HH:MM to Decimal Hours Calculator

Enter a time and pick a direction to convert between HH:MM and decimal hours.

Result

7.75 h
7:45
465 min

How it is calculated

Clock time to decimal: the text before the colon is the hours h and the text after it the minutes m, so decimal hours = h + m ÷ 60 and total minutes = h × 60 + m. The input must look like H:MM with one to three digits of hours and minutes from 0 to 59; anything else, such as 7:75 or 7.45, gives no result. Decimal to clock time works the other way: total minutes = round(decimal × 60), then hours are the whole number of 60s and minutes the remainder, written with a leading zero. A decimal value must be zero or above and use a point as the decimal separator. Decimal hours are shown with two decimals, but the conversion back to H:MM uses the exact value you typed.

Worked example

Convert 7:45 to decimal hours. Hours h = 7 and minutes m = 45. Fraction of an hour: 45 ÷ 60 = 0.75. Decimal hours: 7 + 0.75 = 7.75 h. Total minutes: 7 × 60 + 45 = 465 min. Going back, 7.75 × 60 = 465 minutes, which is 7 hours and 45 minutes, written 7:45. At a pay rate of 20 per hour, this shift is worth 7.75 × 20 = 155, whereas treating 7:45 as 7.45 would give only 149.

Try this example →

Common mistakes

  • Reading the minutes as a decimal fraction, so 7:45 becomes 7.45. The correct value is 7.75, because 45 minutes is 0.75 of an hour.
  • Typing a minute value of 60 or more, such as 7:75, expecting it to roll over. The tool rejects it; enter 8:15 instead.
  • Using a decimal comma such as 7,75 in decimal-to-clock mode. The field only accepts a point, 7.75.
  • Leaving the direction on clock-to-decimal while typing a decimal like 7.5, or the reverse. Either mix-up returns nothing.
  • Using the rounded 2-decimal display for payroll sums. A time like 7:05 shows as 7.08 h but is really 7.0833, so add the exact minutes when totalling many entries.

About this calculator

Time recorded as hours and minutes on a clock or timesheet — like 7:45 — cannot be multiplied by an hourly rate or summed correctly in a spreadsheet without first converting it to decimal hours, because 45 minutes is not 0.45 of an hour but 45/60 = 0.75. This mismatch is one of the most common sources of payroll and invoicing errors when time is entered in HH:MM form and then treated as a plain decimal.

This converter does the arithmetic both ways: given HH:MM it computes total minutes and divides by 60 to get decimal hours, and given a decimal value it splits off the whole hours and converts the fractional remainder back to minutes. It is the same conversion used by timesheet systems, freelancer invoicing tools and payroll software whenever billable time needs to move between a human-readable clock format and a calculation-ready number.

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Comments (1)

  • Editorial team

    On a timesheet with several lines, convert each shift but add the exact values, not the rounded ones. 1:20 shows as 1.33 h, yet the real figure is 80 minutes, so three such lines should total 4 hours, not 3.99. For the reverse direction, typing 1.2 returns 1:12, which is easy to misread as 1:20. What rounding rule does your payroll use: nearest minute, tenth of an hour or quarter hour?

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