How to convert Toggl or Clockify durations to decimal hours for invoicing

An invoice needs 1.5 hours, not 1:30:00, 90:00 min or 1h 30m. Excel won't multiply a text duration by your hourly rate, and multiplying a real time value gives you a fraction of a day. This guide shows how to get decimal hours, either straight from the tracker or with a formula, and how to round them for billing.

Step 1: Try the tracker's own decimal setting first

The cleanest fix is to have the tracker show decimal hours to begin with.

• Toggl: in Profile settings, Duration display format offers Classic (47m 6s), Improved (0:47:06) or Decimal (0.79 h) (Toggl: Your Profile Settings). Toggl Track says the duration format applies across the app and in your reports (Toggl Track: Your account). It's a personal setting, so a teammate's export can look different from yours.
• Clockify: the duration format is a workspace setting (Workspace settings > Time tracking > Duration format): Full (hh:mm:ss), Compact (h:mm) or Decimal (h.hh). Decimal is a paid-plan feature and rounds to two decimals (Clockify Help: Duration format).

Change the setting, export a small detailed report and check the Duration column before you rely on it. If you can't change the setting, or you've been sent a file someone else exported, use the formulas below.

Step 2: Find out what the cell actually contains

Click a duration cell and look at the formula bar.

• A real time value (Excel right-aligns it, and changing the format to General shows something like 0.0625). This is the usual result when Excel opens 1:30:00 from a CSV.
• Text (left-aligned, and General changes nothing). Durations over 24 hours, like 125:30:00, and anything with letters, like 90:00 min, often stay as text.

The formulas are different for each, so check before you convert a whole column.

Step 3: Convert hh:mm:ss to decimal hours

If A2 holds a real time value:

=A2*24

Format the result as a number with 2 decimals, not as a time. Excel stores times as fractions of a day, so ×24 gives hours (1:30:00 → 1.5).

If A2 holds text such as 1:30:00 or 125:30:00, split it at the colons:

=LEFT(A2,FIND(":",A2)-1) + MID(A2,FIND(":",A2)+1,2)/60 + RIGHT(A2,2)/3600

This works for any number of hours as long as minutes and seconds are two digits each.

Step 4: Convert minutes:seconds text such as "125:30 min"

Some files give total minutes and seconds with a unit after them. For 125:30 min in A2:

=LEFT(A2,FIND(":",A2)-1)/60 + MID(A2,FIND(":",A2)+1,2)/3600

That's 125 minutes = 2.0833 h plus 30 seconds = 0.0083 h, or 2.0917 hours. The text after the seconds is ignored, so it doesn't matter whether it says min or nothing at all. Check one row by hand before you fill down.

If the tracker gives you 47m 6s (Toggl's Classic format), switching to Improved or Decimal in Step 1 is far easier than parsing it.

Step 5: Round for billing

Decide whether you round each entry or the total. They give different invoices:

• Five 7-minute entries rounded up to quarter hours each: 5 × 0.25 = 1.25 h
• The same entries totalled first (35 min = 0.583 h), then rounded up: 0.75 h

Write down which rule your contract uses, then pick the formula. With decimal hours in B2:

• Round up to the quarter hour: =CEILING(B2,0.25)
• Round to the nearest quarter hour: =MROUND(B2,0.25)
• Round down: =FLOOR(B2,0.25)

For 6-minute (tenth-of-an-hour) billing, use 0.1 instead of 0.25.

The trackers can also round for you. Toggl's report Rounding (a paid feature) can round up, to nearest or down, at intervals including 6, 15 and 30 minutes, and can apply to individual entries or to grouped subtotals (Toggl Track: Rounding). Clockify has a Round time in reports workspace setting (Clockify Help: Workspace settings). Use either the tracker's rounding or your spreadsheet's, not both.

Step 6: Total, multiply, check

Sum the rounded hours per client and project (a pivot table does this), then work out amount = hours × rate. Before you send anything, check that the total hours roughly match the tracker's report total for the same date range and filters. A big gap usually means a text cell that didn't convert, or a duration over 24 hours that Excel read wrongly.

Doing it faster

Tracker Invoice Lines reads a detailed Toggl, Clockify or Harvest CSV in your browser, converts the durations, groups them into one line per client and project (or task), applies your rates and gives you a Xero, Wave or generic Qty × Rate CSV. It's $8, paid once. It doesn't create PDF invoices or connect to your accounting software.

→ Tracker Invoice Lines

Related tools

• Billing a flat fee plus hours? See How to bill flat-fee plus hourly work from Toggl time entries.
• Getting an export ready for your accountant? BooksExport Clean tidies QuickBooks Online and Xero exports.