Set up overtime

Track overtime hours worked by employees.

Oliver Cook avatar
Written by Oliver Cook
Updated over a week ago

You can use Timesheets to track overtime hours. This overtime can be automatically broken down into different categories. It is particularly useful for differentiating between rates at which the overtime is paid.

Only employees with administrator or timesheets administrator access can follow these steps below.


Select how overtime is tracked

  1. Click your name in the top right, then click Settings.

  2. On the settings menu click Timesheets, then click Overtime.

  3. Select your overtime tracking option.

    • Each day individually - Each day is looked at individually, and if hours in the day exceed hours in default working pattern, then they count as overtime

    • Hours exceeding default working pattern - Total hours within the timesheets period are counted and any hours exceeding this number count as overtime.

    • Don't count overtime - If selected, all information about overtime is hidden. Even if an employee works more than their working pattern, the extra hours are not counted or shown separately as "overtime"


Allow employees to move overtime to a time off policy

If required, you can select what time off policy you would like employees to be able to move overtime hours to - This gives employees the choice of either being paid for their overtime, or increasing their time off allowance, which is the equivalent of time owed in lieu (TOIL).

📌TIP: If you have created a specific TOIL time off policy, this would be an ideal time off policy to select for overtime hours to be moved to. However, it can be any time off policy you have created.

You can either set it so that either

  • Overtime only goes towards the selected time off policy

  • An employee can choose to split overtime hours to be paid salary and/or the selected time off policy.


Create an Overtime Category

Create overtime categories to breakdown overtime hours worked.

  1. Click your name in the top right, then click Settings.

  2. On the settings menu click Timesheets, then click Overtime.

  3. Click Add new category


  4. Name the overtime category.

  5. Specify an overtime range – This range of hours is tracked after the working pattern. If you type in, for example, 0 and 2, then the first two hours of overtime work will fall into this category.

  6. Select what type of days the overtime category will apply on.

    • Working days - Days that have prefilled hours from working pattern or shift scheduling

    • Non-working days and holidays - Days that do not have prefilled hours or are public holidays

    • Custom working days - Days that have been specified in the working pattern

  7. Click Save.

Example

James has a working pattern that makes an 8-hour working day. This working pattern applies every day, from Monday to Friday. His Sage HR account has the following Overtime categories created:

If James would work 10 hours (8h of his contracted hours and 2h as overtime), then his manager would then pay him for a full-day work as well as for 2 hours extra, according to Rate 1 - this is because these hours would be categorised in the Overtime category named Rate 1.

Now, if James works 2 hours more on the same day (making the 4 hours of overtime and 12 hours of work in total), then the last 2 hours would get categorised as Rate 2.

Eventually, if James would come to work on Sunday (as we agreed earlier, James has a standard working week, Monday to Friday, therefore Sunday is not a working day in his working pattern), then all of his working time would be rated at Weekend & Holiday Rate automatically.


Overtime tracking per group

This allows you to assign overtime categories to track overtime hours of your timesheet groups.

  1. Click your name in the top right, then click Settings.

  2. On the settings menu click Timesheets, then click Overtime.

  3. Click Add group.

  4. Select relevant timesheet groups and overtime categories that you want to assign to each other.

  5. Click Save.

How do I extract the overtime data for my employees?

Use Overtime report to retrieve the information on Overtime hours reported by your employees, with breakdown by categories and total per period:

  1. On the main menu click Reports.

  2. Click Timesheets then click Overtime.

  3. Select how you want the report to be broken down, then click Generate to see the report pop up, or click Export to download it as a PDF.

Tracking overtime for part-time employees

In order to be eligible for overtime payouts labour codes often require part-time employees to accumulate a numbers of hours equal to a full-time working day.

In order to enforce this, you can specify the number of hours to calculate overtime - Read more >


📎NOTE: Having this parameter set will enable Sage HR to track the overtime for each day only this amount of time is reached. For example, if set to 8 hours, overtime calculations will only take into account time worked after 8 hours, even if the day duration defined in the working pattern is lower.


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