How to count working hours: from 7:45 to 7.75 on the payslip

Adding up hours and minutes goes wrong in three places: the night shift, the break, and turning minutes into a fraction of an hour. Each has a simple rule.

Working out how long you worked looks like addition. The catch is that clocks run in base sixty, payroll runs in decimals, and the law has its own view on breaks and overtime. Hence the three places where the sum falls apart.

1. A shift that ends after midnight

Subtracting the start from the end only works inside one day. A shift from 22:00 to 6:00 comes out as minus sixteen hours, which people then correct by hand and sometimes get wrong.

The rule: if the end is earlier than the start, add 24 hours. 6:00 plus 24 is 30:00, minus 22:00 is eight hours. That is the length of the shift.

2. The break you must not subtract

Not every break shortens working time. In Poland, a working day of at least six hours includes a 15 minute break that counts as working time, with a second one when the day is longer than nine hours and a third beyond sixteen (art. 134 of the Labour Code, as amended in 2023).

You only subtract a break that does not count as working time, such as a longer meal break introduced by the employer's work rules (art. 141). Subtracting the statutory fifteen minutes is the most common error in a monthly timesheet, and it always works against the employee.

3. Minutes as a fraction of an hour

Payroll does not take 7:45. It takes 7.75. The conversion is minutes divided by sixty:

The trap is 15 and 45 minutes, which get written as 0.15 and 0.45 out of habit. At 30 zł an hour, that mistake on 45 minutes is nearly nine zloty on a single day.

A second trap: do not round on the way. Ten days of 6.67 hours add up to 66.7 rather than 66 hours 40 minutes. Sum in minutes and divide at the end.

When work counts as overtime

Overtime is work beyond the working time norms that apply to you, usually eight hours a day and forty hours a week on average, and beyond the longer daily hours of your working time system (art. 151 of the Labour Code).

On top of normal pay, the supplement is:

• 100% for work at night, on Sundays and holidays that are not your working days, and on a day off given for working a Sunday or holiday;
• 50% for overtime on any other day;
• 100% as well for exceeding the average weekly norm, unless one of the above already applied to those hours.

Overtime is capped at 150 hours per calendar year unless a collective agreement, the work rules or the contract set another figure, and weekly hours including overtime may not exceed 48 on average.

An example over three days

• 8:00-16:30 with a 30 minute unpaid break: 8:00
• 7:00-18:15 with a 45 minute break: 10:30, of which 2:30 is overtime
• a night shift 22:00-6:00: 8:00

That is 26 hours 30 minutes, or 26.5. At 30 zł an hour with a 50% supplement: 24 hours at 30 zł and 2.5 hours at 45 zł, 832.50 zł gross.

Count it without a spreadsheet

The work hours calculator does all three at once: it reads a shift past midnight, subtracts the break you enter, and gives the result in both clock and decimal form, with overtime over the norm you choose. It works in the browser, without an account.

If what you need instead is how many working days and hours a given month holds, that is a different sum, covered in the piece on the Polish working time norm.