Time and a Half Calculator

How Time and a Half Works

“Time and a half” is one of the most common overtime pay rules used in workplaces that track hours. The phrase means that certain hours are paid at one and a half times your normal hourly rate. If your base rate is 20 per hour, time-and-a-half pay is 30 per hour for eligible overtime hours. The idea is simple: overtime hours cost more, so employers have a financial incentive to manage schedules carefully, and workers are compensated more for working beyond the standard schedule.

Even though the concept is straightforward, real paychecks can be confusing. People often see overtime on their payslip, but they are not sure how it was computed. Others know their overtime rate but do not know how many overtime hours they actually had after unpaid breaks, different shifts, or a threshold rule that splits the week into regular and overtime portions. A time-and-a-half calculator is useful because it turns those moving parts into a clean breakdown you can verify: base rate, overtime rate, regular hours, overtime hours, and the total gross earnings.

The Time-and-a-Half Formula in Plain Steps

The core math behind time and a half uses three pieces: your hourly rate, your overtime multiplier (usually 1.5), and the number of overtime hours. The overtime rate is calculated first, then applied to overtime hours:

Overtime Rate = Hourly Rate × Overtime Multiplier

Overtime Pay = Overtime Hours × Overtime Rate

Regular Pay = Regular Hours × Hourly Rate

Total Gross Pay = Regular Pay + Overtime Pay + Other Gross Pay (if any)

This calculator follows those steps across multiple tabs. The Time & a Half Pay tab is best when you already know your regular hours and your overtime hours. If you only know total hours, the Overtime Breakdown tab will split hours into regular and overtime using a threshold you choose, then estimate gross pay. The Weekly Timecard tab goes one level deeper by helping you estimate paid hours day-by-day, especially when unpaid breaks matter.

What Counts as Overtime Hours

Overtime is not defined the same way everywhere. Many people are familiar with the common rule of overtime starting after 40 hours in a week, but other setups exist. Some policies use daily overtime, meaning overtime starts after a certain number of hours in a single day. Others use a mix of daily and weekly rules. Some roles have special exemptions or different multipliers for nights, holidays, or weekends. There are also differences between “hours at work” and “paid hours,” which can affect whether an unpaid break counts.

This tool is designed for planning and clarity. That is why it does not lock you into one overtime threshold. In the Overtime Breakdown and Weekly Timecard tabs, you can set an overtime threshold that matches your work situation. If you are estimating a standard weekly threshold, keep it at 40. If your workplace uses a different threshold, adjust it. The calculator will then split regular and overtime hours in the way you expect for your planning scenario.

Regular Rate vs Overtime Rate

Your hourly rate is your base rate, sometimes called the regular rate. Time and a half is a multiplier applied to that base rate, creating an overtime rate. The overtime rate matters because it is the price tag attached to each overtime hour. If your base rate increases, your overtime rate increases automatically. If your multiplier changes (for example, certain hours pay at double time), the overtime rate changes even if your base pay stays the same.

A useful way to sanity-check overtime pay is to compute the overtime rate first and compare it to your payslip. If your base rate is 22.50 and the multiplier is 1.5, your overtime rate is 33.75. If you worked 6 overtime hours, your overtime pay should be 202.50, before any other premiums or adjustments. When your pay stub looks different, the mismatch usually comes from additional pay components, different definitions of the “regular rate,” or payroll rounding rules.

Why Overtime Makes Your Average Hourly Earnings Higher

When you work overtime at time and a half, your total earnings grow faster than your total hours. That raises your average pay per hour for the period. This average is sometimes called your blended rate. It is calculated as total gross pay divided by total paid hours. Even if you have only a few overtime hours, the blended rate can be noticeably higher than your base rate, especially if the overtime multiplier is strong.

The blended rate is helpful when you want a single number to represent the week. For example, if you are comparing two job schedules, one with fewer hours but higher overtime, you may want to know whether the average hourly earnings are better or worse. The Time & a Half Pay tab reports a blended rate so you can see how overtime changes your effective average.

Understanding Overtime Thresholds

Thresholds determine which hours are paid at the base rate and which hours qualify for overtime. A weekly threshold is a simple split: up to the threshold, hours are regular; beyond it, hours are overtime. If you work 47.5 total hours with a 40-hour threshold, then 40 hours are regular and 7.5 hours are overtime. The gross pay becomes 40×rate plus 7.5×(rate×1.5).

Thresholds matter because they are where planning often goes wrong. Many people think that if they work 47.5 hours, all hours are paid at the overtime rate. That is not how time and a half usually works. Only the overtime portion (the hours beyond the threshold) is paid at the overtime rate. The rest stays at the base rate. This is exactly why the Overtime Breakdown tab exists: it makes the split explicit so there is no confusion.

Unpaid Breaks and Paid Hours

A common source of confusion is the difference between time on-site and paid hours. If you take an unpaid lunch break, you were at work longer than your paid time. Payroll typically uses paid hours for overtime thresholds, not the length of your shift. That means a day with an 8.5-hour shift and a 30-minute unpaid break is generally 8.0 paid hours, not 8.5. Over a full week, unpaid breaks can reduce paid hours enough to change how many overtime hours you end up with.

The Weekly Timecard tab lets you enter a break in minutes so you can estimate paid hours accurately. If you already track paid hours directly, you can switch to Hours per day mode and enter the paid hours without dealing with start and end times. The goal is flexibility: use the method that matches how you record your work time.

Rounding Rules and Small Differences

Payroll systems often apply rounding. Some employers round daily time to the nearest increment (for example, to the nearest 5, 6, or 15 minutes). Others compute to the minute. Some round each line item, while others compute with full precision and round only the final totals. These rules can cause small differences between an estimate and an official payroll result, especially when you have many partial-hour entries in a timecard.

This calculator includes a display precision setting so you can choose how many decimals to show, and a rounding mode option for planning. For most uses, standard rounding with two decimals is enough. If you are close to a target amount or you want a more conservative estimate, rounding down can give you a “worst-case” view, while rounding up can show a “best-case” view. Keep in mind that these are planning aids; your official payroll system may use different rounding rules.

Using the Time & a Half Pay Tab

The simplest workflow is to use the Time & a Half Pay tab when you already know your regular hours and overtime hours. Start by selecting your currency so the results format in a way that feels familiar. Enter your hourly rate, then enter regular hours and overtime hours. If you have any other gross pay that should be included in the same estimate—such as a non-overtime bonus—you can add it as well.

After you calculate, the results show the overtime rate, the regular pay, the overtime pay, and the total gross pay. It also shows a blended hourly rate and the percentage of total earnings that come from overtime. That overtime share is useful for budgeting: it helps you understand whether your income depends heavily on overtime or is mostly stable at base hours.

Using the Overtime Breakdown Tab

The Overtime Breakdown tab is the best choice when you have total hours worked but you do not know the regular vs overtime split. Enter your hourly rate, then enter total hours, and finally set the overtime threshold. The calculator computes regular hours as the smaller of total hours and the threshold. Overtime hours are the excess beyond the threshold. Once the hours are split, the pay follows the standard time-and-a-half math.

This tab also reports “extra earned from overtime,” which isolates the premium portion of overtime. Here is what that means: when you work an overtime hour at time and a half, you earn your base rate plus an additional half-rate premium. The “extra” is the premium portion that you would not earn if that hour were paid at the base rate. This is useful when you are comparing schedules because it shows how much additional income the overtime multiplier actually creates.

Weekly Timecard: Turning a Schedule into Paid Hours

A weekly timecard is where planning becomes practical. You can estimate a week before it happens, or you can reconstruct a week from your actual shifts. The timecard approach is especially helpful when you have different shift lengths, unpaid breaks, and days off. Instead of guessing total hours, you enter each day and let the calculator sum the week.

In Hours per day mode, you type paid hours directly. This is the fastest method if you already track paid hours or if your workplace reports them in a scheduling app. In Start/End time mode, you enter a start time, an end time, and an unpaid break in minutes. The calculator estimates paid hours for that day. If your shifts cross midnight, it also handles that by treating an end time earlier than the start time as the next day.

Once paid hours are computed, the calculator applies your weekly overtime threshold and splits the week into regular and overtime hours. It then computes regular pay, overtime pay, and total gross pay. If you want to save or share the estimate, the Export CSV button downloads a simple file you can open in a spreadsheet, making it easy to keep a weekly record.

Target Pay Planning: Working Backward from a Goal

Sometimes you do not want to know “What will I earn?” You want to know “How many overtime hours do I need?” That is the purpose of the Target Pay tab. You enter your hourly rate and the regular hours you expect to work at your base rate. Then you enter a target total gross pay amount. The calculator computes the pay you will earn from regular hours and any additional gross pay, then solves for the overtime hours needed at your time-and-a-half rate.

This kind of reverse planning helps with budgeting. If you have a monthly goal, you can estimate how many overtime hours you need each week. If you have a one-time goal, you can estimate a short-term overtime plan. This also provides a reality check: if the overtime hours needed are extremely high, it is a sign to adjust the goal, extend the time frame, or look for other income sources rather than relying entirely on overtime.

Blended Rate and Budgeting

Many people budget using a simple estimate: hourly rate times hours. Overtime complicates that because a portion of hours is paid at a higher rate. The blended rate compresses the complexity into one number. If you earned 1,050 in a week and worked 45 paid hours, your blended rate is 23.33 per hour. That is higher than your base rate because overtime raised the average.

Blended rates are useful when comparing options. For example, suppose one week you work 40 hours with no overtime, and the next week you work 46 hours with 6 overtime hours. The second week’s blended rate may be only slightly higher than your base rate, but the total earnings can be meaningfully higher. Seeing both the total and the blended rate helps you make balanced decisions about time, rest, and income.

Common Scenarios Where Time-and-a-Half Helps

Time-and-a-half pay often comes into play in predictable situations: end-of-month deadlines, seasonal peak periods, covering for coworkers, unexpected demand, or short-staffed shifts. In many industries, overtime is a major part of income planning. In others, overtime is occasional and used mainly as a buffer. No matter which category you fall into, understanding the math makes your pay less mysterious.

A typical use case is to estimate the value of one additional shift. If you know your base rate and you know that the shift hours would push you into overtime, you can estimate the overtime pay quickly. Another use case is to compare different schedules: fewer days with longer shifts vs more days with shorter shifts. The weekly timecard makes those comparisons simple because you can try multiple week layouts and instantly see the overtime split.

What This Calculator Does Not Include

This tool estimates gross pay based on rates and hours. It does not calculate taxes, retirement contributions, insurance deductions, or any other withholding. It does not automatically determine overtime eligibility under specific legal rules, and it does not apply special premiums unless you include them as other gross pay. If your paycheck includes shift differentials or holiday premiums, you can add them as other gross pay for an approximate total, but the exact breakdown may differ.

If you need a “net pay” view, the right approach is usually to start with gross pay (which this calculator provides) and then apply your own tax and deduction assumptions. For many planning tasks—like deciding whether to accept overtime, estimating weekly gross earnings, or planning overtime hours to reach a goal—gross pay is the most stable and comparable number.

Tips for Getting the Most Accurate Estimate

• Use paid hours, not shift length: If breaks are unpaid, subtract them so the calculator uses paid time.
• Match your threshold: If your overtime starts after a different weekly number, set the threshold to that value.
• Keep multiplier realistic: Time and a half is commonly 1.5, but if your policy uses a different multiplier, update it.
• Be consistent with rounding: Use the same precision across comparisons so your scenarios are apples-to-apples.
• Separate planning from payroll: Use this estimate to plan. For exact figures, verify with your payroll policy and payslip line items.

Using the Calculator for Weekly vs Biweekly Paychecks

Many paychecks are biweekly, but overtime rules are often based on a weekly threshold. If that is your situation, a good way to estimate a biweekly paycheck is to compute each week separately and then add the two totals. The weekly timecard tab helps because it estimates overtime based on a weekly threshold. You can run it for Week 1 and Week 2 and then combine the results. If your employer instead applies a threshold across the entire pay period, you can treat the threshold as a pay-period threshold in the breakdown tab and enter total hours for the period.

When you are not sure which method your employer uses, your payslip can usually tell you. If overtime is listed separately each week, weekly thresholds are likely being used. If it is listed only once for the full pay period, a pay-period threshold may apply. This calculator supports either approach through the threshold and hours inputs, but for the most accurate planning you should match the policy that produces your pay stub’s overtime hours.

Why “Extra From Overtime” Matters

Overtime pay is sometimes described as “worth it” or “not worth it,” but that judgment depends on what you mean. If you look only at total overtime pay, you may overestimate how much additional income overtime creates, because part of each overtime hour is just your base pay. The true incremental gain from the time-and-a-half rule is the extra half-rate premium per overtime hour.

For example, if your base rate is 20 and the overtime rate is 30, each overtime hour produces 10 of “extra” income beyond base pay. If you worked 6 overtime hours, the extra premium is 60. You still earned 120 at base pay for those 6 hours, but the premium is what makes overtime financially different. This perspective helps when you are deciding whether overtime is worth the time cost for you personally.