7 hours 45 minutes is 7.75, not 7.45
This is the single most common payroll error. Minutes are sixtieths of an hour, not hundredths, so the minutes figure cannot simply be moved after the decimal point. Forty-five minutes is three quarters of an hour, which is 0.75. Writing 7.45 understates the shift by eighteen minutes.
Why payroll uses decimals at all
Pay is hours multiplied by a rate, and multiplying by a mixed hours-and-minutes value is awkward. Decimal hours makes it one multiplication: 7.75 hours at £14 is straightforwardly £108.50. Every timesheet system converts to decimal internally, which is why the number on a payslip rarely matches the clock times it came from.
Quarter-hour and tenth rounding
Many employers round each entry to the nearest quarter hour, and professional services firms often bill in tenths — six-minute increments. Rounding is not inherently unfair as long as it goes both ways, which is what US Department of Labor guidance requires: rounding must be neutral over time, not systematically down. The tool shows both rounded figures and how many minutes the rounding moved you, so you can see which direction it went.
Rounding that only ever goes against the employee — rounding start times up and end times down — is a wage violation in most jurisdictions, however small each individual adjustment looks.
The three-minute rule
With quarter-hour rounding, the tipping point sits at seven and a half minutes either side of the mark. Clocking in at 9:07 rounds to 9:00; clocking in at 9:08 rounds to 9:15. Over a year those single minutes accumulate into real money, which is the argument for recording actual times and converting exactly.