Timesheets, invoices and project plans often want hours as a decimal, while your watch gives you minutes. Converting by hand is easy to get wrong, especially with the leftover minutes.
One box, both directions.
How to use the Minutes to Hours Converter#
- Choose a direction. Minutes to hours, or hours to minutes.
- Enter the amount. Decimals are fine.
- Read the result. You get decimal hours and hours and minutes.
The formula#
135 minutes is 135 ÷ 60 = 2.25 hours, or 2 hours and 15 minutes. The decimal part isn’t the number of minutes: 0.25 hours is 15 minutes, not 25.
Common conversions#
| Minutes | Decimal hours |
|---|---|
| 15 | 0.25 |
| 30 | 0.5 |
| 45 | 0.75 |
| 90 | 1.5 |
| 100 | 1.67 |
| 120 | 2 |
Billing by the hour#
If you bill by the hour, convert the minutes before multiplying by your rate. A job that took 95 minutes at 40 an hour is 95 ÷ 60 × 40 = 63.33. Converting longer spans of time, such as a number of hours into weeks, is covered by the hours to week converter.
Timesheets and decimal hours#
Many payroll systems want hours in tenths, so time is rounded to the nearest six minutes. Others use quarter hours.
| Minutes | Tenths of an hour | Quarter hours |
|---|---|---|
| 6 | 0.1 | 0 |
| 12 | 0.2 | 0 |
| 18 | 0.3 | 0.25 |
| 30 | 0.5 | 0.5 |
| 45 | 0.75 | 0.75 |
A common mistake is reading 1.30 hours as one hour thirty minutes. It’s actually 1 hour 18 minutes, because 0.30 of an hour is 18 minutes. Check which format a form expects before you type a number in.
Decimal hours for common minutes#
Most payroll systems, invoices and spreadsheets want hours as a decimal, not as hours and minutes. This table gives the figures people need most often. Minutes are divided by 60, so 15 minutes is 0.25 of an hour and 20 minutes is one third.
| Minutes | Decimal hours | As hours and minutes |
|---|---|---|
| 5 | 0.0833 | 0 h 5 min |
| 10 | 0.1667 | 0 h 10 min |
| 15 | 0.2500 | 0 h 15 min |
| 20 | 0.3333 | 0 h 20 min |
| 30 | 0.5000 | 0 h 30 min |
| 40 | 0.6667 | 0 h 40 min |
| 45 | 0.7500 | 0 h 45 min |
| 50 | 0.8333 | 0 h 50 min |
Notice that 0.5 hours is 30 minutes, but 0.3 hours is only 18 minutes. People commonly read 1.3 hours as 1 hour 30 minutes, and that mistake gets repeated in timesheets every week. 1 hour 30 minutes is 1.5 hours.
Two worked examples#
Take 135 minutes. Divide by 60 and you get 2.25 hours. To say it in hours and minutes, find how many whole hours fit (2, because 2 × 60 = 120) and keep the remainder: 15 minutes. So 135 minutes is 2 hours 15 minutes, or 2.25 hours.
Now 47 minutes. 47 ÷ 60 = 0.7833 hours. If you are paid ₦2,500 an hour, that is ₦1,958.33. If your payroll rounds to two decimal places, it would use 0.78 hours and pay ₦1,950, so check which rounding your employer uses.
To go the other way, multiply by 60. 3.4 hours is 204 minutes, which is 3 hours 24 minutes.
Rounding rules at work and in billing#
Many employers and clients round time, and the rule matters. In the United States, the Fair Labor Standards Act allows employers to round to the nearest quarter hour, the so-called 7-minute rule: 1 to 7 minutes round down and 8 to 14 round up, as long as the rounding does not favour the employer over time. Law firms and consultants commonly bill in tenths of an hour, so each increment is 6 minutes, and 20 minutes becomes 0.4 hours.
If you freelance, say in your contract how you round. A client who sees 0.33 hours on an invoice may ask where it came from, and you can point them to the minutes.
| Billing increment | Length | A 20-minute task bills as |
|---|---|---|
| Tenth of an hour | 6 minutes | 0.4 hours (24 minutes) |
| Quarter hour | 15 minutes | 0.5 hours (30 minutes) |
| Exact minutes | 1 minute | 0.33 hours (20 minutes) |
Minutes in a day and a year#
A day has 1,440 minutes, a week has 10,080 and a 365-day year has 525,600. If you want to know what share of the day something takes, divide its minutes by 1,440. A 90-minute film is 6.25 percent of a day. A 30-minute commute each way is 60 minutes, which over 250 working days is 15,000 minutes, or 250 hours, a bit over six working weeks.
Frequently asked questions#
1.5 hours, or 1 hour and 30 minutes.
Divide by 60.
Because 0.5 of 60 minutes is 30 minutes.
Multiply by 60.
Divide the number of minutes by 60. For example, 90 minutes divided by 60 is 1.5 hours, and 45 minutes divided by 60 is 0.75 hours. To show the result as hours and minutes, take the whole number of hours and keep the remainder as minutes, so 90 minutes is 1 hour 30 minutes.
Because the figure after the decimal point is a fraction of an hour, not a count of minutes. 0.30 hours is 0.30 × 60 = 18 minutes, so 1.30 hours is 1 hour 18 minutes. One hour thirty minutes is 1.5 hours. The mix-up is common in timesheets, which is why it helps to write decimal hours and clock time differently.