Overtime: calculating it correctly from your timesheets

The timesheets are in, and the payslips have to go out. In between, someone adds up each employee's days and decides what gets 25% extra, what gets 50%, and what gets nothing. That is where the errors come from, in both directions.

The short answer, under French labour law: count by calendar week, and anything beyond 35 hours of actual work is overtime. The rest of this article covers the cases that complicate that simple rule.

The basic rule#

Three points cover most full-time employees.

• Overtime is counted per calendar week, from Monday 00:00 to Sunday 24:00. Not per day, not per month.
• Any hour of actual work beyond 35 hours in the week, worked at the employer's request, is an overtime hour.
• Unless an agreement provides otherwise, the premium is 25% from the 36th to the 43rd hour, then 50% from the 44th. An agreement can set other rates, but never below 10%.

Two details matter in the field. The annual overtime allowance is 220 hours per employee when no agreement sets a different one. And hours logged in your time-tracking tool and then approved by the employer count as implicit consent: an approved hour is an hour owed.

The method, week by week#

Take a crew lead paid €16 gross per hour, with no specific agreement in the company. The rate is an assumption.

The calculation takes three steps:

1. The first 35 hours are paid at the normal rate.
2. From the 36th to the 43rd hour, 8 hours, the premium is 25%: 8 × €16 × 1.25 = €160.
3. The 44th and 45th hours get 50%: 2 × €16 × 1.5 = €48.

The 10 overtime hours that week come to €208 gross. Applying 25% to all of them would have put €200 on the payslip, and the employee would have been right to claim the difference.

The opposite mistake happens too: counting hours as overtime when they aren't. That is what the next cases are about.

The four cases that trip people up#

A public holiday in the week#

Unless an agreement or custom says otherwise, hours not worked because of a public holiday don't count as actual work for this calculation. An employee who works four 8-hour days around a Wednesday holiday has 32 hours worked. Even after adding the usual 7 hours of the holiday for pay purposes, there is no overtime: the hours above 35 are paid at the normal rate. The employer may choose a more generous count.

Paid leave in the week#

Here it works the other way. When working time is tracked by the week, a day of paid leave counts as actual working time. An employee who works 33 hours and takes Friday off as paid leave is counted at 40 hours: 5 hours of overtime.

A week that straddles two months#

A week running from Monday the 28th to Sunday the 3rd is counted as a whole. Its overtime is paid on the following payslip. Splitting the week in two, one part per month, distorts the 35-hour threshold.

Part-time employees#

Beyond the hours set in their contract, part-time employees work additional hours, not overtime. These have their own limits and rates: 10% within one tenth of the contract hours, 25% beyond that.

What changes with an application built for your business#

The calculation isn't hard. What costs is redoing it by hand for every employee, every week, from hours that arrived by text message or on paper. We described how to record those hours in the field without a spreadsheet: once they are entered in the right place, the rest can follow.

• Each employee logs their hours on their phone, day by day, against the job.
• The calendar week is calculated automatically, including the holidays and leave recorded in the application.
• Your agreement's rates are set once, and each hour falls into the right band.
• The manager approves the week, and the list of hours to pay goes to payroll before the deadline, straddling weeks included.

It is the same shift as for payroll inputs that always arrive late: you stop chasing and collect what has already been entered.

What not to do#

Paying overtime as a flat amount, "four hours a week for everyone", with no link to the hours actually worked. In a dispute, the time record is what counts, and a flat rate without records protects nobody.

Letting an employee work extra hours without approving or refusing them. An hour that was seen and allowed to happen is still an hour to pay.

Overtime: the key takeaways#

Overtime is counted per calendar week, beyond 35 hours of actual work, with a 25% then 50% premium unless an agreement says otherwise. A public holiday doesn't count towards the threshold, paid leave does, and a week that straddles two months is paid in full the following month.

The calculation is simple for one week. It becomes a source of errors when it is redone by hand for a whole team. Hours entered in the right place and a rule set once are enough to get it right.