The problem

A common concern / question we get asked is why the hours you see on the timesheet aren’t totaling up correctly. When you add the totals by hand, you get a different total than the one shown on the timesheet. Here’s an example:

Here you see that on Dec 1st, 8.03 + 8.03 + 8.08 hours were worked, totaling 24.14 hours, but the timesheet shows 24.15 hours. Similarly for Dec 2nd, 8.15 + 8.22 + 8.52 hours were worked, totaling 24.89 hours, but the timesheet shows 24.88 hours. But don’t worry, the totals are not wrong!

Why the totals don’t appear to add up

The reason why the totals don’t appear to add up is because when you convert minutes to hours, the conversion often results in a number with lots of decimal places. If you’ve configured the timesheet to only show durations to two decimal places, we’re only able to show part of that number. For example:

1 minute = 1/60 hours = 0.0166666666 hours
2 minutes = 2/60 hours = 0.033333333 hours
3 minutes = 3/60 hours = 0.05 hours
4 minutes = 4/60 hours = 0.066666666 hours
5 minutes = 5/60 hours = 0.083333333 hours
6 minutes = 6/60 hours = 0.1 hours
7 minutes = 7/60 hours = 0.116666666 hours
8 minutes = 8/60 hours = 0.133333333 hours
9 minutes = 9/60 hours = 0.15 hours

So when we display 4 hours and 1 minute, we’ll show 4.02 hours if you’ve opted to show durations to two decimal places, or 4.0167 if you’re showing durations to four decimal places (the default setting). If you have lots of clock times that are being cut off at 2 decimal places, you’ll quickly see that you can’t manually add up the intermediate steps to get the final total.

Note that Clockspot does not perform any rounding whatsoever on clock times! We simply display the final, accurate total to the number of decimal places you’ve configured in your settings. You can change your duration precision by going to Settings > General Settings > Timesheet tab.

Another common mistake

Another common mistake people make is confusing 8.15 hours for 8 hours 15 minutes, or 8.30 hours for 8 hours 30 minutes (don’t worry, this trips us up sometimes too!). Just remember that when you see 8.30 hours, it means 8 hours and 18 minutes (0.3 hours = 0.3 x 60 minutes = 18 minutes), not 8 hours and 30 minutes!