Working Hours Calculator South Africa 2025

Keeping track of your work hours isn’t just helpful—it’s essential. In South Africa, your working hours, breaks, leave, and overtime are protected by the Basic Conditions of Employment Act (BCEA), which sets standards for fair treatment in the workplace.

Whether you're a full-time employee at a firm in Johannesburg, a part-time café worker in Cape Town, or a contract cleaner in Durban, logging your hours helps ensure you’re paid correctly and working within legal limits.

Need a simple, reliable way to track your work hours or check if you're owed overtime?
Use our free Online Working Hours Calculator for South African workers.

What Is a Working Hours Calculator?

A working hours calculator helps you keep track of the hours you've worked on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. It’s especially useful for:

• Verifying your wages match the hours you've worked
• Identifying unpaid overtime
• Checking that you’re working within legal limits
• Supporting pay or contract disputes
• Managing your schedule and budget better

Whether you're in retail, healthcare, construction, or remote freelance work, this tool helps you manage your time and income efficiently.

How to Use Our Working Hours Calculator?

Using our free Working Hours Calculator is simple and takes less than a minute:

• Enter your start time, end time, and break duration for each workday
• The calculator will automatically work out your total daily hours
• It adds up your weekly hours and flags any overtime
• Use the summary to check if you’re being paid fairly or working beyond your contract
• You can save or screenshot your results for personal records or to share with HR

It's a quick, accurate way to stay in control of your time and earnings—no spreadsheets or guesswork needed.

What Are The Working Hours Rules in South Africa?

Standard Working Hours

• Maximum of 45 hours per week
• Typically 9 hours per day if you work 5 days a week
• 8 hours per day if you work more than 5 days a week
• Working more than this is considered overtime

Breaks

• You’re entitled to a 1-hour lunch break after 5 consecutive hours of work
• This break can be reduced to 30 minutes by agreement
• Breaks shorter than 60 minutes are usually unpaid unless otherwise agreed

Overtime Pay

• Overtime must be voluntary and agreed to by the employee
• You can’t be asked to work more than 10 hours of overtime per week
• Weekday overtime is paid at 1.5x your normal hourly rate
• Sunday or public holiday work is paid at 2x your normal rate

Rest Periods

• 12 consecutive hours of rest between workdays
• 36 consecutive hours of weekly rest (including a Sunday, unless agreed otherwise)

Full-Time vs. Part-Time Work

• Full-time: Typically 40 to 45 hours per week with full employment benefits
• Part-time: Fewer hours than full-time, with proportional access to employment rights and benefits

How to Calculate Your Working Hours?

Use these simple formulas:

• Daily hours = End time – Start time – unpaid breaks
• Weekly hours = Total of daily hours for the week
• Monthly hours = Weekly hours × number of work weeks

For example

If you work from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM with a 1-hour lunch break:

• Daily = (9 hours – 1 hour) = 8 hours
• Weekly = 8 hours × 5 days = 40 hours

Example Timesheet – 45-Hour Workweek

Let’s say you’re an admin assistant working from 8 AM to 5 PM, Monday to Friday, with a 1-hour unpaid lunch:

Total Weekly Hours = 40

If your contract is for 45 hours per week, this means you’re 5 hours under. If you worked late during the week to make up for it, those hours might qualify as overtime depending on your agreement.

How to Track Working Hours in Excel?

If you prefer using Excel to manually log your hours, here’s how to set it up:

• Create columns for:DateStart TimeEnd TimeBreak Time (in hours)Total Hours Worked
• Date
• Start Time
• End Time
• Break Time (in hours)
• Total Hours Worked
• Formula to calculate total hours (assuming Start Time is in B2, End Time in C2, Break in D2):=(C2-B2)*24 - D2 Make sure the cell format is set to “Number” or “Time (hh:mm)” as needed.
• Sum the total hours for the week:=SUM(E2:E6)
• Add a column for Overtime and compare the total with your contract’s weekly hours.

Pro Tip: Format time columns as “Time” and total columns as “Number” to avoid display issues.

What’s Next? Grow Your Money Through Smart Investing

Tracking your hours and pay is step one. Once you’ve got control over your income, the next step is growing it through smart investments.

In South Africa, you can explore:

• Tax-Free Savings Accounts (TFSAs)
• Unit Trusts and ETFs
• Retirement Annuities (RAs)
• Fixed Deposits and Bonds
• Stock Market Investments through JSE or online brokers

Whether you're starting with R500 or R5,000, investing helps you grow your income and secure your financial future.

Check out our South Africa Investment Guide to compare options and start building wealth today.

P. Laurore

Finance expert

Co-founder of HelloSafe and holder of a Master's degree in finance, Pauline has recognised expertise in personal finance, which she uses to help users better understand and optimise their financial choices. At HelloSafe, Pauline plays a key role in designing clear, educational content on savings, investments and personal finance. Passionate about financial education, Pauline strives, with every piece of content she oversees, to provide reliable, transparent and unbiased information for independent and informed financial management. To this end, she has tested over 100 trading platforms to help internet users make the right choices.