Overtime Calculation
How Hire2Hero classifies regular, overtime, and double-time hours using overtime rules, and how weekly totals aggregate across a candidate's placements.
Hire2Hero splits every candidate's hours into Regular, Overtime, and Double Time buckets automatically. The split is driven entirely by Overtime Rules — reusable threshold definitions you manage in Settings and assign per placement — so nothing about 8-hour days or 40-hour weeks is hardcoded. This article covers building rules, assigning them, and how the calculation behaves, including what happens when one candidate works multiple placements in the same week.
Overtime Rules
An Overtime Rule is a named set of threshold rows. Each row says: once hours pass this threshold in this scope, classify the excess as Overtime (or Double Time).
Create or edit a rule
In the sidebar, open the Administrator settings group and choose Overtime Rules.
Click + New to create a rule, click an existing row to edit it, or click the swap-arrows icon in the list toolbar (tooltip: Start a new Overtime Rule from a template) to start from a shared template.
In Basic Information, enter a Name (e.g. "California 8/40 Daily" or "Standard Federal 40") and optionally an ATS Name.
In the Rules section, click Add Rule for each threshold row and fill in its columns (below).
Rule row columns
| Column | What it does |
|---|---|
| Applies To | Overtime (paid at the placement's OT rate) or Double Time (paid at the DT rate). |
| Number of Hours | The threshold that triggers the row — e.g. 40. |
| How Often | Per Week — counts hours across the whole work week. Per Day — counts hours within a single day. Specific Day — applies to one day of the week. |
| Day of Week | Appears only when How Often is Specific Day; picks the day the row applies to. |
Hire2Hero ships with two pre-configured rules:
- Standard — Overtime after 40 hours per week.
- California — Overtime after 40 hours per week, Overtime after 8 hours per day, and Double Time after 12 hours per day.
Rules are generic threshold definitions — there is no per-state or per-client automation that picks a rule based on a worksite address. You choose the right rule when you set up each placement.
Assign rules and rates on the placement
Each placement carries two rule pickers — Pay Overtime Rule (drives what the candidate earns) and Bill Overtime Rule (drives what the client is charged). They can differ, e.g. when your client contract bills OT on different terms than you pay it.
The money side comes from the placement's rate grids: the OT and DT columns in Pay Rates and Bill Rates are full hourly rates (not multipliers) — enter the actual overtime dollar amount per hour. See Managing Placements.
How the calculation behaves
- The work week comes from the placement's cycle settings (start day of week, Sunday by default), and thresholds are evaluated week by week.
- Double Time is carved out before Overtime, and daily rules are applied before weekly rules, so hours are never double-counted across buckets. Weekly overtime that remains is spread across the week's days in proportion to each day's remaining regular hours.
- PTO and non-billable blocks don't count toward overtime thresholds — only worked time does.
- Recalculation is automatic. Editing timecard blocks recalculates the affected timecard (and sibling timecards in the same week); payroll and invoice generation recalculate against approved hours.
Overtime across placements
When one candidate works more than one placement in the same week, pay-side overtime is calculated against the candidate's combined weekly hours — the engine pulls in the candidate's hours from their other placements when deciding whether a threshold has been crossed, so overtime "flows between placements" rather than resetting per assignment.
The resulting overtime hours are then split proportionally across the placements that contributed hours, and each placement's share is paid at that placement's own OT/DT rate from its rate grid.
There is no weighted-average (blended) regular rate. If a candidate's placements pay different rates, each placement's slice of the overtime is paid at that placement's stored OT rate — Hire2Hero does not compute an FLSA-style weighted-average rate across assignments. If your jurisdiction requires one, handle it in your payroll system.
Cross-placement aggregation applies to pay calculations only. Billing overtime is computed per placement in isolation — a client is never billed overtime triggered by hours the candidate worked for a different client.
Where the results appear
- Timecard detail — Regular, Overtime, and Double totals at the bottom of every timecard, plus a calculated breakdown showing each block's date, hours, what it Counts Towards, its rate, earning code, and any schedule differential.
- Payroll list — Regular / OT / Double-Time minute columns and the resulting Pay Amount. See Payroll.
- Payroll exports — OT and DT blocks carry the earning codes configured under Settings → Customer Info (defaults: "Overtime 1" and "Double-Time 1"), alongside the invoice item names used for OT and DT lines.