I typed 1 for a one-hour break and only one minute was taken off. Why?
Because the break field is counted in minutes, not hours. 1 means one minute, so a 09:00 to 17:00 day comes out at 7:59 instead of 7:00. Type 60 for an hour and 30 for half an hour. Decimals such as 1.5 are refused with an error rather than guessed at.
Whole minutes only
The column heading is 'Break (min)', and every number in it is read as minutes. That is on purpose: real breaks are measured in minutes, 15, 20 or 45, and entering them in hours would mean fractions like 0.25 and 0.75 that are easy to get wrong.
Examples on the same 09:00 to 17:00 day, eight hours before any break:
- Break 1: the row is 7:59, or 7.98 in decimal.
- Break 60: the row is 7:00.
- Break 90: the row is 6:30.
- Break 1.5: an error saying break minutes must be a whole number between 0 and 1440.
The field also accepts Arabic-Indic digits, so ٦٠ gives the same result as 60.
Why decimals are refused rather than interpreted
If you type 1.5, do you mean an hour and a half or a minute and a half? The calculator cannot know, and any guess would be wrong for half the people using it. So it highlights the row, shows the error and holds back the totals until you enter a whole number. The number 1, on the other hand, is a valid whole number, which is why it went through without a warning and took off a single minute. The clue is in the row's hours, not in a message, so always glance at them after typing a break.
A break longer than the shift
Another common slip: a short shift from 09:00 to 10:00 with a break of 90. You do not get negative hours. You get a message that the break is longer than the shift itself, with the shift's length, here 1:00, so you know how far to bring it down. Usually the break was typed on the wrong row, or the end time is missing a digit.
A quick routine to avoid it
- Open the Timesheet calculator and convert every break to minutes before typing it: an hour is 60, an hour and a quarter 75, an hour and a half 90.
- After typing, look at the row's hours: do they equal the shift length minus the break you expected?
- Enter a break only if it is unpaid. If your contract pays for it, leave it out, because the calculator subtracts whatever is in the field.
- If a row is highlighted, read the message under the table; it names the day number and the kind of error.
Common questions
Can I leave the break field empty?
Yes. Empty counts as zero and the row is counted at its full length.
What is the largest break allowed?
The field takes up to 1440 minutes, but a break can never be longer than the shift it belongs to.
Are breaks treated as paid?
No. The calculator treats all break minutes as unpaid and subtracts them from the shift.