Shift Calculator

Your Shift on the Wheel

Common Shift Patterns

Tap a real-world roster to load clock-in, clock-out, and a typical unpaid break.

Shift → Total & Paid Hours

Building a full week? Pair this with the Work Hours Calculator to total multiple shifts and apply 40-hour overtime.

The Overnight-Wrap Formula

Pay Rules Reference

No saved shifts yet. Tap "Save to History" to remember up to six shift calculations.

How to Use the Shift Wheel

1. Enter clock-in and clock-out. If clock-out is earlier than clock-in, the wheel automatically wraps the arc past the midnight notch — no negative hours.
2. Set the unpaid break in minutes (typically 30 or 60). Paid hours equal total hours minus this break.
3. Enter your hourly rate and the night differential multiplier; the deep-blue band shows which worked hours fall in the 22:00–06:00 night window.
4. Toggle "Weekend shift" to apply a Saturday/Sunday premium, then read total hours, paid hours, night hours, and gross pay in the cards.
5. Save the shift to history. Total multiple shifts across the week and remember FLSA overtime kicks in past 40 hours.

Shift Math, Overtime & the Eight-Hour Day

In 2026, a hospital scheduler in Manchester building next week's rota, a 24-hour distribution-center supervisor in Memphis, and a freelance bartender reconciling a graveyard shift all wrestle with the same trap: a shift that starts at 22:00 and ends at 06:00 is not minus-sixteen hours. It is eight. The minute a shift crosses midnight, naive subtraction breaks, and the worker either gets shorted or the employer overpays. This Shift Calculator solves the overnight wrap on a 24-hour shift wheel, then subtracts the unpaid meal break and layers night and weekend differentials to produce paid hours and gross pay.

The eight-hour shift is the descendant of a two-century fight. Robert Owen coined the demand in 1817 - eight hours labour, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest. The Haymarket affair of 1886 in Chicago turned May 1 into International Workers' Day around that single number. In the United States the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) of 1938 finally set the federal baseline: 40 hours per week at straight time, with time-and-a-half overtime for every hour beyond 40. The FLSA does not cap daily hours for most adults and does not itself mandate meal breaks, which is why break rules vary by state and by contract.

Overtime is where shift math earns its keep. Under FLSA section 7, non-exempt employees earn 1.5 times their regular rate for hours worked over 40 in a workweek. Some states stack a daily overtime rule on top: California pays 1.5x after 8 hours in a day and 2x after 12, and double time on the seventh consecutive day. This tool computes straight paid hours per shift; weekly overtime is applied once the week's total crosses 40, so a worker logging five 9-hour shifts banks 5 hours of overtime regardless of how the days fall.

Night-shift differentials reward the biological cost of working against the circadian clock. There is no federal private-sector mandate, but the practice is near-universal: the U.S. federal pay system (5 CFR 550.121) pays a 10 percent night differential for regularly scheduled work between 6:00 PM and 6:00 AM. Private employers commonly pay a flat per-hour add-on or a 5 to 15 percent premium for hours after 22:00. This calculator marks the 22:00-to-06:00 window with a deep-blue band on the wheel and applies a configurable night-differential multiplier to only those hours.

Weekend and holiday premiums follow the same logic of compensating undesirable hours. Many collective-bargaining agreements and retail or healthcare contracts add a weekend differential - often time-and-a-quarter for Saturday and time-and-a-half for Sunday - independent of weekly overtime. The wheel here lets you flag a shift as a weekend shift to apply that premium to the paid hours, useful for nurses, transit operators, and hospitality staff who rotate through Saturday-Sunday coverage.

Reading shift time on a circular 24-hour wheel rather than a linear timeline makes the overnight wrap unmistakable. The wheel runs midnight at the top, noon at the bottom; the shift arc sweeps clockwise from clock-in to clock-out. A graveyard shift literally sweeps across the top of the wheel through the midnight notch, so the eight-hour span is read off the dial, not miscounted. The night-differential band sits underneath the arc so you can see at a glance how many of the worked hours qualify for the premium.

Accurate shift accounting matters beyond the paycheck. Fatigue-management standards from the FAA, FMCSA, and the European Working Time Directive all key off accumulated hours, and the difference between a 7.5-hour and 8.5-hour logged shift compounds across a roster. Whether the goal is a clean timesheet, a fair rota, or a dispute over a graveyard premium, the workflow is the same: set clock-in and clock-out, subtract the unpaid break, flag night and weekend hours, and read total hours, paid hours, and gross pay together.