Payroll hours · Kangaroo Clock glossary

Payroll hours are the worker hours that get paid in a given pay period. This usually equals total clocked time minus unpaid breaks, then split into regular and overtime portions based on the applicable labor rules.

Payroll hours are the hours that translate into wages on a paycheck. Computing them starts with the raw clock data, total time between each clock-in and clock-out, and then applies a series of adjustments:

Subtract unpaid breaks (usually meal breaks of 30+ minutes)
Round to the agreed unit (some employers round to the nearest 6 minutes or 15 minutes; others use exact time)
Split into regular and overtime portions per the applicable rules (federal FLSA, state-specific overtime rules, union agreements)
Apply per-period totals if anything depends on weekly or monthly aggregation

The output is usually expressed as decimal hours (e.g., 38.75) rather than HH:MM, because payroll calculations multiply hours by wage rate and decimal is easier to compute with. Most digital time trackers export decimal hours; the payroll provider consumes them directly.