The minute chart payroll clerks keep taped to the monitor
One minute is 1/60 of an hour, so every minute is worth 0.0167 decimal hours. Payroll usually shows two decimals; this chart is the whole conversion, six minutes at a time.
Rounding: what employers may legally do
Federal rules let employers round time to the nearest quarter hour, the "7-minute rule": 7:07 rounds down to 7:00, 7:08 rounds up to 7:15. Rounding must cut both ways; a system that only rounds down is wage theft.
Questions people ask
Why does my pay stub show 7.70 instead of 7:42?
Payroll systems multiply hours by your rate, and multiplication needs a decimal. 42 minutes is 42/60 of an hour, which is 0.70.
Is 7.5 hours the same as 7:50?
No, and this is the classic timesheet mistake. 7.5 decimal hours is 7:30 on the clock. 7:50 on the clock is 7.83 in decimal.
How do I convert decimal hours back to minutes?
Multiply the decimal part by 60. For 7.70, take 0.70 times 60, which gives 42 minutes: 7:42. Or type the decimal on the right side above and read the left.