Subtracting Time

[SeaBoard]

I am fairly new to Excel, so please pardon this amatuer. I am trying to keep up with overtime figures. In the first column is the amount of OT we are budgeted for that day. In the second column is the actual amount of overtime. In the third column I want to show the difference between the first two. I am entering the values in the "h:mm" format. It seems excel refuses to view the data as quantities of time in the aforementioned units, and rather as various times of the day. I simply want it to calculate the difference between the quantities. Am I making any sense at all? I would appreciate any help on this.

[swatsp0p]

Hi SeaBoard: Yes, time management is a common issue with new (and not so new) users. Understanding how Excel deals with time helps a lot. Excel breaks a day into parts of 1, i.e. 12:00 Noon is actually recorded as 0.500.

Therefore, to calculate hours, one needs to multiply by 24 (e.g. 0.500 * 24= 12)

In your example, with allotted hours in A2 and used hours in B2, in C2 enter this formula:

=(A2-B2)*24

note: A2 and B2 should be formatted as Time (hh:mm) and C2 should be formatted as Number

Example:

in A2: 8:00 (indicating 8 hours available)
in B2: 9:30 (indicating 9 hours and 30 minutes used)
in C2: -1.5 is returned with the above formula (indicating an extra one and a half hours were used)

HTH