How are working hours calculated?
Working hours come from the span between check-in and check-out, reduced by any unpaid break the employer's policy takes out. Nine hours on site with an hour of unpaid lunch gives eight working hours. The figure appears per record on the attendance table, and as a period average beside the shortfall against expectation.
Three different numbers describe the same day, and people mix them up in reports where the difference decides the answer.
Time on site is first entry to last exit. Working hours take the unpaid break off that span. Logged hours are a separate act of recording, done later, against projects.
They rarely agree, and the gaps are informative. Working hours running well above logged hours usually means a timesheet nobody filled in. The reverse usually means somebody estimated a week on Friday afternoon.
Pick the number that fits the question. Cover questions want time on site. Capacity questions want working hours. Questions about where the effort went want logged hours.
Getting this wrong is easy and hard to spot. The wrong number still looks authoritative. It has a decimal point and a heading. It simply answers a question nobody asked.
The period view adds a second figure worth using. Average working hours comes with the shortfall against what was expected, stated rather than left for somebody to subtract. That saves the most common arithmetic slip, which is comparing an average against the wrong baseline.
Baselines are not one number everywhere either. A role at four longer days can meet a weekly target and miss a daily one. Decide which your reports enforce, and write it next to the break rule.
A day with an unmatched entry produces no figure at all rather than a short one. An open record is a missing measurement, and treating it as a low number turns a broken scan into an apparent half day.
Read the average working hours beside the hours-short figure shown with it. The shortfall is stated rather than left for somebody to work out from two columns.
Related questions
Do breaks come out of the figure?
Unpaid ones do and paid ones usually do not. Which of yours is which comes from the employer's own policy, and the convention varies enough to be worth checking.
Why do my working hours differ from my logged hours?
They measure different things. One comes from the clock, the other from what you recorded against projects. A persistent gap usually means an incomplete timesheet.
Are these the same as billable hours?
No. Billable is a flag on a project, and plenty of genuine working hours attach to nothing billable.