How to calculate your hourly salary in Excel

Do you know how much you’re making every day? If you’re paid on an hourly basis, keep track of your pay so you know exactly how much your income varies every month. Using Excel, you can keep your financial information all in one place and calculate hourly salaries with ease. Learn how to use Excel to keep track of hourly salaries with these helpful tips.

How to access Excel

In order to use the Excel app on your desktop, sign up for a Microsoft 365 subscription plan. You can choose a family plan or a personal plan depending on what makes the most sense for you. If you want to try Excel for free, you can opt for the free version of Microsoft 365 and get access to all available productivity tools online. You can calculate your hourly salary on either version, so choose the plan that works best for your budget.

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How to set up your salary spreadsheet

Don’t get overwhelmed by the hundreds of different formula options, it only takes a few simple steps to calculate your hourly salary in Excel. Use these quick tips to calculate your salary in a matter of minutes:

Open a new spreadsheet

Open a new spreadsheet in Excel and add a title to your document so you can access it again in the future. You can also browse through this collection of Excel templates and download the one that best fits your style.

Create your columns

Go to the top of the spreadsheet and start entering your information in each individual cell. You can change the width of the cell to fit longer words by moving your cursor between the top rows. So, if you’re trying to stretch column “B”, you’ll want to click between “B” and “C” at the top of the spreadsheet and drag to adjust. The texts in your columns should look something like this:

“Date” (Cell A4) > “# Of Hours Worked” (Cell B4) > “Amount Paid” (Cell C4) > “Hourly Rate” (Cell D4)

If you’re calculating the salaries of multiple employees, you can also include a column for “Employee Name” next to “Date.”

Enter your hours and amount paid

In the rows below the named columns, enter the date, number of hours you’ve worked, and the amount you made. Leave the cells under “Hourly Rate” blank.

“Thankfully, it only takes a few simple steps to calculate your hourly salary in Excel.”

Do some quick math

Double-click on the cell that’s directly under “Hourly Rate” and divide the product of 24 and the number of hours worked in the row by the amount earned. If you structured the columns of spreadsheet like the example above, your formula should look like this:

=C5/(24*B5)

Enter the formula into the empty cell and hit Enter. The number that appears should be your hourly salary for that day. To quickly apply this formula onto the rows below, select the cell with the formula and click on the small box located on the lower right-hand corner of the cell. Drag the box down to the other rows with data.

How to quickly calculate your weekly salary in Excel

If you already know your hourly salary, you can calculate how much money you’ll make each week by using the Timecard template. Download the template or open it in your browser and enter your hours under the “Regular Hours” column. Add your hourly rate in the “Rate per hour” row, and Excel will instantly calculate your weekly earnings in the “Total pay” row. You can adjust this template however you like or customize it to your liking.

When used correctly, Excel can be a very handy tool for budgeting and planning. Learn how to use Excel to calculate your expenses, and find more budgeting tips to get help with managing your money.