How to Convert a Time to Decimal Hours in Excel

Turn h:mm durations into decimal hours for billing: multiply by 24, price the work, and round up to quarter hours.

You will learn to

• Convert an h:mm time to decimal hours
• Multiply hours by an hourly rate
• Round billable time up to the next quarter hour

How it works

Excel stores times as fractions of a day, so 1:45 is really 0.0729. Multiply by 24 to get decimal hours: =B2*24 returns 1.75. Format the result as General or Number — if it still uses a time format, it will look wrong.

Decimal hours are what you need for billing and payroll: =B2*24*rate prices the work. Many firms bill in quarter-hour increments, so round up with =CEILING(B2*24,0.25) — 6 hours 10 minutes becomes 6.25 billable hours.

=B2*24