Not all breaks are equal. Short rest breaks are paid by law; a real meal break usually isn't. Put both in and see exactly what is deducted.
The federal regulation behind this page (29 CFR §785.19) draws one bright line:
So the deduction question is never just "how long was the break" — it is "how long, and were you actually off duty." This calculator lets you mark each break paid or unpaid to match your situation. For a full week with an automatic lunch rule, use the Timesheet Calculator with Lunch Break.
A weekly timesheet with honest lunch maths: manual breaks, plus an automatic lunch deduction when a long shift has no break entered.
Free — try itOne shift in, one exact answer out: hours and minutes, decimal hours, break handling, rounding and the gross pay for that shift.
Free — try itBuilt for real punch clocks: up to four in/out pairs in a day — lunch gaps excluded automatically — totalled into paid time and decimal hours.
Free — try itThe flagship weekly time card: clock in/out and breaks for 7 days, overtime split at 40 hours, gross pay, print and CSV — plus Save My Week on your device.
Free — try itNo. Under federal rules, short breaks of about 5–20 minutes are paid time and cannot be deducted from your hours, even if you leave your workstation.
If you are not completely relieved of duty — for example you must answer the phone or watch the counter — the meal period counts as work time under federal law and should be paid, whatever it is called.
Each is a short rest break under the federal rule and must be paid. They would be entered here as paid breaks, deducting nothing.
The paid/unpaid line above is the federal floor. Some states (California, Washington, Oregon and others) additionally require that meal and rest breaks be provided and add premium pay when they are not — a separate entitlement from the deduction maths here.
This calculator separates the three things a shift contains: time on the clock, breaks that come off, and breaks that stay on. It takes the full span from clock-in to clock-out (rolling into the next day for overnight shifts), subtracts only the breaks you mark as unpaid, and reports the paid time that remains — with the paid-break minutes shown separately so you can see they were kept.
You work 9:00 AM to 5:30 PM at $20/hour, with a 30-minute unpaid lunch (Break 1) and a 15-minute paid rest break (Break 2). The calculator shows 8:30 on the clock, 0:30 of unpaid break deducted, 0:15 of paid break kept, and paid time of 8:00 (8.00 hours) — a gross of $160.00 for the shift. If the rest break were wrongly marked unpaid, paid time would drop to 7:45 and the gross to $155.00.
It follows your switches, not its own judgement: a break marked “unpaid” is subtracted and a break marked “paid” is kept, whichever way round you set them. Whether a break should legally be paid depends on its length and whether you were relieved of duty — this tool does the arithmetic for the treatment you choose.
Paid time is floored at zero — the calculator never reports negative time. If the unpaid breaks meet or exceed the time on the clock, the result is 0:00 paid time, which usually means a break length or a clock time was entered wrong.
The page has two break slots, but you can combine breaks of the same type: add a second unpaid break's minutes into the first unpaid slot, or a second paid break into the paid slot. Only the totals matter to the result, not how the breaks were spaced through the day.
Yes. A clock-out at or before the clock-in is treated as the next day, so a 10:00 PM to 6:00 AM shift measures 8 hours on the clock before breaks are applied — the same engine the other Loona Hours tools use.
The gross line is shown only when an hourly rate is entered. Leave the rate at 0 (or empty) and the page reports time only — on the clock, deducted, kept, and paid — which is all you need if you are checking hours rather than money.
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