Setting Up Overtime & Pay Rules: Australia

Every country has its own unique overtime rules based on national laws and regulations. That’s why Connecteam gives you the flexibility to customize overtime rules to ensure full compliance with local requirements! Overtime laws in Australia are designed to protect employees from excessive working hours while ensuring fair compensation for extra time worked. Understanding these regulations is crucial for businesses to maintain compliance and for workers to ensure they receive their rightful entitlements. Let's dive in!

This article will cover:

Let's take a closer look at how to set up each of these rules!

To set up a new Overtime rule, follow these steps:

Below we will review the relevant details needed for each overtime rule.

Ordinary hours refer to the standard working hours an employee is expected to work without triggering overtime. Setting up this rule will allow you to view all the regular hours in the user's timesheet, in a separate column. For this rule, set the Payment field to multiply base wage by 1x per hour, so that users will not receive any additional pay.

When an employee works overtime on a Saturday, they are typically entitled to 1.5 times (150%) their ordinary hourly rate for the hours worked. This means they receive "time-and-a-half" pay, for any hour worked on a Saturday.

For this rule, select the Additional Rate rule type and set the payment to 0.5x the base wage per hour. This ensures that employees receive an extra 50% of their regular hourly rate for every hour worked on a Saturday. For example, if an employee’s base wage is $10 per hour, applying an additional 0.5x means they will earn a total of $15 per hour for Saturday work.

Next, set the condition to Daily Overtime, select Saturday, and set the start time to 0 hours. This ensures that employees begin earning the additional rate immediately upon starting work on Saturday.

When an employee works on a Sunday, they are typically entitled to 2 times (200%) their ordinary hourly rate, also known as "double time." Follow the same set up as shown above, however under Payment, set it 1x the base wage per hour, and instead of Saturday, set it to Sunday.

This ensures that employees receive twice their regular hourly rate for every hour worked on a Sunday. For example, if an employee’s base wage is $10 per hour, applying an additional 1x their base wage means they will earn a total of $20 per hour for work on Sunday.

When an employee works on a public holiday, they are generally entitled to 2.5 times (250%) their ordinary hourly rate, commonly known as “double time and a half.” This overtime rule requires you to specify the exact hour range during which employees will earn overtime, during a public holiday.

To set up this rule, select the Additional Rate rule type, and under Payment, add an extra 2.5x base wage per hour. This ensures that employees receive 2.5 times their regular hourly rate for every hour worked on a public holiday. For example, if an employee’s base wage is $10 per hour, applying an additional 2.5x their base wage means they will earn a total of $35 per hour for work on a public holiday.

Finally, set the condition to Holiday and specify the exact dates and times when the public holiday applies. You will also be able to decide if this rule will repeat every year on these dates.

The weekday overtime rule typically applies when an employee works beyond their ordinary hours on a regular weekday (Monday to Friday). In this case, the employee is entitled to 1.5 times (150%) their ordinary hourly rate, also known as “time-and-a-half”.

For this rule, set the Rule Type as Overtime, and under Payment, set to multiply the base wage by 1.5x per hour. Next, add a Daily condition for days Monday through Friday, to start after 8 hours a day. Add an additional (and) Weekly condition to start after 40 hours a week.

The weekend overtime rule applies when an employee works beyond a certain threshold of hours on a Saturday or Sunday, and they are entitled to 2 times (200%) their ordinary hourly rate. For example, if an employee works on a Saturday, and also works above 8 hours, they will be entitled to 2x their base wage.

To set this up, select the Overtime rule type, select to multiply base wage by 2 per hour, and add a Daily condition for Saturday and Sunday, to start after 8 hours a day.

The sleepover allowance overtime rule typically applies in certain industries, such as healthcare or residential care, where employees are required to stay overnight at a work site to provide supervision or assistance if needed. The sleepover allowance is usually paid per shift/unit/job rather than hourly. In this case, the rate is $57.99 per sleepover.

To set this up, select the Additional Rate rule type, and under Payment, add an extra $57.99 fixed amount per hour. For the Condition, select Partial Day overtime on all days of the week, and select an hour which you know for certain users will work throughout, in order to ensure they will receive this additional payment.

You can easily view all overtime and additional paid hours directly within the user's timesheet, displayed in separate rows. To access this, navigate to the Timesheet tab and select the relevant user's timesheet. On the right-hand side, you'll find all overtime and pay rule rows. Hover over them to see detailed rule types and additional information.

You can customize which columns you would like to see by clicking on the column selector on the far right, and marking the overtime rules you would like to appear.

When exporting users' timesheets, you can choose to present the information in either a column or row format. If you select the row format, you can decide whether to display totals by pay period or by day.

All overtime and additional paid hours will be presented in the export as separate columns, similar to their display in the timesheet.

Setting Up Overtime & Pay Rules in Connecteam

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