A time card calculator with a lunch break subtracts your unpaid meal period from each day's clock-in-to-clock-out span, then adds up the week. A 9:00 AM–5:00 PM day with a 30-minute unpaid lunch is 7.5 paid hours, not 8 — and over a five-day week that gap is 2.5 hours of pay.
How to calculate a time card with a lunch break
- For each day, find the span from clock-in to clock-out. 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM is 8 hours.
- Subtract the unpaid lunch from that span. 8 hours minus a 30-minute lunch is 7 hours 30 minutes, or 7.5 decimal hours.
- Add up the paid hours across all the days you worked to get the weekly total.
- Anything over 40 hours in the week is overtime, paid at one and a half times your rate. Multiply regular and overtime hours by your pay rate for gross pay.
The calculator above does all four steps live: type each day's in time, out time, and lunch minutes, and it deducts the lunch, totals the week, splits regular from overtime, and — if you enter an hourly rate — shows gross pay. Overnight shifts are handled automatically: if the clock-out is earlier than the clock-in, the span is treated as crossing midnight.
Paid or unpaid? What the law says about lunch
Whether your lunch is deducted comes down to one question: were you completely relieved of duty? Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, a bona fide meal period — ordinarily 30 minutes or more, during which you are free of work duties — is not paid and is correctly subtracted from your hours. Shorter rest breaks are different: breaks of about 5 to 20 minutes count as time worked and must be paid, so you should not deduct them.
Two rules follow from that, and both protect you:
- A working lunch is paid. If you eat at your desk while still answering calls, covering the floor, or otherwise on duty, the meal period is not "bona fide" — it counts as hours worked and should not be deducted, even if your timesheet auto-subtracts it.
- Short breaks stay in. A 10- or 15-minute coffee break is paid time. Only the genuine, duty-free meal period comes out.
One more point worth knowing: federal law does not actually require employers to provide a lunch break at all. The FLSA sets rules for how breaks are paid, not whether you get one. Many states do mandate meal and rest breaks — California, for example, requires a 30-minute meal period for shifts over five hours (waivable by mutual consent when the shift is no longer than six hours) — so check the rules where you work. The federal overtime basics guide covers the workweek rules these hours feed into. (Details from the U.S. Department of Labor's Fact Sheet #22 on hours worked.)
Worked example: a week with daily lunches
Sam works Monday through Friday, 8:00 AM to 4:30 PM, taking a 30-minute unpaid lunch each day.
- Daily span: 8:00 AM to 4:30 PM = 8 hours 30 minutes.
- Minus the 30-minute lunch: 8 hours 0 minutes paid per day.
- Five days × 8 hours = 40 hours for the week — no overtime.
- At $20/hour: 40 × $20 = $800.00 gross.
Now add a sixth day — a Saturday, 8:00 AM to 12:30 PM with no lunch, 4.5 hours. The week becomes 44.5 hours: 40 regular and 4.5 overtime. The overtime pays 4.5 × $30 = $135, so gross is $800 + $135 = $935.00. Without subtracting the weekday lunches, the same timesheet would have wrongly shown 49.5 hours and overpaid — which is exactly why the lunch deduction matters.
How a daily lunch adds up over a week
An unpaid lunch is small each day and large by Friday. The table shows the weekly paid hours for a fixed 8-hour clocked span (say 8:00 AM–4:00 PM) across five days, by lunch length.
| Lunch per day | Paid hours/day | Paid hours/week (5 days) | Unpaid hours/week |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 min | 8:00 | 40.0 | 0.0 |
| 30 min | 7:30 | 37.5 | 2.5 |
| 45 min | 7:15 | 36.25 | 3.75 |
| 60 min | 7:00 | 35.0 | 5.0 |
Auto-deducted lunches and unpaid time
Many timekeeping systems automatically subtract a 30- or 60-minute lunch from every shift, whether or not you actually took it. That is legal only when the meal period was genuine and duty-free. If you regularly work through an auto-deducted lunch — staying on the line, covering a station, or being interrupted — those minutes are hours worked and should be paid. Keep your own record of the days you skipped or shortened lunch; the gap between a clean auto-deduction and the time you actually worked is one of the most common sources of unpaid wages. This calculator lets you enter the real lunch you took each day, including 0, so your total reflects what you actually worked rather than a blanket deduction.
Frequently asked questions
Is a lunch break paid or unpaid?
A genuine meal period — usually 30 minutes or more, during which you are completely relieved of duty — is unpaid and is subtracted from your hours. Short rest breaks of about 5 to 20 minutes are paid and count as time worked. If you work through your lunch, it stops being a bona fide meal period and should be paid.
Does my employer have to give me a lunch break?
Not under federal law — the FLSA does not require meal or rest breaks. It only sets how breaks are treated when they are given: short breaks paid, bona fide meal periods unpaid. Many states do require breaks, with their own rules on length and timing, so check your state's law.
How much does a 30-minute lunch cost me over a week?
A 30-minute unpaid lunch is 2.5 unpaid hours across a five-day week. At $20/hour that's $50 a week you spend off the clock, and about 130 hours — more than three full work weeks — across a 52-week year. It isn't pay lost, since the time isn't worked; it just explains why a "9 to 5" rarely means 40 paid hours.
Should I enter the lunch as minutes or as a time?
Enter the lunch as a number of minutes — 30, 45, 60 — not as a clock time. The calculator subtracts those minutes from that day's clocked span. Use the "apply lunch to all days" button to fill the same value down every row, then adjust any day where your lunch was different.
Does it handle overnight shifts and overtime?
Yes. If a day's clock-out time is earlier than its clock-in, the shift is treated as crossing midnight, so a 10:00 PM–6:00 AM night counts correctly. Once the week's paid hours pass 40 (or your own weekly threshold), the extra hours are split out as overtime at one and a half times your rate.
Is anything I type saved or sent anywhere?
No. Every calculation runs in your browser. Nothing you enter — times, lunches, or pay rate — is transmitted or stored anywhere.