Overtime Counters are a key feature of our platform that allows the automated management of hours worked on Bank Holidays, Sundays, as well as Overtime or Complementary hours. They provide remarkable flexibility by enabling precise definition of accumulation and compensation rules.
This feature aims to simplify the tracking of working hours to avoid tedious manual processes. The information is transparent to employees, and the ability to automate the calculation of hours to be paid outside the fixed salary is a significant advantage. These payable hours are displayed in weekly, monthly, and yearly reports under columns labeled "Variable Pay Elements, from Overtime Counters," facilitating monthly closure and providing necessary information to the Human Resources team for salary calculation.
NOTE:
It's important to note that this Overtime Counters feature is an improvement over the previous system. In the previous system, it was necessary to manually record the number of additional hours, overtime hours, or festive hours in the scheduling. These hours were then distinguished in reports by columns under the heading "SCHEDULE INFORMATION." This new Overtime Counters feature greatly simplifies this task.
The configuration of Overtime Counters offers several flexible options to adapt to the specific needs of each company. These options include different accumulation and compensation modes, allowing companies to choose the method that best suits their situation:
Different Accumulation Methods:
- Daily or weekly calculation.
- With or without a multiplication factor.
- Starting from the number of hours worked, after which festive or additional hours are considered, leaving the remaining hours worked as regular hours.
Different Compensation Methods:
- All hours worked with this qualification of festive or additional/excess hours are paid.
- It is possible to accumulate them over a period of several weeks.
- Excess hours worked compared to regular working hours can be compensated for by deficits.
- Compensation can be done with lower planning than the planned working time or by assigning compensatory rest periods.
- A combination of 2 or more options above.
We have two main categories of Hour Counters:
- Bank Holiday : for hours worked on holidays, Sundays, or both (holidays and Sundays).
- Overtime : in excess (or deficit) compared to "normal" hours.
Thus, it is necessary to define the limits or criteria to consider these hours as festive or additional/excess:
Bank Holiday: This is relatively simple, as it's possible to define a calendar of holidays in the schedules of each establishment or store.
As an option, it is possible to define a threshold from which the hours worked are considered as festive hours.
NOTE: To avoid conflicts in the case of employees regularly working in multiple stores (or even occasionally) where local holidays differ, it is possible and recommended to define the employee's reference establishment. This is done at the same time as the assignment and adjustment of the employee's contract.
Overtime/Excess Hours: Here, it's more complicated, as in the case of contracts with a definition of working hours on a weekly basis, this calculation can be affected by the coincidence in this week of holidays and/or days off for the employee.
By default, the calculation of weekly working hours is done as follows:
- At the contractual level, the number of weekly working hours is divided by the number of contractual working days of the employee (subtracting weekly rest days) to determine the number of working hours per working day (=> working hours per workday).
- For each week, the number of working days is calculated by subtracting holidays and days off.
- This number of working days is multiplied by the number of working hours per workday.
However, several situations affect these calculations and can render this automatic calculation by the system unsuitable for certain situations:
For example, when a store is usually closed on Sundays or even on Saturday afternoons, this has a different impact on the calculation of weekly working hours if a holiday or a day off falls on a Sunday or Saturday rather than another day of the week.
When an employee takes a full week off, it's easy—the system considers that the employee has no working hours that week, so no difference will be generated in their hour counter (worked hours and working hours are equal to 0 in this case).
In contrast, in cases where we are in a week where multiple holidays and/or days off fall (but not a full week off), the automatic calculation method of the system to determine the number of working days for the employee this week may not work correctly. It may therefore be necessary to recalculate the number of working days for this specific week for this employee, taking into account the contractual rest days of the employee to adjust the calculation.
For example: An employee has 2 weekly time-off days as per the contract, but in a particular week, they have 3 non-working days (due to a holiday and days off). The system would blindly calculate that they have 2 working days this week: 7 calendar days - 3 non-working days - 2 rest days = 2 working days.
In these cases, there are situations where the collective agreement or company regulations actually allow for adjustments to the working days for this specific week.
All these specific situations can be taken into account so that in almost all situations and the specific operation of each company or collective agreement, the system can correctly calculate the number of working hours for each week, taking into account the contractual level of the employee as well as the definition of the usual weekly opening days of the establishment (e.g., closure on Sundays and/or Saturday afternoons).
Additionally, the system allows the Manager or main account administrator to review and temporarily adjust the number of working days for a specific week for an employee in a particular situation, as explained above.
In the following article, we explain in detail the operation and configuration of an Overtime Counter.