In Excel: subtract the earlier time from the later one and format the result as [h]:mm — or multiply by 24 to get decimal hours you can pay against.
8.00 decimal hours
What this does
Excel stores a time as a fraction of a day: 06:00 is 0.25, 12:00 is 0.5. Subtracting two times therefore gives a fraction of a day, and the formatting decides what you see. The square brackets in [h]:mm are the critical part — plain h:mm resets to zero after 24 hours, so a 30-hour total displays as 6:00, which is the classic wrong timesheet. Multiplying the difference by 24 converts it to decimal hours (7.5 rather than 7:30), which is what payroll arithmetic needs. A shift crossing midnight makes the subtraction negative; =MOD(End-Start, 1) handles it by wrapping into the next day. And where the two moments fall on different DATES, store date and time together in one cell — subtracting a bare 09:00 on Tuesday from a bare 17:00 on Monday cannot possibly know a day passed. Most people learn this as a sequence of clicks and forget it by next week; learning it as a pattern instead is what lets you apply it to the next, slightly different version of the problem without starting from scratch. That is the difference this page is trying to make. Treat “excel hours between two times” as a small repeatable workflow rather than a one-off click you hope to remember next time. Use a small test block before the live file, so any surprise in the affected cells shows up while it is still harmless. When a formula is involved, keep the inputs labelled beside it, reference cells instead of typing values, and apply number formatting only after the result checks out. That turns a workflow that saves repeating the same clicks every week into a method you can reuse, explain, and defend when the workbook leaves your screen.
A worked example
Start 09:15 in B2, end 17:45 in C2. =C2-B2 formatted as [h]:mm shows 8:30. =(C2-B2)*24 formatted as a number shows 8.5 — the figure to multiply by an hourly rate. A night shift with start 22:00 and end 06:00: =C2-B2 shows ###### or a negative; =MOD(C2-B2, 1) shows 8:00. Timesheet arithmetic fails in exactly two ways — the 24-hour wrap and the midnight crossing — and both are one formatting choice and one MOD away from being right. If there is any chance you will reuse this, drop it into a small template tab right now: a labelled input area on the left and the formula beside it, checked once against the tool above. Next time the same question comes up, the answer is a single paste away instead of a rebuild from memory.
In Google Sheets
Google Sheets handles this almost identically to Excel. The formula syntax above is the same, and the menu lives under a slightly different label rather than a ribbon tab. Use the platform toggle at the top of the page to switch every keyboard shortcut between Windows and Mac, and expect at most cosmetic differences in naming. Nothing on this page is behind a login: the tool runs entirely in your browser, the formula is shown in full with one-click copy, and the steps work the same on Windows and Mac. That is the whole promise here — the exact answer, a way to prove it on your own numbers, and just enough context to make it stick. If you take one thing from this page on “excel hours between two times”, make it the habit rather than the keystrokes: set the problem up with labelled inputs, reference those cells, and let Excel do the recomputing. Bookmark the page for the syntax, but do the example once in a blank sheet and check it against the tool above — five minutes of hands-on practice fixes the method in memory far better than re-reading, and it surfaces the small snags while they are still harmless. After that the technique is genuinely yours: faster than searching for it again, and reliable enough to drop into work that other people depend on.
Common mistakes
- Formatting a total as h:mm rather than [h]:mm, so anything over 24 hours silently wraps.
- Subtracting bare times across midnight and getting ###### or a negative number.
- Paying against a time value directly — 8:30 as a number is 0.354, so it must be multiplied by 24 first.
- Entering times as text, which right-alignment (or the lack of it) reveals immediately.
- Summing a column of daily durations without the bracket format, which is where the wrong weekly total comes from.
Frequently asked questions
How do I calculate the difference between two times in Excel?
Subtract the earlier from the later — =End-Start — and format the cell as [h]:mm.
How do I get the number of hours as a decimal?
Multiply the difference by 24: =(End-Start)*24, formatted as a plain number. 7:30 becomes 7.5.
Why does my time difference show ###### or a negative?
The shift crosses midnight, so End is numerically smaller than Start. Use =MOD(End-Start, 1).
Why does my total reset after 24 hours?
The cell is formatted h:mm. Change it to [h]:mm — the brackets are what let the hours run past 24.