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TimesheetCalculator

Lunch & break deductions

Time Card Calculator with Lunch

Built for shifts with unpaid meal breaks: enter your times, type the lunch minutes, and get exact paid hours, overtime and pay for the week.

Weekly Time Card (with lunch) — enter start time, end time and unpaid break for each day
Day Start End Lunch (min) Total

Type times like 9, 9:30a, 17:30. Breaks in minutes (30) or 0:45. Overnight shifts (10 PM → 6 AM) are handled automatically. Use + split for a second work period in a day.

How to use this calculator

  1. 1

    Enter each shift

    Start and end times per day — type 9, 9:30a or 17:30.

  2. 2

    Enter the unpaid lunch

    Put the lunch length in minutes in the Lunch column (30, 45, 60…). It is deducted from that day instantly. Use h:mm like 1:00 for longer meals.

  3. 3

    Keep paid breaks in

    Short rest breaks of 5–20 minutes are paid time under federal rules — don’t enter them as deductions.

  4. 4

    Check totals and pay

    Weekly hours appear in h:mm and decimal with overtime split out. Add a rate to see gross pay.

Common lunch deductions

What a lunch costs you in paid hours on a standard shift:

ShiftLunchPaid hoursDecimal
9:00 AM – 5:00 PMNone8:008.00
9:00 AM – 5:00 PM30 min7:307.50
9:00 AM – 5:30 PM30 min8:008.00
8:00 AM – 4:30 PM30 min8:008.00
8:00 AM – 5:00 PM60 min8:008.00
7:00 AM – 7:00 PM45 min11:1511.25

Tip: working a “9 to 5” with an unpaid half-hour lunch is a 37.5-hour week, not 40 — a difference of about $195/month at $18/hour. Knowing the real number is exactly why this page exists.

Frequently asked questions

How do I calculate my time card with a lunch break?
Work out each day as end time minus start time, then subtract the unpaid lunch. An 8:00 AM–4:30 PM shift with a 30-minute lunch is 8.5 hours minus 0.5 = 8 paid hours. Enter the times and lunch minutes above and the deduction happens automatically for every day.
Is a lunch break counted in hours worked?
A genuine meal break of 30 minutes or more where you are fully relieved of duty is normally unpaid and excluded from hours worked. If you work through lunch — answering phones, covering a register — that time legally counts as paid work under the FLSA.
Are 15-minute breaks paid?
Yes — under federal law, short breaks of about 5 to 20 minutes count as compensable work time. Only bona fide meal periods (typically 30+ minutes, duty-free) can be unpaid. So enter your lunch in the Lunch column, but leave coffee breaks out of it.
Do employers have to give a lunch break?
Federal law does not require meal or rest breaks — break rights come from state law. Over 20 states require meal periods (California: 30 minutes before the end of the 5th hour; a second before the end of the 10th). Check your state labor department, and see the break time calculator for the common state rules.
What if my lunch is automatically deducted but I worked through it?
Auto-deducted but worked lunches are one of the most common wage errors. Track the days it happened with this calculator (set lunch to 0 for those days), compare against your pay stub, and raise the difference with payroll in writing.
Can it handle two breaks in one day?
Yes — either sum the unpaid minutes into the Lunch field (e.g. two 30-minute meals = 60), or use “+ split” to enter the day as separate work periods around the breaks. Both produce the same paid-hours total.

Sources & further reading

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