An overtime policy decides when worked hours become overtime, when someone gets a warning, and which working-time rules apply when you roster. This page covers policies, alerts, the time bank and the overtime broadcasting add-on.
Before you start
- You need to be an admin to create or edit overtime policies.
- You can edit overtime policies on every plan. Hours only reach a policy through clock-ins and timesheets, which need Professional or above.
- The time bank needs Professional or above and is off until you switch it on.
- Overtime opportunity broadcasting is an add-on from the Business plan (included on Enterprise).
Overtime policies
Overtime policies live in Time off › Policies, on the Overtime Policies tab.
Each row shows three daily and three weekly figures: when overtime starts, the soft warning limit and the legal maximum. A Contract badge means the policy reads the overtime thresholds from each employee's contract. Click a row to see all its settings.
Start from a recommended policy
Open the recommended policy
Go to Time off › Policies, open Overtime Policies and click Use a recommended overtime policy. TimeLeaf suggests a policy based on your company's jurisdiction (set under Settings › Company).
Check the suggestion
The dialog names your jurisdiction and shows the policy with a short summary. Presets exist for the US (FLSA, 40 hours a week), the UK (Working Time, 48-hour cap), Canada (Ontario ESA, 44 hours a week), Australia (NES, 38 hours a week plus daily), Germany (ArbZG, 8 hours a day) and a generic 40-hour week for everywhere else.
Apply it
Click Apply recommended policy. TimeLeaf creates the policy and, if your workspace has no default overtime policy yet, makes it the default. Applying it again never creates a duplicate, and it never replaces a default you already have.
Review the settings
Click the pencil icon on the new policy and check every value. A recommended policy is a starting point, not legal advice. It does not switch on the time bank.
Create a policy by hand
Click Add Overtime Policy, fill in the form and click Create Policy. To change a policy later, click its pencil icon and then Update Policy.
Who a policy applies to
Every employee is covered by your workspace's default overtime policy. The only way to set the default in the app is Use a recommended overtime policy while no default exists yet. A policy you add with Add Overtime Policy does not become the default, and there is no screen today to choose a different default or to give a team, a location or a single person their own overtime policy.
If you have no default overtime policy, nobody gets overtime alerts and none of the working-time rules on this page apply. The onboarding checklist flags a missing default.
Policy settings
The form is grouped into sections. Hours are in hours; leave a field blank where the form says blank means "not enforced".
Basics
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Policy Name / Description | How the policy appears in lists. |
| Use Contract Limits | Reads the Overtime Starts After thresholds from each employee's contract hours instead of the policy. The soft warning and legal maximum still come from the policy. |
| Statutory Holidays Count as Overtime | Hours worked on a statutory holiday count as overtime whatever the daily or weekly thresholds say. |
Daily and weekly limits
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Overtime Starts After (hrs) — daily and weekly | Hours after which time counts as overtime: a normal workday and a normal work week. |
| Soft Warning Limit (hrs) — daily and weekly | When someone goes past this, an overtime alert is sent (see Alerts). |
| Legal Max Daily (hrs) + Enforce when rostering | The legal daily maximum. Only enforced when the box is ticked: auto-rostering then skips anyone a shift would push past it on one roster date, and a manager assigning by hand has to confirm the override. |
| Legal Max Weekly (hrs) | The statutory weekly maximum. It is only recorded until you set a Reference Period (below). |
Statutory holidays
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Holiday Overtime Multiplier | The pay rate for overtime on a statutory holiday, for example 1.5 or 2. |
| Holiday counts as work time | A holiday counts toward the weekly overtime threshold. |
| Overtime starts immediately | Every hour worked on a holiday is overtime. |
Forgot clock-out detection
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Detection Threshold (hrs) | A clock entry longer than this is flagged as a possible forgotten clock-out. |
| Auto-Cap To (hrs) | The length TimeLeaf suggests for an entry nobody clocked out of, when the person has no scheduled shift end to use instead. The entry is closed as a draft that the employee or their manager confirms on the timesheet. |
Notifications
Notify Employee and Notify Manager choose who gets the overtime alerts for people on this policy.
Time bank and standby pay
The Time Bank section (with Enable Time Bank) is described under Time bank. The On-call standby pay section sets whether standby time is paid (Standby time: Paid or Not paid), the Standby multiplier, the Active-work premium multiplier for hours actually worked while on call, and whether paid standby hours count toward overtime (daily, weekly or both).
US FLSA acknowledgements
If your company jurisdiction is the US, the form shows a warning and asks you to tick a confirmation before you can save:
- Ticking Enable Time Bank. Banking overtime as time off is generally not allowed under the FLSA for non-exempt private-sector employees. You confirm that everyone on the policy is either exempt from FLSA overtime or employed by a state or local government.
- Setting standby time to Not paid. You confirm that the on-call conditions for everyone on the policy count as "waiting to be engaged", which is not paid time under the FLSA.
You give each confirmation once per policy. It is a warning, not legal advice. Check with your own counsel.
Working-time rules
These rules protect people from too many hours or too little rest. They are all off until you fill them in. Once set, auto-rostering skips anyone a shift would break a rule for, takeover offers skip them too, and a manager assigning or moving a shift by hand sees every rule that shift breaks and has to confirm each one by name. The rules are in the Weekly Limits section and the section after it.
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Reference Period (weeks) | Averages the Legal Max Weekly over this many weeks (17 in the UK, Ireland and the EU). A single long week is still allowed; a long quarter is not. Blank means not enforced. |
| Daily Rest (hrs) | Hours of rest needed either side of a shift for people on this policy (11 in the UK, Ireland and the EU). Blank uses the company-wide Minimum Rest Between Shifts in Settings › Working Time. |
| Work Period | The period timesheets, weekly overtime, contracted hours and weekly rest are counted over: a Monday–Sunday week (blank), 1–4 weeks from a start date, or a month starting on a day from 1 to 28. A change starts after each person's current timesheet ends. |
| Weekly Rest (hrs) × rests, plus Separate rests allowed | Unbroken rest needed inside every work period, for example 24 × 1 in the UK. Without Separate rests allowed the rests must be one continuous block; with it, a 48-hour rest counts as two 24-hour rests. Blank means not enforced. |
| Night Window | The hours that count as night on the shift's own clock (23:00 to 06:00 in the UK). An end before the start runs past midnight. |
| Night Limits (hrs) | From left to right: night hours that make a shift a night shift (blank means any), the longest night shift allowed, and a night worker's average per 24 hours over its own period in weeks. Blank limits enforce nothing. |
| Young Workers (under 18) | Hours a day, hours a week, rest between shifts and unbroken rest each work period for anyone under 18 on the shift's date, plus No night work for young workers (which needs a night window). These limits are fixed, never averaged, and an opt-out never applies to them. |
Young workers need a date of birth. Age is worked out from each employee's date of birth on the day of the shift. If someone's date of birth is missing, TimeLeaf treats them as under 18 rather than risk giving a minor adult limits. When your company jurisdiction's recommended policy includes young-worker limits (the UK and Germany today) and a policy sets them, the date of birth is required when you add an employee at a location in that country.
An employee can sign a written opt-out of the averaged weekly limit. Record it in the employee's Edit Employee window under Working-time opt-out. It lifts the weekly average only; every other rule still applies, and it is refused for anyone under 18.
How working time is measured
The How Working Time Is Measured section decides what the averages and rest rules count. Choose these with your counsel.
| Setting | Choices |
|---|---|
| Hours basis for past days | Planned shifts (the roster) or Hours worked (for past days, the larger of the roster and the time entries). |
| Which worked hours count | Approved entries only or Approved and awaiting approval. Only used with Hours worked. |
| Approved leave inside the averages | Leave counts as nothing, Leave counts as hours worked, or Exclude leave and extend the period. |
| On-call standby inside the averages | Standby does not count or Standby counts. |
| Rest between shifts measured from | Rostered end or Actual clock-out (rest starts at the later of the rostered end and the real clock-out). |
Each choice can show a marker. Amber means it is the less protective option in your jurisdiction, as TimeLeaf understands it on the date shown, so confirm it with counsel. Red means TimeLeaf refuses to save it. The markers are not legal advice. When you save a policy with amber markers, TimeLeaf records that you saw them in the audit log.
Alerts
When a time entry takes someone past the policy's daily or weekly Soft Warning Limit, TimeLeaf sends an in-app alert ("Daily Overtime Alert" or "Weekly Overtime Alert") to the employee, their manager, or both, as the policy's Notify Employee and Notify Manager boxes say. The weekly alert compares the whole work period against the weekly limit times the number of weeks in the period.
People who have push notifications switched on also get the alert on their device. If you use webhooks, an overtime.alert event is sent too.
Time bank
The time bank lets employees bank overtime as time off in lieu (TOIL) instead of being paid for it, and cash it out later.
The time bank is off by default. An admin switches it on under Settings › Working Time › Modules (Professional plan or above). Banked comp time is restricted for private employers in the US, so check before switching it on there.
Switch it on
Switch on the module
Go to Settings › Working Time and switch on Time Bank in the Modules section. It saves as soon as you change it.
Turn it on in a policy
Edit the overtime policy, tick Enable Time Bank and fill in the time bank settings below. US companies confirm the FLSA warning first.
Approve timesheets
Overtime is banked when a manager approves a timesheet. Nothing is banked before that.
Banking starts on the day you switch the module on (weekly overtime from the work period that includes that day). Overtime from while it was off is never banked, because it was paid as overtime pay.
While the module is off, nothing new is banked, nothing expires and no new payout can be requested. Balances are kept, a rejected timesheet still takes back hours it had banked, and payouts already requested can still be acknowledged, recorded as paid or cancelled. Hours whose expiry date passed while it was off expire at the next daily check after you switch it back on.
Time bank settings
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Accrual Multiplier | Banked hours per overtime hour. 1.0 is hour for hour; 1.5 means 2 hours of overtime bank 3 hours. |
| Max Balance (hours) | The cap. Empty means unlimited. |
| When the cap is exceeded | Bank up to the cap, discard excess, Reject the whole accrual, or Bank to cap, pay out the excess (the excess becomes a payable due). |
| Expiry (days) and Expiry anchor | Rolling expires hours that many days after they were banked; Fixed annual cutoff expires them on a yearly date (MM-DD). Empty means no expiry. |
| At expiry | Forfeit the hours or Pay out the hours. |
| Payout multiplier | Hours paid per banked hour when hours are cashed out. 1.5 pays 15 hours for 10 banked. Each payout keeps the rate in force when it was created, so changing it later affects only new payouts. Payout reports and payroll exports show both banked and payable hours. |
| Accrual eligibility | Daily and weekly overtime, Daily overtime only, or Weekly overtime only. This can't be changed once the policy has banked hours; create a new policy instead. |
| Coming-due alert (days) and Alert recipients | Warns the employee, manager and/or admins this many days before hours expire. |
Re-approving a timesheet never banks the same hours twice, and rejecting an approved timesheet takes its banked hours back out.
Balances and payouts
Admins manage the time bank under Scheduling › Time Bank:
- The Balances tab lists every employee's balance per policy, with accrued, used and expired hours. Export it as CSV or PDF.
- Request payout on a balance row starts a payout for some or all of the hours.
- The Payable Dues tab lists payouts. A payout moves from requested to Acknowledge to Record paid, and can be cancelled before it is paid. The person who requested a payout can't acknowledge it. Record paid asks which payroll system paid it.
- Export dues exports the payouts as a CSV, a QuickBooks or Xero file, or a PDF for your payroll provider.
Employees see their balance on the dashboard's Time bank card and the full history on the Time Bank page in Timekeeping. Managers see their team under Team Time Bank in the user menu.
Overtime opportunity broadcasting
Broadcasting lets you post extra shifts and offer them to employees by SMS, email and push. It is an add-on from the Business plan and included on Enterprise. An admin adds it under Settings › Billing › Add-ons & Options.
Create an opportunity
Go to Scheduling › Overtime and click New Opportunity. Fill in the Title, date, Start time, End time, Slots needed, team and an optional Pay note.
Choose how offers go out
On the Distribution step, pick a Distribution Mode:
- Sequential by seniority offers it to one person at a time, in seniority order, waiting the minutes you set before moving to the next person.
- Broadcast to all notifies everyone eligible at once. Choose how it is decided: By seniority within window (acceptances are pooled until the window closes and the most senior win), First-come-first-served, or Lottery (a random draw when the window closes).
Choose who is eligible
On the Eligibility step, pick a saved Eligibility Rule, or leave it blank to offer it to every active employee in the selected team. Manage saved rules on the Overtime Rules page (the Rules link on this step). TimeLeaf also leaves out anyone the extra hours would break a working-time rule for.
Publish
On Review & Publish, click Publish Now, or Save as Draft to send it later. The list on Scheduling › Overtime shows each opportunity's status and how many slots are filled.
Employees answer from the link in the message, or on the Overtime Opportunities page (/overtime), which has Open, My Offers and History tabs and a Respond Now button for each open offer. Accepted overtime counts toward the person's hours for every working-time rule.
Reports
The Reports hub covers overtime in Hours Summary, Overtime Cost, Overtime Distribution Fairness and Overtime Offer Response & Fill, and the time bank in Time Bank Ledger, Time Bank Expiry Forecast and Time Bank Payout Pipeline. See Reports.