Minutes to Hours Converter

Clock time counts in sixtieths; decimals count in hundredths. In 2.30 hours, the .30 is three-tenths of an hour, which is 0.30 × 60 = 18 minutes. Two and a half hours is 2.5 in decimal and 2:30 on a clock.

This is the most common timesheet mistake. Someone works 7:45 and types 7.45, which is 7 h 27 min, so they lose 18 minutes of pay. The opposite direction catches people too: a payslip showing 7.75 hours means 7 h 45 min, not 7 h 75 min.

The Hours → minutes mode reads 2:30 as clock time and 2.30 as a decimal, so it shows the difference: 150 minutes against 138.

Many employers and billing systems don't record exact minutes:

• Tenths of an hour (6 minutes): the standard for lawyers' and consultants' billing. A 4-minute call is billed as 0.1 h.
• Quarter hours (15 minutes): common for hourly payroll. Rounding to the nearest quarter is often called the 7-minute rule: 1–7 minutes past a quarter rounds down, 8–14 rounds up.

US federal rules allow rounding to the nearest 5, 10 or 15 minutes only if it averages out over time and doesn't consistently shortchange employees. Rounding that always goes down isn't allowed. Many state laws are stricter. The rounding option above always rounds to the nearest step.

Spreadsheets store times as fractions of a day, so there are two different conversions depending on what you want to see:

• Decimal hours: =A2/60 turns 135 in A2 into 2.25.
• Clock display: =A2/1440 with the cell formatted as [h]:mm shows 2:15. The square brackets matter: plain h:mm resets after 24 hours, so 1,500 minutes would show as 1:00 instead of 25:00.
• Clock time back to decimal: if B2 holds 7:45 as a time, =B2*24 gives 7.75.