Free Time and a Half Calculator

Use the free calculator below to find your time-and-a-half rate and overtime pay instantly, or keep reading to learn the formula and calculate it yourself. Either way, this is one of the most common payroll questions there is, and getting it wrong is an easy way to underpay or overpay an employee without anyone noticing until it's already happened a few times.

What Is Time and a Half?

Time and a half is a pay rate equal to 1.5 times an employee's regular hourly rate, most commonly paid for overtime hours. If someone earns $20 per hour, their time-and-a-half rate is $30 per hour for every overtime hour they work.

The Time and a Half Formula

Time and a Half Rate = Hourly Rate × 1.5
Overtime Pay = Overtime Hours × Time and a Half Rate

For example, an employee earning $18 per hour who works 5 overtime hours in a week would calculate it like this:

$18 × 1.5 = $27 per hour
5 × $27 = $135 in overtime pay

⏱ Time and a Half Calculator

Enter an hourly rate and hours worked to calculate pay instantly.

Hourly Rate ($)

Regular Hours

Overtime Hours

Time and a Half Rate

$30.00

Overtime Pay

$150.00

Regular Pay

$800.00

Total Pay

$950.00

When Do You Earn Time and a Half?

Under federal law (the Fair Labor Standards Act), non-exempt employees earn time and a half for every hour worked beyond 40 in a single workweek. The workweek is a fixed, recurring 7-day period that the employer defines, not a calendar week or a pay period, and overtime is always calculated against that single week, never averaged across two weeks in a biweekly pay period.

Some states layer on additional rules. California is the most notable example, requiring daily overtime once an employee works more than 8 hours in a single workday, in addition to the standard weekly threshold.

Time and a Half vs Double Time

Factor	Time and a Half	Double Time
Multiplier	1.5× regular rate	2× regular rate
Federal requirement	Required after 40 hours/week	Not required under federal law
California trigger	Hours 8–12 in a single workday	Hours beyond 12 in a single workday
Example at $20/hr	$30.00/hr	$40.00/hr

Common Mistakes When Calculating Time and a Half

The most common mistake is calculating overtime against the pay period instead of the workweek. In a biweekly or semimonthly pay period, each individual week inside that period has to be checked separately, since a two-week total can look perfectly fine while one specific week inside it actually triggered overtime. A second common mistake is leaving non-discretionary bonuses and commissions out of the regular rate before calculating overtime, when in many cases they're required to be folded in, which quietly understates the true time-and-a-half rate. Misclassifying an employee as exempt when they don't actually meet the salary and duties test is another frequent and costly error, since it strips away overtime they were legally owed. And in states with daily overtime rules like California, tracking only the weekly total instead of each individual day will miss overtime that was earned and never paid.

How Updoot Makes This Automatic

Doing this calculation by hand for one employee in one week is simple enough. Doing it correctly for a whole team, every week, across different states and pay rates, is where manual tracking starts to break down. Updoot calculates daily, weekly, and California overtime automatically as time is tracked, applies the correct pay rates and multipliers without anyone running a formula by hand, and exports everything in a payroll-ready format. The calculation above is exactly what's happening behind the scenes, just running automatically across every employee instead of one at a time.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is time and a half? ▶

Time and a half is a pay rate equal to 1.5 times an employee's regular hourly rate, typically paid for overtime hours. If someone earns $20 per hour, their time-and-a-half rate is $30 per hour.

What is the formula for time and a half? ▶

Time and a Half Rate equals Hourly Rate multiplied by 1.5. Overtime Pay equals Overtime Hours multiplied by the Time and a Half Rate. For example, $18 per hour times 1.5 equals a $27 time-and-a-half rate, and 5 overtime hours at that rate equals $135 in overtime pay.

When does an employee earn time and a half? ▶

Under federal law, non-exempt employees earn time and a half for hours worked beyond 40 in a single workweek. Some states have additional rules, most notably California, which also requires daily overtime after 8 hours in a single workday and double time after 12.

Is time and a half based on the pay period or the workweek? ▶

Time and a half is always calculated based on the workweek, not the pay period. In a biweekly or semimonthly pay period, each individual week within that period must be checked separately for overtime, since a pay period total can look fine while one specific week inside it actually triggers overtime.

Does time and a half apply to salaried employees? ▶

It depends on whether the employee is exempt or non-exempt, not simply whether they're salaried. Non-exempt salaried employees are still entitled to overtime pay under federal law, while exempt employees, who typically meet specific salary and job duty tests, are not.

Does time and a half include bonuses and commissions? ▶

In many cases, yes. Non-discretionary bonuses and commissions are often required to be factored into an employee's regular rate of pay before calculating overtime, which can make the true time-and-a-half rate higher than the base hourly wage alone would suggest.

Final Takeaway

Time and a half comes down to one formula: hourly rate times 1.5, multiplied by overtime hours. The math is simple. What trips businesses up is the workweek rule, daily overtime in states like California, and folding bonuses into the regular rate correctly. Use the calculator above any time you need a fast, accurate number instead of doing the math by hand.