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Hours worked: keep your own record

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division tells workers who have no record of their hours or pay to start keeping one: the time you start, the time you finish, the meal break, and every time you are paid. This page is a place to do that. It adds up each shift and each workweek, shows the hours over 40 in a week, and prints the whole record to keep. There is no account and no price, and it works on a phone at the end of a shift.

Private by design. Nothing you type is sent anywhere, and your employer cannot see it through this site. What you add is kept in this browser on this device from the first time you press Add, and one button erases it. If the phone or computer belongs to your employer, or other people use it, think about keeping the record on a device of your own, or on paper. This page runs no analytics or tracking. How we handle privacy.

This tool needs JavaScript. You can keep the same record on paper: for each day, the date, the time you started, the time you stopped, and how long the meal break was; and for each payday, the date and the amount.

Good to know

How it works

The hours I worked: one line for each shift, with the date, the time you started, the time you stopped, and the unpaid meal break in minutes. The note is for anything you want to remember: the place, the task, who was there.
After you add a shift, the times stay in the boxes and the date moves to the next day, so a week of the same shift is quick to enter.
A split shift, with hours off in the middle, goes in as two lines on the same date.
Each time I was paid: the date and the amount that reached you.
My record puts the shifts into workweeks and adds up each one. Choose the day your workweek starts. An hourly rate is optional.
Print, Copy as text and Download (.txt) give the record to keep somewhere else. A copy off this device is the only backup there is.

What the Wage and Hour Division says

“If there is no record of your hours or pay: you can start keeping one yourself. Every day you work, write down the time you start and the time you finish. Write down if you took time for a meal break and how long the break was. Write down every time you get paid, with the date and how much pay you received.”
Wage and Hour Division, Frequently Asked Questions: Workers

“Unless exempt, employees covered by the Act must receive overtime pay for hours worked over 40 in a workweek at a rate not less than time and one-half their regular rates of pay.”
“An employee’s workweek is a fixed and regularly recurring period of 168 hours — seven consecutive 24-hour periods. It need not coincide with the calendar week, but may begin on any day and at any hour of the day.”
“Averaging of hours over two or more weeks is not permitted.”
Wage and Hour Division, Overtime Pay

“Federal law does not require lunch or coffee breaks. However, when employers do offer short breaks (usually lasting about 5 to 20 minutes), federal law considers the breaks as compensable work hours that would be included in the sum of hours worked during the workweek and considered in determining if overtime was worked.”
“Meal periods (typically lasting at least 30 minutes), serve a different purpose than coffee or snack breaks and, thus, are not work time and are not compensable.”
U.S. Department of Labor, Breaks and Meal Periods

“The employee must be completely relieved from duty for the purpose of eating regular meals. The employee is not relieved if he/she is required to perform any duties, whether active or inactive, while eating.”
Wage and Hour Division, Fact Sheet #22: Hours Worked (revised July 2008)

The same Frequently Asked Questions page says the Division has a free DOL-Timesheet app for Android phones and iPhones, and free record keeping handbooks that any Wage and Hour office will send.
The Division’s phone line is 1-866-487-9243. Its fact sheets give the hours as 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. in your time zone.

We read these four pages on October 10, 2026. The words in quotation marks are the Department of Labor’s; everything else on this page is ours.

How the page counts

A shift: the stop time minus the start time, minus the unpaid meal break you typed. From 8:00 am to 4:30 pm with a 30 minute meal break is 8 hours.
Past midnight: a stop time at or before the start time is read as the next day. From 10:00 pm to 6:00 am is 8 hours.
A shift that runs past midnight is split at midnight. Each part is counted on its own day, so when the next day begins a new workweek, the hours after midnight go to the new week. The meal break is taken off the part before midnight first.
A workweek: seven days in a row from the day you choose, starting at midnight.
Hours over 40: the week’s total minus 40. Weeks are never averaged together.
With a rate typed: the first 40 hours times the rate, and the hours over 40 times one and a half times the rate, each rounded to the cent. At $15.00 an hour, 44 hours 15 minutes is $600.00 plus 4.25 hours at $22.50, which is $95.63.
Short rest breaks are not taken off, because the Department of Labor page quoted here counts them as work hours.

What this record does not know

It does not know if the overtime rule covers your job. The rule starts with the words “Unless exempt”, and some jobs are exempt.
It does not know your state. Some states have their own rules about overtime, breaks and pay, and this page counts only the federal 40 hours in a week.
It does not know your regular rate. The Department of Labor counts overtime on the “regular rate”, which can differ from an hourly rate when there are tips, bonuses, piece rates or two rates of pay. The two sums here use only the number you type.
It starts every workweek at midnight. An employer can start the workweek at another hour, and then the weeks here will be a little off.
It does not know about clock changes. On the two nights a year the clocks move, a night shift is an hour longer or shorter than this page counts.
It does not check whether shifts overlap, and it does not know whether a time you typed is right.
It is your own record, not your employer’s, and this page cannot say how an agency or a court would weigh it.
It holds up to 400 shifts and 120 payments on this device, and it does not move to another phone or computer by itself.

If the pay does not match the hours

On this site: When something is wrong at work has the offices that take a pay problem, their phone numbers, and how long you have.
The Wage and Hour Division answers questions at 1-866-487-9243.
If the job ended: Lost your job.

Tools that go with this

When something is wrong at work: what to write down, which office takes which problem, and the words to say about your pay.
Money plan: one month of money on one page.
Bills: one real month, each bill with its due date, ticked off when paid.
Help with money: where to turn when the pay does not cover the month.
All the free tools, and how to save them on your phone.

A record and arithmetic, not legal advice. This tool adds up the times you type. It does not know your job, your state or your contract, and it cannot tell you what you are owed. If someone at work is in danger, call 911. If things are so heavy that you are thinking about ending your life, call or text 988 (in the U.S.), or open Get help now.

The tool and the wording around it were written with AI (Claude) for Scarlet Beast (our AI policy); the times, the amounts and the notes are yours. There is no AI inside this tool: it only adds, subtracts and multiplies. It has been checked by a program, not yet used by people on a job. What it keeps is listed on My data on this device. Also in Spanish: Horas trabajadas; both pages keep the same record on this device. Found a mistake? Email [email protected].