Why Your Timesheet Is Probably Wrong (And How Rounding Rules Work)

I once worked at a company that rounded clock-in times to the nearest quarter hour. I did not think much of it until a coworker pointed out that he was consistently clocking in 7 minutes early and the system was rounding him down. He thought he was being diligent. In reality, he was donating about 30 hours of unpaid labor per year. Timesheet rounding is legal, common, and poorly understood. The rules are straightforward once you know them, but most employers never explain the mechanics. The 7-Minute Rule Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, employers can round clock-in and clock-out times to the nearest quarter hour. This is the 7-minute rule, and it works like basic rounding. If you clock in at 8:07 or earlier, your time rounds down to 8:00. If you clock in at 8:08 or later, it rounds up to 8:15. The dividing line is 7 minutes and 30 seconds. The same applies to clocking out. Clock out at 5:07, it rounds to 5:00. Clock out at 5:08, it rounds to 5:15. The FLSA allows this because, in th