Ask three people in an office how a thirteen-hour Sunday should be paid and there is a fair chance of three answers. Is the thirteenth hour Sunday time, or overtime? Is it both? On a paper sheet it depends on who is adding it up, and on how busy they are that Friday.
Costworks gives the same answer every time, because it applies the rules in a fixed order. The values — the thresholds and the multipliers — are yours. The order is not, and that is deliberate: it is what makes the answer defensible.
The order, step by step
- Leave is set aside first. Holiday, sick and bank holidays not worked are paid as what they are, and never count towards any overtime threshold.
- The day’s worked time is totalled — every shift that day, whichever jobs they were on.
- The day is split at your daily threshold. Out of the box that is twelve hours. Anything beyond it is daily overtime.
- What is left is banded by the kind of day. A worked bank holiday first, then Sunday, then Saturday if you pay a Saturday premium, and otherwise standard.
- The weekly threshold is applied, in date order, to standard hours only, if you have one switched on.
- Every band is priced at the person’s rate in force on the day the hours were worked.
A thirteen-hour Sunday, worked through
Take the rules Costworks starts with — overtime past twelve hours in a day at time and a half, Sunday at double time — and somebody on £16.00 an hour who works thirteen hours on a Sunday.
| Band | Hours | Rate | Pay |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sunday | 12:00 | ×2.0 · £32.00 | £384.00 |
| Overtime | 1:00 | ×1.5 · £24.00 | £24.00 |
| The day | 13:00 | £408.00 |
The daily threshold comes first, so the day is cut at twelve hours before anybody asks what kind of day it is. The first twelve hours are then Sunday hours, at double time. Only the thirteenth is overtime.
That is the consequence worth knowing: the first hours of a Sunday are always Sunday hours. Only the excess over your daily threshold becomes overtime — never the other way round.
Worth checking against your own policy. With these defaults, an hour past twelve on a Sunday is paid at time and a half, which is less than the Sunday rate. Whether that is right for your firm is a question for your pay rules: the thresholds and multipliers are yours to change.
Why the weekly threshold only touches standard hours
If you switch on weekly overtime — say, past forty hours — Costworks walks through the week in date order and counts standard hours towards the forty. Once they pass it, the rest of the week’s standard hours become overtime.
Saturday, Sunday and bank holiday hours are already banded by then, and a weekly cap never moves them. Otherwise a Sunday worked at the end of a long week could lose its Sunday rate, and the same day would pay differently depending on what came before it.
And when a bank holiday falls on a Sunday
The kind of day is decided highest premium first, and a worked bank holiday is checked before Sunday. So the day is banded as a bank holiday. The daily threshold still comes first, exactly as it does on any other day.
The rate is the rate on the day
The last step prices every band at the rate in force on the day the hours were worked. A pay rise on a Wednesday prices Monday and Tuesday at the old rate and the rest of the week at the new one — and hours worked in August stay priced at the August rate, however long afterwards anybody looks.
Try it with your own numbers
The pay engine on our website runs this same order. Drag the hours about, change the daily threshold, switch weekly overtime and the Saturday premium on and off, and watch the gross figure — and the reason for it — change as you go.
