: minutes 1-7 past a quarter round down, 8-14 up
- what this leaves out
- money. A converter converts; wage arithmetic, overtime multipliers and jurisdictional employment rules are not on this page
Worked example
7 hours 47 minutes, rounded to the nearest quarter hour
7 + 47 ÷ 60 = 7.783333 decimal hours. (The textbook case is easier: 7 h 45 m is 7 + 45/60 = 7.75 exactly)
That is 28,020 seconds, or 467 minutes
47 minutes is 2 minutes past the 45-minute quarter, and 2 is inside 1-7, so it rounds down to 45 — the 7-minute rule, which is just where the 7½-minute boundary falls
Rounded: 7.75 hours, which has removed 2 minutes of worked time
Two minutes a day, five days a week, 52 weeks is 8.67 hours a year — from one clock-out. If the scheme rounded the other way it would add the same amount
Which is the point of the condition in 29 CFR 785.48(b): rounding is accepted only “provided that it is used in such a manner that it will not result, over a period of time, in failure to compensate the employees properly for all the time they have actually worked”
The quarter-hour ladder, minute by minute — where the “7-minute rule” comes from
| Minutes worked past the hour | Exact decimal hours | Rounded minutes | Rounded decimal hours | Direction | Gain (min) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 0.0000 | 0 | 0.00 | exact | 0 |
| 1 | 0.0167 | 0 | 0.00 | down | -1 |
| 2 | 0.0333 | 0 | 0.00 | down | -2 |
| 3 | 0.0500 | 0 | 0.00 | down | -3 |
| 4 | 0.0667 | 0 | 0.00 | down | -4 |
| 5 | 0.0833 | 0 | 0.00 | down | -5 |
| 6 | 0.1000 | 0 | 0.00 | down | -6 |
| 7 | 0.1167 | 0 | 0.00 | down | -7 |
| 8 | 0.1333 | 15 | 0.25 | up | 7 |
| 9 | 0.1500 | 15 | 0.25 | up | 6 |
| 10 | 0.1667 | 15 | 0.25 | up | 5 |
| 11 | 0.1833 | 15 | 0.25 | up | 4 |
| 12 | 0.2000 | 15 | 0.25 | up | 3 |
| 13 | 0.2167 | 15 | 0.25 | up | 2 |
| 14 | 0.2333 | 15 | 0.25 | up | 1 |
| 15 | 0.2500 | 15 | 0.25 | exact | 0 |
| 16 | 0.2667 | 15 | 0.25 | down | -1 |
| 17 | 0.2833 | 15 | 0.25 | down | -2 |
| 18 | 0.3000 | 15 | 0.25 | down | -3 |
| 19 | 0.3167 | 15 | 0.25 | down | -4 |
| 20 | 0.3333 | 15 | 0.25 | down | -5 |
| 21 | 0.3500 | 15 | 0.25 | down | -6 |
| 22 | 0.3667 | 15 | 0.25 | down | -7 |
| 23 | 0.3833 | 30 | 0.50 | up | 7 |
| 24 | 0.4000 | 30 | 0.50 | up | 6 |
| 25 | 0.4167 | 30 | 0.50 | up | 5 |
| 26 | 0.4333 | 30 | 0.50 | up | 4 |
| 27 | 0.4500 | 30 | 0.50 | up | 3 |
| 28 | 0.4667 | 30 | 0.50 | up | 2 |
| 29 | 0.4833 | 30 | 0.50 | up | 1 |
| 30 | 0.5000 | 30 | 0.50 | exact | 0 |
| 31 | 0.5167 | 30 | 0.50 | down | -1 |
| 32 | 0.5333 | 30 | 0.50 | down | -2 |
| 33 | 0.5500 | 30 | 0.50 | down | -3 |
| 34 | 0.5667 | 30 | 0.50 | down | -4 |
| 35 | 0.5833 | 30 | 0.50 | down | -5 |
| 36 | 0.6000 | 30 | 0.50 | down | -6 |
| 37 | 0.6167 | 30 | 0.50 | down | -7 |
| 38 | 0.6333 | 45 | 0.75 | up | 7 |
| 39 | 0.6500 | 45 | 0.75 | up | 6 |
| 40 | 0.6667 | 45 | 0.75 | up | 5 |
| 41 | 0.6833 | 45 | 0.75 | up | 4 |
| 42 | 0.7000 | 45 | 0.75 | up | 3 |
| 43 | 0.7167 | 45 | 0.75 | up | 2 |
| 44 | 0.7333 | 45 | 0.75 | up | 1 |
| 45 | 0.7500 | 45 | 0.75 | exact | 0 |
| 46 | 0.7667 | 45 | 0.75 | down | -1 |
| 47 | 0.7833 | 45 | 0.75 | down | -2 |
| 48 | 0.8000 | 45 | 0.75 | down | -3 |
| 49 | 0.8167 | 45 | 0.75 | down | -4 |
| 50 | 0.8333 | 45 | 0.75 | down | -5 |
| 51 | 0.8500 | 45 | 0.75 | down | -6 |
| 52 | 0.8667 | 45 | 0.75 | down | -7 |
| 53 | 0.8833 | 60 | 1.00 | up | 7 |
| 54 | 0.9000 | 60 | 1.00 | up | 6 |
| 55 | 0.9167 | 60 | 1.00 | up | 5 |
| 56 | 0.9333 | 60 | 1.00 | up | 4 |
| 57 | 0.9500 | 60 | 1.00 | up | 3 |
| 58 | 0.9667 | 60 | 1.00 | up | 2 |
| 59 | 0.9833 | 60 | 1.00 | up | 1 |
What each increment can do to a year, on a five-day week
| Increment | In decimal hours | Named in 29 CFR 785.48? | Worst a single total can move, nearest | Worst if the two punches are rounded separately | A year of worst cases, nearest, one rounding a day | A year of always-up |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 minutes | 0.0167 h | No | 0.5 min | 1 min | 2.17 h | 4.3 h |
| 5 minutes | 0.0833 h | Yes | 2.5 min | 5 min | 10.83 h | 21.7 h |
| 6 minutes | 0.1000 h | Yes | 3.0 min | 6 min | 13.00 h | 26.0 h |
| 10 minutes | 0.1667 h | No | 5.0 min | 10 min | 21.67 h | 43.3 h |
| 15 minutes | 0.2500 h | Yes | 7.5 min | 15 min | 32.50 h | 65.0 h |
| 30 minutes | 0.5000 h | No | 15.0 min | 30 min | 65.00 h | 130.0 h |
29 CFR 785.48, quoted in full — a US Government work
| Paragraph | Text |
|---|---|
| (a) Clock records | “Time clocks are not required. In those cases where time clocks are used, employees who voluntarily come in before their regular starting time or remain after their closing time, do not have to be paid for such periods provided, of course, that they do not engage in any work. Their early or late clock punching may be disregarded. Minor differences between the clock records and actual hours worked cannot ordinarily be avoided, but major discrepancies should be discouraged since they raise a doubt as to the accuracy of the records of the hours actually worked.” |
| (b) Rounding practices | “It has been found that in some industries, particularly where time clocks are used, there has been the practice for many years of recording the employees’ starting time and stopping time to the nearest 5 minutes, or to the nearest one-tenth or quarter of an hour. Presumably, this arrangement averages out so that the employees are fully compensated for all the time they actually work. For enforcement purposes this practice of computing working time will be accepted, provided that it is used in such a manner that it will not result, over a period of time, in failure to compensate the employees properly for all the time they have actually worked.” |
Who uses which increment, and why
| Increment | Where you meet it | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Exact | Modern software timesheets, project trackers | If the system can capture actual time, there is nothing to round. That is the simplest way to satisfy 785.48(b). |
| 1 minute | Access-control and badge systems | Not an increment the regulation names, and it barely matters: half a minute of drift is 0.0083 hours. |
| 5 minutes | Manufacturing and retail time clocks | Named in 785.48(b). 0.0833 decimal hours. |
| 6 minutes — a tenth of an hour | Law firms, and professional services billing generally | Named in 785.48(b) as “one-tenth” of an hour. It exists because a tenth is the natural unit of a decimal hourly rate: 0.1, 0.2, 0.3. MinuteDock notes that “Six-minute increments are common in attorney billing” while “accountants, bookkeepers and consultants often work in 15-minute or task-level increments”. Billing a client is a contract question and not an FLSA one. |
| 10 minutes | Some European and Asian payroll conventions | Not named in the regulation. A sixth of an hour, 0.1667. |
| 15 minutes — a quarter hour | The classic US time clock | Named in 785.48(b), and the source of the so-called 7-minute rule. The largest increment in ordinary use, and therefore the one where the arithmetic matters most. |
| 30 minutes | Shift rosters and some public-sector systems | Not named in the regulation, and large enough that rounding to the nearest can move a day by a quarter of an hour. |
7.75 is the easy part; the rounding rule is the page
The conversion is two lines and the rounding is the rest of the page. Decimal hours are h + m/60 + s/3600, so seven hours forty-five minutes is 7.75 and seven forty-seven is 7.7833…. Going back, the whole part is the hours and the fraction times sixty is the minutes. Payroll and billing systems want the decimal because it multiplies cleanly by a rate; clocks and people work in hours and minutes. The two constants are 60 and 3600 and there is nothing else to learn.
What is worth learning is what happens next, because almost nobody is paid on the exact number. In the United States, 29 CFR 785.48(b) permits timekeeping “to the nearest 5 minutes, or to the nearest one-tenth or quarter of an hour”. Three increments, named explicitly — and 1, 10 and 30 minutes are not among them, although payroll systems use all three. The regulation says “nearest”, and it attaches a condition that is the whole of its force: the practice is accepted “provided that it is used in such a manner that it will not result, over a period of time, in failure to compensate the employees properly for all the time they have actually worked.” The test is the outcome, not the tidiness of the method. Rounding to the nearest passes by symmetry. Rounding that always favours the employer — always down, or clock-ins up and clock-outs down — does not.
The “7-minute rule” is not a rule; it is where the boundary falls. If you round to the nearest quarter hour, the midpoint between two quarter marks is 7½ minutes, so minutes 1 to 7 past a quarter go down and 8 to 14 go up. That is all it is, and the phrase appears nowhere in the regulation. The minute-by-minute table on this page prints all sixty so you can see the staircase, and the chart draws it against the exact line: the diagonal is the truth and the two staircases are what a quarter-hour and a tenth-of-an-hour system record.
The number that makes this worth reading is the annual one. Rounding to the nearest quarter hour can move any single total by up to 7½ minutes in either direction. Round always up or always down instead, and the average drift is 7½ minutes a day — 32.5 hours over a five-day, 52-week year, which is most of a working week. And there is a subtlety the arithmetic makes visible: 785.48(b) is written about rounding the punch times, not the day’s total. Round two punches separately and both errors can fall the same way, so a single day can move by a full increment rather than half of one. The calculator shows both cases.
Six minutes deserves its own sentence. A tenth of an hour is exactly six minutes, which is why professional-services invoices come in 0.1 steps and why a two-minute phone call so often appears as 0.1 hours. It is the same “one-tenth” the regulation names. But keep two things apart: paying an employee under the Fair Labor Standards Act and billing a client under an engagement letter are different questions with different rules, and many billing systems round up to the next tenth rather than to the nearest. And keep the jurisdiction straight. 29 CFR 785.48 is United States federal law. It says nothing about the United Kingdom, the European Union, India, Australia or anywhere else, where timesheet rounding is generally a matter of contract or local employment law; some US states are stricter than the federal floor too. This page is a converter. It quotes the regulation in full so you can read it, does the arithmetic for any increment you like, and leaves money to the finance calculators — no wage sums here, and no jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction employment advice. For the other direction of time arithmetic see the degrees, minutes and seconds converter, which is the same sexagesimal problem in a different unit, and the running pace converter for minutes-per-kilometre.
Frequently asked questions
What is 7 hours 45 minutes in decimal hours?
7.75. Divide the minutes by 60 and add: 45 ÷ 60 = 0.75. The ones worth memorising are the quarters — 15 minutes is 0.25, 30 is 0.5, 45 is 0.75 — and the tenths, because a tenth of an hour is exactly six minutes: 6 minutes is 0.1, 12 is 0.2, 18 is 0.3. Everything else is m/60.
What is the 7-minute rule?
It is what “round to the nearest quarter hour” means, and it is not itself a rule in the regulation. The midpoint between two quarter-hour marks is 7½ minutes, so minutes 1 to 7 past a quarter round down and 8 to 14 round up. 29 CFR 785.48(b) permits recording time “to the nearest 5 minutes, or to the nearest one-tenth or quarter of an hour”, and the phrase “7-minute rule” appears nowhere in it. The table above lists all sixty minutes so you can see the boundary.
Is rounding my timesheet legal?
In the United States, under federal law, rounding to the nearest 5 minutes, tenth of an hour or quarter of an hour is accepted — with a condition. 29 CFR 785.48(b) says the practice “will be accepted, provided that it is used in such a manner that it will not result, over a period of time, in failure to compensate the employees properly for all the time they have actually worked.” So the test is the outcome, not the method: a scheme that rounds to the nearest satisfies it by symmetry, and a scheme that always rounds down, or rounds clock-ins up and clock-outs down, does not, however neat its arithmetic. Two limits on that answer: this is a federal floor and some US states are stricter, and it is United States law — it says nothing about anywhere else. This page quotes the regulation in full so you can read it rather than take our word for it, and it is not legal advice.
Does this apply outside the United States?
No. 29 CFR 785.48 is a United States federal regulation made under the Fair Labor Standards Act, and it has no force anywhere else. Timesheet rounding elsewhere is generally a matter of contract, collective agreement or national employment law, and the conventions differ — 10-minute increments are common in some European and Asian payroll systems, for instance, and that increment is not one the US regulation names at all. The arithmetic on this page is universal; the regulation is not, and the page says so wherever it quotes it.
Why do lawyers bill in six-minute increments?
Because six minutes is a tenth of an hour, and a tenth is the natural unit of a decimal hourly rate: 0.1, 0.2, 0.3 straight onto the invoice with no arithmetic. It is the same “one-tenth of an hour” that 29 CFR 785.48(b) names. Worth keeping separate, though: billing a client and paying an employee are different questions governed by different things — the FLSA regulation is about hours worked, and what a firm may bill is a matter of its engagement letter. And note that many billing systems round up to the next tenth rather than to the nearest, which is a different arithmetic with a systematic drift; this page will show you what that costs.
How much does rounding actually cost over a year?
It depends entirely on whether it is symmetric. Rounding to the nearest quarter hour can move any single total by up to 7½ minutes either way, and if start and finish times are spread evenly it averages out to nothing — which is exactly what 785.48(b) means by “Presumably, this arrangement averages out”. Rounding always up or always down at a quarter hour moves 7½ minutes a day on average, which is 32.5 hours over a five-day, 52-week year — the better part of a working week. And if the two punch times are rounded separately rather than the day’s total, a single day can move by a full increment rather than half. The calculator works out your own case.
Will this page work out my pay?
No, deliberately. It converts time and it shows what rounding does to time. Wage arithmetic, overtime multipliers, shift premiums and holiday entitlement are money questions and belong in a finance calculator, not a unit converter — and employment entitlements vary by jurisdiction in ways no converter should pretend to know. Decimal hours are the output payroll wants; what payroll then does with them is its own business.
Related calculators
References
- 29 CFR 785.48, Use of time clocks (read 27 September 2026 from the Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School). A US Government work, quoted in full on this page. Paragraph (b): “It has been found that in some industries, particularly where time clocks are used, there has been the practice for many years of recording the employees’ starting time and stopping time to the nearest 5 minutes, or to the nearest one-tenth or quarter of an hour. Presumably, this arrangement averages out so that the employees are fully compensated for all the time they actually work. For enforcement purposes this practice of computing working time will be accepted, provided that it is used in such a manner that it will not result, over a period of time, in failure to compensate the employees properly for all the time they have actually worked.” Three increments are named and no others, and the words “7-minute rule” appear nowhere in it.
- MinuteDock, Billing Increments Explained (read 27 September 2026), for the professional conventions rather than the law: “Six-minute increments are common in attorney billing”, while “accountants, bookkeepers and consultants often work in 15-minute or task-level increments”. Its own worked example rounds every entry UP, not to the nearest, and that is a different arithmetic with a different average — which is why this page separates direction from increment and shows both.