Defining Overtime Rules

You can define rules that will generate overtime pay for your employees when certain conditions are met. These rules are defined in the Overtime Setup dialog box. To display this dialog box, select Tools > Lists > Overtime.

If you have selected the Check Overtime Rules when Saving Jobs and Dispatching check box in the Scheduling Options dialog box, you will be notified whenever you create or edit a job for which overtime pay will be generated.

Caution!

Caution:
Because overtime rules cover time periods, overtime pay will not be linked to any specific jobs. Thus, overtime pay will appear on the paycheck and will also appear on the employee's Payroll History tab, but will not appear on the Job Costing report.

This dialog box contains all of your overtime rules. Your current rules are displayed on the left side of the dialog box, and the details about each rule are displayed on the right side. Select the rule to display its properties. The fields in this dialog box are explained below:

Rules
Selected Rule Properties
Applies To
Accounting Tab

Rules

Active. This check box defines if the rule is actively used in the system or not.
Name. The name of the rule.
Hourly Rate Multiplier. The rule's overtime pay rate. The employee's normal pay rate will be multiplied by this number to determine their pay rate for the rule. For example, the Over 40 rule is designed to pay the employee one and one-half times the amount of their normal pay rate.

Selected Rule Properties

Rule Type. This field defines what exactly sparks overtime pay. The rule types are described below.
Note that the overtime rate will only apply to the hours that exceed the value you select here.
Hours per Day. Defines pay rate for workers that work more then a defined number of hours per day.
Hours per Shift. Defines pay rate for workers that work more then a defined number of hours per shift.
Hours per Week. Defines pay rate for workers that work more then a defined number of hours per week.
Hours per Pay Period. Defines pay rate for workers that work more then a defined number of hours per pay period.

Note!

Note:
Before you can use the Hours per Pay Period or Days per Pay Period rule types, you must first define your pay period. See the Defining Payroll Options section for details.

Days per Week. Defines pay rate for workers that work more then a defined number of days per week.
Days per Pay Period.
Day of Week. Defines pay rate for workers that work on a defined day. For example, in Ireland, some workers receive overtime pay if they work past 3:00 PM on a Saturday.
Holiday (specific date). Defines pay rate for workers that work on a defined holiday. See the Defining Holidays section for more on holidays.

Tip!

Tip:
Depending on the Rate Type you select, the fields in the Selected Rule Properties section will vary.

The non-intuitive fields in the rest of the Selected Rule Properties box are:

Only count consecutive days/hrs? Select this check box to only count hours or days that have no gap between them against overtime considerations.

Tip!

Tip:
ServiceCEO gives you a ten-minute gap leeway for consecutive hour calculations. Thus, if one job ends at 11:15 and the next job starts at 11:25, both jobs could count towards overtime consideration.

Pay OT for entire shift, even if it extends into another day/week/period? This field, available for all rate types, would pay the employee an overtime rate for the entire job, even if the job extends into another Day/Week/Pay Period.
Apply this rule when the individual works over: x hrs. Defines the limit beyond which overtime rates apply for the hours per shift and hours per week rate types.
Pay OT only after a specific time. Defines the time beyond which overtime rates apply for the day of week rate type.

Applies To

The Applies To section only appears for users running ServiceCEO Enterprise. This section enables you to identify the section of the company to which the rule applies. Select the company hierarchy level to which you want to apply the overtime rule from the drop-down list. Your options are:

Entire Company. Select this to apply the overtime rule to all sections of your company.
Region. Select the name of the particular region to which you want to apply this overtime rule.
Branch. Select the name of the particular branch to which you want to apply this overtime rule.

Add multiple regions or branches to an overtime rule by clicking Add. Another line item will appear, where you can add another Applies To line.

Caution!

Caution:
The overtime rules you define will apply to all of the employees in your company. In a future release, we will expand this functionality so that you will be able to define overtime rules for individual employees.

Accounting Tab

You can integrate your overtime rules with an accounting account on the Accounting tab. To do so,

Click the Accounting tab.
Click Select Payroll Expense/Debit Account.... The General Ledger Account Links dialog box appears. By default, the overtime rule will be integrated with the Default Payroll Expense Account as selected in the payroll integration section of the Company Information Options dialog box. See the Integrating Accounting section for more details.
To change the default value, click in the Account field and type the name of the new accounting account.

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