Breaking down minutes from 60 to a base-10 decimal system assists with tracking large amounts of minutes worked on a specific task or project.
If a company is billing a client and needs to know the accurate number of hours worked by an employee or they are monitoring productivity, this method will help tremendously. Minutes can easily get convoluted after a certain point, so making the conversation streamlines the process and the review easier to understand.
As mentioned above, to convert minutes to decimals you will divide the number of minutes by 60. The number is divided by 60 since that is the number of minutes in an hour. The decimal will represent the fraction of an hour that the minutes represent.
Here are a few examples to get your head wrapped around it.
Example 1: Convert 85 minutes to a decimal
85 ÷ 60 = 1.417
Example 2: Convert 222 minutes to a decimal
222 ÷ 60 = 3.7
Example 3: Convert 15 minutes to a decimal
15 ÷ 60 = 0.25
Example 4: Convert 60 minutes to a decimal
60 ÷ 60 = 1.0 (As you can see, 60 minutes of work equals exactly one hour.)
Depending on the timesheet and policy, it might make more sense to round to the second decimal point. Getting the conversion can save time and aid with reading and tracking hours on a timesheet or paycheck. While it does take some getting used to, once it is down it will contribute to efficiency and accuracy overall.
