Time Bank Calculator

The balance is hours worked − hours contracted. Work 46 hours against a contracted 40 and you bank +6 hours — a credit. Come up short and the balance goes negative: a debit of hours you are expected to make up. The table above also shows the same figure as clock time (h:mm), which reads more naturally than a decimal once the numbers get larger.

Banking hours and paying overtime are two different things, and for a specific group of workers, swapping one for the other is not simply a matter of employer preference. Under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, non-exempt employees at private-sector employers generally must be paid overtime in cash — a private employer generally cannot lawfully offer time off later instead of the cash overtime premium as a substitute. Banking compensatory time off in place of cash overtime is, with narrow exceptions, an option federal law reserves for state and local government employers, not private companies. If a private employer is offering comp time instead of overtime pay to a non-exempt employee, that arrangement is worth confirming against federal and state rules rather than assuming it is standard practice.

This tool tracks a neutral hour balance — worked minus contracted, one hour for one hour. It does not calculate an overtime premium, it does not know whether your hours worked are eligible for time-and-a-half pay instead of banked time, and it does not know whether your specific arrangement is one a private employer can lawfully offer. For the cash value of extra hours at a premium rate, the overtime pay calculator answers a different question than this one.

Two situations sit outside the private-sector cash-overtime rule above. Exempt salaried employees are not entitled to overtime pay in the first place, so an employer giving them informal flexibility — extra time off after a heavy week — is not substituting for a legal entitlement that exists; it is simply a scheduling choice. Public-sector employers (state and local government) are separately permitted under federal law to offer compensatory time off in place of cash overtime for non-exempt employees, subject to caps and conditions set by federal rules and their own agency policy. Which situation applies to you depends on your employer type and your exempt status — both worth confirming directly.

Run this each pay period and carry the total forward to track a running balance — that part is simple bookkeeping and applies to anyone. Caps on how many hours can be banked, expiry windows, and whether banked time is paid out when you leave a job all vary by employer policy and, for public-sector workers, by agency rules, so confirm the specific terms with HR rather than assuming a single national rule covers every arrangement.