Military vs. Decimal Time Display

I often talk with customers who use the phrase 'military time' to describe how they want total hours to be displayed on their timecard reports. After a little more discussion, I realize they are using military time to describe something other than a 24-hour clock. Technically, military time refers to the 24-hour clock that keeps time from midnight to midnight. This time keeping convention is typically used in the military or in medicine so there's no ambiguity as to when events occur.

What time clock software users are usually asking for when they want hours to display in military time is to show the hours worked in decimal format. If the symbol separating the hours and minutes is a colon (:) on your employee timecards, then the total hours worked are displaying as hours and minutes. If the symbol separating the hours and minutes is a dot (.), then the total hours worked are displaying in decimal format, which is the most common format for entering employee hours into your payroll software, or reporting the hours to your payroll processor.

Virtual TimeClock uses the same 12-hour or 24-hour clock notation that your computer is set to. However, if you want to change your employee timecards to display totals in decimal format, you can make that change directly in the time clock software. All you need to do is go to the Reports menu and choose Report Writer. Select the employee timecard and click the Format tab. You'll be able to toggle the time display between hours & minutes and decimal hours.

Jeff Morrow

Technical Support Team

Redcort Software