The importance of accurate minute to decimal conversion

While a few decimal points more or less might not seem like a big deal, it really is. Consistently rounding 0.15 hours up or down to 0.2 or 0.1 could hypothetically cause fluctuations of 5% in an employee’s paycheck. While these problems aren’t hard to correct, they put an additional burden on HR and employee relations, which can pose a real obstacle to growing your business. By calculating payment correctly, you avoid the risk of cutting your own profits or depriving employees of their earned wages. Of these two problems, though, underpaying employees is certainly the worse one.

If a job description guarantees a certain level of payment and an employee consistently finds themselves earning slightly less than they should, it can contribute to poor morale and mistrust. People make work decisions with their hearts more than with their brains, so these negative experiences can have an outsized impact on the reputation of your business. Increased turnover, reputation damage and greater difficulty finding good employees are all possible consequences of faulty minute-to-decimal conversion.

Convert minutes to decimal chart

If there were 50 minutes in an hour, then conversion to decimals would be extremely simple; you could simply double the number to get a perfect conversion. Converting 60 minutes into a decimal number requires multiplying it by 1 2/3, which is a problem because 10 cannot be divided neatly into thirds.

As such, the only practical way to handle payroll is to round the decimal to the nearest hundredth. This rounding produces some odd figures, such as one minute rounding to one-fiftieth of an hour (0.02 hours) rather than one-sixtieth. However, this is a better solution than inviting errors by making payroll more complex by rounding to thousandths or tenths of thousands. You can review the following minutes-to-decimals chart to make sure that your payroll is accurate.

Time to decimal chart

Automatic minutes-to-decimal conversion

Minutes-to-decimal conversion and similar tasks that demand time and precision but have no space for creativity or added value are ideal targets for automation. Neatly converting each minute to the proper decimal taxes a person’s relatively limited ability for deep focus, and it’s necessary to compromise absolute accuracy for the sake of practicality. While a computer cannot manage employee relations or conduct an interview, there’s virtually no limitation on its ability to calculate precisely and consistently for any amount of time.

If your growing company finds payroll and minutes-to-decimal conversion to be a source of unwanted headache, consider implementing payroll software. The time and human error that it saves can translate into cost savings and improved HR performance, all while rounding minutes and decimals much more precisely.