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Put in the hours you worked each day and your hourly rate. The week is priced against the real rules of the state or province you pick — daily and weekly thresholds, seventh-day premiums, no hour counted twice — and every line shows its own arithmetic.
Last reviewed · maintained by Ihor Bezrukavnyk · how we calculate
the week you actually worked
A differential is not a separate bonus. It folds into the regular rate the multiplier is applied to, so every overtime hour that week gets more valuable — paying 1.5× on base plus 1.0× on the differential is the classic short-pay.
Sun 12 AM
Biweekly period · gross
$2,090.00
87h across 2 workweeks · $176.00 of it earned above straight time
workweeks in this period
what this week should pay · gross
45h
$1,144.00
No weekly overtime owed: hours already paid a daily premium do not count again toward the 40. No hour is counted twice.
Assumes a Sunday workweek. Your employer sets this and it is printed on your stub — the app asks properly.
missed by a flat tracker
+$176.00
Multiplying every hour by $22.00 shows $1,914.00 for this period.
This, automatically, every shift.
US and Canada · works offline · no account.
Every hour you work earns straight time. An overtime hour earns straight time and then a premium on top, and the premium is the part the multiplier adds: half the regular rate at time and a half, a whole extra rate at double time. That is the same money as pricing those hours at 1.5× or 2×, and it is how the federal regulations and most payroll systems write it down.
Both forms give the same total when your rate never changes: 40 × $22.00 + 5 × $33.00 and 45 × $22.00 + 5 × $11.00 both come to $1,045.00. They stop being interchangeable the moment a week has to be paid in pieces.
Why that matters when a workweek straddles two paychecks. Overtime is owed on the workweek, and the workweek rarely lines up with the pay period. A semi-monthly period ends on the 15th no matter what day of the week that is, so most workweeks get cut in half; biweekly periods split a workweek whenever the two boundaries differ. Written as straight time plus a premium, the split is easy to follow — the hours are paid in the period they fall in, at the same rate they always were, and the premium for the workweek arrives as its own line once the week is complete. Written as “40 at $22.00 and 5 at $33.00”, half of the week is unpriceable until the other half exists, and that is the seam premiums go missing in.
Twelve hours Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, nine on Friday: 45 hours at $22.00 an hour. A tracker that multiplies hours by rate shows $990.00 wherever you are. What the rules add on top is a different number in each of the three.
Texas · 40h/week
California · 8h/day · 40h/week
Same hours, different stamps. California marks its premium hours day by day, because the threshold is a daily one. Texas owes premium on five hours as well, but they only become knowable once the week has ended, which is why a daily chart cannot show them.
| where | thresholds | rule that fires | premium hours | premium pay | the week |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Texas29 U.S.C. § 207(a)(1) | 40h/week | Weekly overtime | 5h | +$55.00 | $1,045.00 |
| CaliforniaCal. Labor Code § 510 | 8h/day · 40h/week | Daily overtime | 13h | +$143.00 | $1,133.00 |
| OntarioEmployment Standards Act, 2000, s. 22(1) | 44h/week | Weekly overtime | 1h | +$11.00 | $1,001.00 |
| line | hours | rate | amount |
|---|---|---|---|
| Regular | 45h | $22.00 | $990.00 |
| Daily overtime×1.5 · CA daily over 8 · Cal. Labor Code § 510 | 13h | $11.00 | $143.00 |
| What the week should pay | 45h | $1,133.00 |
The regular line pays all 45 hours at $22.00. The premium line adds $11.00, half the regular rate, for each of the 13 hours that fell past 8 in a day. Priced the other way, 32 × $22.00 + 13 × $33.00 comes to the same $1,133.00.
The multiplier is applied to your regular rate, and the regular rate is an average: all the straight-time money you earned that week divided by all the hours you worked. Your posted hourly rate is only the same number when nothing else was paid. A shift differential, a night or weekend premium, a production or attendance bonus, a contractual safety bonus — anything you earn by working rather than as a gift — belongs in that average before the multiplier touches it.
Take that same 45-hour week under the plain weekly rule, five hours past 40, at $22.00 an hour, with 20 of those hours worked at night on a $1.50 differential.
| Base pay | 45 hours × $22.00 | $990.00 |
|---|---|---|
| Night differential | 20 hours × $1.50 | $30.00 |
| Regular rate | $1,020.00 ÷ 45 hours | $22.67 |
| Overtime premium | 5 hours × 0.5 × $22.6667 | $56.67 |
| The week | base + differential + premium | $1,076.67 |
A payroll run that applies 1.5× to the $22.00 base and pays the differential flat comes to $1,075.00. That is $1.67 short, every week, and nothing on the stub looks wrong: the hours are right, the differential is right, the multiplier is right. Only the rate the multiplier was applied to is wrong.
When a differential runs across every hour you work, the shortfall is exactly your overtime hours × 0.5 × the differential: on 5 overtime hours with a $1.50 differential all week, $3.75. When it covers only part of the week, as above, the differential is spread over all the hours first, so it lifts the regular rate by less and the shortfall shrinks with it. Non-discretionary bonuses work the same way and are allocated back to the weeks that earned them. A true gift or a bonus whose amount and timing were entirely the employer’s to decide stays out of the rate.
A workweek is a fixed, recurring period of 168 hours. Your employer designates it, and it can start on any day of the week at any hour — Wednesday at 7 a.m. is as valid as Sunday at midnight. It does not have to match the calendar week, the pay period, or the schedule you actually work, and different departments can be on different ones. Once it is set it stays set; it can be changed if the new one is meant to be permanent, but not shuffled week to week to keep hours under a threshold.
It is the single most overlooked number in overtime, because it decides which hours are past the line. Seven consecutive 10-hour days, Wednesday through Tuesday, at $22.00 an hour:
| workweek boundary | how the days fall | overtime hours | premium | the seven days |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Workweek starts Sunday | Wed–Sat is 40 hours, Sun–Tue is 30 | 0h | $0.00 | $1,540.00 |
| Workweek starts Wednesday | All seven days land in one workweek: 70 hours | 30h | $330.00 | $1,870.00 |
Identical work, $330.00 apart. Nobody chooses their boundary after the fact; it is wherever the employer fixed it. But you cannot check a premium without knowing where it sits, and it is usually on the stub. If it is not, it is the first thing worth asking about. The calculator above assumes Sunday at midnight and says so; the app asks you once and then remembers.
Two workweeks are never averaged together, even when they arrive on one paycheck. Work 45 hours and then 35, and the first week owes five hours of premium while the second owes none. Eighty hours over two weeks is not a 40-hour average with nothing to pay.
| how it is counted | first week | second week | two weeks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Each workweek on its own | 45h — 5 hours past 40 | 35h — nothing past 40 | $1,815.00 |
| Two weeks averaged to 80 | 40h on paper | 40h on paper | $1,760.00 |
The $55.00 between those rows is the whole reason the rule exists. Federal law makes two narrow exceptions, both by agreement and both outside ordinary hourly work: an 8-and-80 arrangement in hospitals and residential care, and the work-period rules for police and firefighters. In Canada, several provinces allow hours to be averaged over two to four weeks, and everywhere they do it takes a written agreement — in Ontario one that sets an averaging period of no more than four weeks under s. 22(2) of the Employment Standards Act.
The calculator carries every US state and Canadian province. These are the pages worth reading if your week has more than one threshold in it.
Or open the full index of US states and Canadian provinces.
the same arithmetic, every shift
This page prices one week you type in. The app watches the whole pay period: it knows your workweek boundary, your differentials and your rotation, and it tells you what the cheque should say before it arrives.
Multiply every hour you worked by your regular rate, then add a premium for the overtime hours: half the regular rate for each hour at time and a half, a full extra rate for each hour at double time. A 45-hour week at $22.00 an hour is 45 × $22.00 = $990.00, plus 5 × $11.00 = $55.00, for $1,045.00. That is the answer wherever overtime is counted weekly and nothing else applies.
Both rules exist. The US federal rule is weekly: hours past 40 in a workweek. Five US jurisdictions add a daily threshold — California and Alaska at 8 hours, Nevada at 8 with a wage test, Oregon at 10 for certain industries, Colorado at 12 — and most Canadian provinces have one at 8. Where both apply, the jurisdiction also sets how they interact: some take the greater of the two calculations, some subtract daily overtime hours from the weekly count. None of them adds the two together.
Yes. The employer designates a fixed, recurring period of 168 hours that can begin on any day and at any hour, and it stays where it is put. It is usually printed on the pay stub or set out in the handbook. That boundary decides which hours fall past the threshold, so two people working identical calendar days can be owed different amounts.
The premium belongs to the workweek that produced it, not to the pay period. Employers commonly pay it with the period in which that workweek ends. The straight-time hours are paid in whichever period they fall in, and the premium shows up as its own line, which is why a semi-monthly stub, where periods almost never line up with workweeks, is worth reading line by line rather than by the total.
It does. A shift differential is part of the regular rate that the multiplier is applied to. Add the differential dollars to your base pay for the week, divide by the hours you worked to get the regular rate, then take half of that for each overtime hour. Applying 1.5× to the base rate and paying the differential flat is the most common way a premium comes up short.
No. Each workweek is counted on its own, so the 45-hour week owes five hours of premium and the 35-hour week owes none, even though both land on the same biweekly paycheck. Averaging the two is not permitted under the federal rule. A few Canadian provinces do allow averaging, but only under a written agreement; in Ontario that agreement has to set an averaging period of no more than four weeks under s. 22(2) of the Employment Standards Act.
The federal rule counts hours worked. Holiday, vacation and sick hours that were paid but not worked generally do not push you past the threshold, so a week with 8 hours of holiday pay and 36 hours worked is a 36-hour week for overtime purposes. An employer policy or a collective agreement can count them, and where it does, the agreement governs.
Compare the lines, not the totals: hours worked, the rate the premium was figured on, the number of premium hours and the multiplier used for each. Most gaps come from one of three places: the workweek boundary the employer uses, a differential or non-discretionary bonus left out of the regular rate, or daily overtime hours counted a second time in the weekly total.
Every figure on this page traces to the statute or agency page above. If one is out of date, tell us — corrections ship the same week.
Overtally computes what you should be paid before taxes. It does not calculate take-home pay, withholding or deductions, and it is not legal advice — it is your own record and your own estimate.