Work Hours Calculator

Use the Breathe working hours calculator to add up your work week time sheet and calculate work hours for payroll. This calculator uses a standard 24-hour clock and calculators total hours in hours/minutes format.

How can I calculate my working hours?

You can calculate the working hours of any week by using Breathe's working hours calculator above. Just type in each working shift or use the dropdown box provided.

By entering your start and end times, along with any break time in minutes, you can easily compute your total work hours for the week. This tool is particularly useful for managing both full-time and part-time employees, helping you keep track of total hours worked and ensuring compliance with working time regulations.

What are my maximum working hours?

Maximum working hours are capped at 48 hours a week, on average, under the working time directive. (This applies to adults over 18.) 

If you opt out of this law, you can choose to work more hours than this.

While the legal cap is 48 hours, typical working weeks are much shorter. According to the Office for National Statistics, the average full-time UK employee works 36.5 hours per week (2025).

Calculating working time hours for part-time employees

There isn’t an official number of weekly hours that makes someone a part-time worker, but a full-time worker will normally work around 35 hours per week.   

Calculating rest breaks

Legally, workers are entitled to one uninterrupted 20-minute rest break if they work more than 6 hours per day (regardless of if they work full or part-time).  

This doesn’t have to be paid – it depends on their employment contract whether it is or not.

How to convert hh:mm digital time to decimal hours?

To convert hh:mm digital time to decimal hours, you'll need to divide the minutes by 60 since there are 60 minutes in an hour. For example, if you have a time of 7:30, this translates to 7 hours and 30 minutes. To find the decimal equivalent, divide 30 by 60, which gives you 0.5. Therefore, 7:30 in decimal hours is 7.5.

This conversion is particularly useful when using a work hours calculator to ensure accurate calculations of total hours worked, especially when managing payroll or tracking employee hours in a work week time sheet.

Examples of working hours

The table above shows how different shift patterns add up. If you’d like to check the maths yourself, here’s how it works.

How to check your hours manually

You can use the working hours calculator at the top of the page to add up your own shifts and break times. Or, if you’d rather do it by hand, just follow this simple formula:

Shift length − Break(s) = Total hours worked

Example: 09:00 to 17:30 with a 1-hour break

• Hours: 09:00 → 17:00 = 8 hours

• Minutes: 17:00 → 17:30 = 30 minutes

• Shift length = 8h 30m

• Subtract break: 8h 30m − 60m = 7h 30m

• Total hours worked: 7:30

What is a Timesheet?

A timesheet is either a document or digital tool that companies use to log the number of hours each of their employees work. It records details like start and end times, breaks, and total hours worked for payroll or project tracking purposes.

They're useful because they help with accurate payroll processing, and can help when you have part-time employees or those working irregular shifts.

Using a timesheet calculator like Breathe’s allows you to simplify this process, making it easy to log and total work hours over a day, week, or even longer periods. This ensures accuracy and saves time, making payroll hassle-free.