Decimal Hours Converter

Seven hours and forty-five minutes is 7.75 decimal hours, and 7.45 means nothing of the sort. Convert both ways between the clock and the spreadsheet.

Result

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Result—

In hours and minutes—

In decimal hours—

In minutes—

Rounded to the quarter hour—

How this was worked out

How it is worked out

decimal hours = hours + minutes ÷ 60

Why it is done this way

Clocks count in base sixty and spreadsheets and payroll in base ten. Half an hour is 30 minutes and 0.5 hours; a quarter is 15 minutes and 0.25. Moving between the two systems means dividing the minutes by 60, and treating the minutes as decimals directly can be off by more than half an hour a day.

Step by step

Take the loose minutes: in 7:45, that is 45
Divide by 60: 45 ÷ 60 = 0.75
Add it to the whole hours: 7 + 0.75 = 7.75 hours
To go back, multiply the decimal part by 60: 0.75 × 60 = 45 minutes

What is worth knowing

Plenty of contracts and clock-in systems round to the nearest quarter hour, which is why the page shows that figure separately. The rounding is not neutral: applied to the start and the end of every shift it can trim or hand over up to half an hour a day, so it is worth knowing which way your employer rounds and checking the monthly total against the unrounded figure.

Frequently asked questions

What is 7:45 in decimal?

7.75 hours. The 45 minutes are three quarters of an hour, that is 0.75.

And how long is 0.5 hours?

Half an hour, or 30 minutes. On a clock you write it 0:30.

Why does my spreadsheet add hours wrongly?

Almost always because the cells are formatted as numbers rather than as times. Converting to decimals before adding fixes it.