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Business Math: How to Convert Minutes to Decimals and Decimals to Minutes

Time can be expressed either as fractions, decimals, or as minutes and hours. In order to calculate payroll, time needs to be in decimal form so that it can be multiplied by an employee’s pay rate.

Convert decimals to minutes

To convert time expressed in decimals back to minutes you will simply take the decimal portion of the number, i.e. just the digits to the right of the decimal point, and multiply it by 60 (minutes in an hour).

For example, if you have 1.45 hours, then take .45X60. This gives you 27. So 1.45 hours is the same as 1 hour and 27 minutes.

That’s it!

Convert minutes to decimals

Going back to decimal form is just as simple. For 1 hour and 35 minutes, you will simply divide the minutes by 60, In this case divide 35 by 60, i.e. 35/60=.58. Back in decimal form, 1 hour and 35 minutes is the same as 1.58.

Easy peasy once you know how!

As a fraction

If, for some reason, you want to see what this looks like represented as a fraction, you can easily do that too.

First, convert minutes and hours to decimal form. Let’s use our last example. 1 hour and 35 minutes is represented as 1.58 in decimal form. As a fraction you have 1 and 58/100 – since you have one whole and 58 pieces of a whole. Of course we can reduce that fraction by dividing both numerator and denominator by their greatest common factor, 2 in this case, to get 29/50. So 1 hour and 35 minutes is the same as 1 and 29/50.

For Payroll

In payroll calculations, you need to multiply the employee’s pay rate by the decimal form. If you’re tracking your employee’s time in Timesheets.com, you’ll see both the numbers on the timesheet and just the decimal numbers on reports.

Let Timesheets.com convert minutes to decimals automatically!

9 Responses

  1. I am brushing up on my mental math before I switch jobs. Does anyone by chance know a URL that contains math minutes with decimals. Division, multiplication, addition, subtraction on the site?

  2. Businesses across America could save hundreds of millions of dollars a year by using what I call 35-20 rounding. Explained easily instead of using pennies, for every bill that is .03 or higher would be .05, and every bill that is .02 or lower would be .00, therefore, 3=5 and 2=0 or 35/20. This would totally eliminate the need for using, counting, processing, and making pennies. This would greatly benefit businesses and government to finally rid our economy of burdensome pennies and literally save billions over years.

  3. With regards to fractions, it is always tricky to deal with it. Thankfully your site gives me another way to solve it accurately.

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