How working time is calculated: ordinary hours, overtime & authorised time

What this guide covers

This is the complete, authoritative explanation of how myWork turns clock scans into paid time - the model behind every hours screen. It covers how your week is measured, what authorised, unauthorised and declined hours mean, how overtime is calculated and rated, how public holidays and leave are treated, and when each kind of pay is paid.

Two shorter guides sit on top of this one: Your hours and pay: how it works (the employee summary) and Manage hours: authorise and decline your team's time (what a manager does). Read this when you want the full picture of why the numbers come out the way they do.

From clock scan to pay: you clock in and out; each day gets a status; the whole week is added up and compared to your weekly ordinary (contract) hours, which paid leave and public holidays lower. Below target is a deducted shortfall; on target is ordinary pay at times one; above target is beyond-schedule time that starts unauthorised, and a manager either approves it (authorised, becomes overtime) or declines it (never paid). Overtime is rated by day: weekday and Saturday times 1.5, Sunday and public holiday times 2. Normal hours are paid monthly; overtime on the 16th to 15th cycle.

The one big idea: the week is the unit

myWork does not judge each day on its own. It adds up your whole week (Monday to Sunday) and compares the total against your weekly ordinary hours - the hours your schedule contracts you to work.

A quiet day and a long day in the same week balance out.
What matters is whether the week's total lands on your contracted hours.
The ideal is to land exactly on contract: not under (which is a deduction) and not over (which becomes paid overtime).

Overtime is a weekly result, worked out when the week closes - it is never "time past the end of one shift".

The vocabulary (what each word means)

Term	What it means
Working (worked) hours	The time your clock-ins actually recorded.
Ordinary hours	Your contracted weekly hours, reduced for paid leave and public holidays. This is the baseline your week is measured against.
Authorised hours	Worked time within your schedule, plus any beyond-schedule time a manager has approved. Only authorised hours count toward ordinary and overtime.
Unauthorised hours	Beyond-schedule time a manager has not yet decided on. Shown for transparency; it pays nothing until it is authorised.
Declined hours	Beyond-schedule time a manager refused. Recorded, never paid, and final.
Overtime	On an overtime-eligible schedule: authorised hours beyond the weekly ordinary, rated by the day they fell on.
Extra hours	On a schedule that does not allow overtime: hours over ordinary are shown but unpaid (never overtime).
Shortfall	Hours you fell short of your weekly ordinary - deducted unless made up in the same week.

Authorised, unauthorised and declined: the three states of extra time

Your ordinary scheduled hours pay automatically - you do nothing. But any time worked beyond your schedule never pays automatically. It starts life as unauthorised and waits for a manager to decide:

The life of a beyond-schedule hour: it starts Unauthorised (pending), then a manager either Approves it (it becomes Authorised, is paid and counts toward weekly overtime), Declines it (written off, never paid, final), or for a short day Marks it reviewed (acknowledged, but the shortfall is still deducted).

Approve - the time becomes authorised: it is paid, and it feeds the weekly overtime tally once your week passes the ordinary contract.
Decline - the time is written off as declined: it is not paid, and this is final (there is no un-decline).
Mark reviewed - only for a short (under-schedule) day. It acknowledges the day so it drops off the manager's to-do list. It does not add the missing hours back, so the shortfall is still deducted.

That is why it pays to agree any significant extra hours with your manager before working them - approving overtime is their call.

How the weekly overtime calculation works

When a week closes, the system:

Works out your ordinary target = your contracted weekly hours, reduced by paid leave and by public holidays not worked. So leave and holidays automatically lower the bar before any overtime can start.
Fills the week Monday to Sunday with each day's authorised minutes. While the running total is below the target, those minutes are ordinary (paid at the normal rate).
Once the running total reaches the target, every further authorised minute is overtime, attributed to the day it fell on and rated by that day (see the rates below).
A worked public holiday is always overtime - its hours never fill ordinary.
Unauthorised minutes count toward neither ordinary nor overtime - they are invisible to pay until a manager authorises them.

The week measured as one total: hours up to your weekly ordinary contract are paid at the normal rate; authorised hours above the contract become overtime (which costs more); a week below the contract is a shortfall that is deducted. The ideal is to land exactly on the contract line.

Worked example. Your contract is 45 hours a week. You work Monday to Friday, 8 hours each (40 hours, all authorised), and you also come in on Saturday. Your 40 weekday hours plus the first 5 Saturday hours fill the 45-hour ordinary target at the normal rate; the rest of Saturday is overtime at the Saturday rate. If those Saturday hours were never authorised by a manager, they stay unauthorised and earn nothing until they are approved.

Overtime rates

Overtime is rated by the kind of day each overtime hour fell on. These are the myWork defaults (aligned to the BCEA); HR can change them under HR ? Pay Rate Categories.

Kind of time	Rate
Ordinary scheduled hours	x1.0
Overtime on a weekday	x1.5
Saturday / rest day worked	x1.5
Sunday worked	x2.0
Public holiday worked	x2.0

There is no hard cap. Nothing stops overtime being paid - working more than about 10 hours of overtime in one week raises a compliance warning for HR, but the hours are still paid in full.

Public holidays

Situation	What happens
Public holiday on your scheduled working day, not worked	Paid your scheduled hours at x1, automatically (no manager action), and it counts toward your week's ordinary hours.
Public holiday worked	The hours you work are overtime at x2.
Public holiday on a rest day	Nothing unless you work it (then it is paid at x2).

Leave and the weekly target

Leave lowers your ordinary target, so a planned day off is never treated as a shortfall:

A paid leave day (annual, sick, and so on) removes that day's scheduled hours from the target - you are not expected to make them up, and leave is paid separately.
Half-day (partial) leave removes half the day.
A public holiday not worked is excluded from the target (see above).
Unpaid leave also lowers the target (so there is no phantom shortfall or overtime), but those hours are not paid - they are the dockable amount and appear under Missing / unpaid leave for payroll.

When you fall short

If your week's worked hours land below your ordinary target on completed working days, the gap is a shortfall and is deducted - unless you make it up within the same week. On the manager and HR screens this rolls into a figure called Missing, which is shortfall + unpaid leave. Missing is different from unauthorised: unauthorised time is extra hours waiting for approval, while missing time is hours you did not work.

Overtime-eligible vs "extra hours"

Whether beyond-ordinary time can ever become paid overtime depends on your schedule's overtime policy:

Overtime-eligible schedule - authorised hours over the weekly ordinary become overtime, rated as above.
Overtime not allowed - hours over ordinary are shown as extra hours: they need no authorisation and are never paid. (This is common for salaried or exempt roles.)

When it is paid: payroll periods

Normal pay and overtime run on different cycles:

Normal (ordinary) pay follows the calendar month.
Overtime follows the 16th to 15th cycle (configurable).

Because each day's overtime is recorded on the day it happened, a week that straddles the cycle boundary splits its overtime across two payslips. Until a week has fully elapsed inside the chosen period its overtime is shown as provisional; once the week has closed it is final.

Before the weekly model started (8 June 2026) earlier days are recorded only - no beyond-ordinary hours are calculated or authorised for them.

The daily statuses you will see

Each day carries a status badge - Present, Late arrival, Left early, Short day, On leave, Rest day, Public holiday, and so on. For what each badge means and where it appears, see Attendance status field definitions.

Where this shows up

Employees - Your hours and pay: how it works, and the My Hours screen.
Managers - Manage hours: authorise and decline your team's time, where you approve or decline beyond-schedule time before payroll.
HR - Hours Analytics and Employee hours for HR (read-only pay numbers), and Schedule Management (schedules, public holidays, scan sync).

Your hours and pay: how it works - the short employee version.
Manage hours: authorise and decline your team's time - the manager actions.
Manage schedules - sets the ordinary hours this model measures against.
Attendance status field definitions - the day-status badges.
Clock in and out remotely - how the worked hours are captured in the first place.