Military time chart

Minutes to decimal hours

Hours

h

Minutes

min

Decimal hours

7.67

Minutes ÷ 60	0.6667
Total minutes	460

Convert a full week →

Every hour of the day

The first chart lists the 24 starting hours with their standard form and, for reference, the colon style used by phones and computers set to 24-hour display. Read across a row to convert in either direction. The labels on the right are only there to help orient a time quickly; in a schedule built around three 8-hour shifts, for example, the changes usually fall at 0700, 1500 and 2300, which sit in three different sections.

Two rows deserve a second look. The 00 row is 12 AM, the hour that begins the day, and the 12 row is 12 PM, the hour that begins the afternoon. On the 12-hour clock both are written with 12, which is the whole reason the military clock exists: it gives each hour of the day a number used once.

A quick way to memorize the afternoon half is to remember a few anchors and count from them. 1500 is 3 PM, the end of a typical day shift; 1800 is 6 PM, dinner time; 2100 is 9 PM. Every other afternoon hour sits one step away from one of those. In the morning half nothing needs memorizing, since 0800 is simply 8 AM. People who read schedules every day, such as nurses, flight crews or warehouse leads, stop converting after a few weeks and read 1630 directly as late afternoon, the way they would read a temperature. Until then, print the chart or keep this page open next to the rotation, and check any time before 0100 twice, because that is where the 12 AM confusion lives.

Quarter hours at a glance

Schedules and time clocks often work in quarter hours, so the second chart lays out each hour with its :00, :15, :30 and :45 marks in military form, followed by the standard time. It is useful for reading a posted rotation or a printed time card quickly. Federal rules let an employer round punches to the nearest quarter hour if the practice averages out over time (29 CFR 785.48), which is why so many cards show these four values.

Minutes in decimals for military punches

A time card in military format still has to be paid in decimal hours. The hours part of a punch is already a number; the minutes part is a fraction of 60. The third chart converts the common minute values. A worker who punches in at 0652 and out at 1521, with a 30-minute unpaid lunch, has worked 7:59, which payroll writes as 7.98 hours. Writing it as 7.59 by mistake, reading the minutes as a decimal, would underpay the shift.

For a value that is not on the chart, the minutes to decimal converter handles any number, and the military time converter explains the rules behind the first two charts, including how to say each time aloud. Whole weeks of military punches can go straight into the timesheet calculator, which accepts 1752 as readily as 5:52 PM and applies the meal deductions allowed by 29 CFR 785.19. Short rests stay on the card under 785.18.