Overtime worked out by your employer's rules

Muster works out overtime from the hours you record, week by week, by the rules in your employer's agreement: the weekly threshold, the time-and-a-half and double-time columns, Sundays and bank holidays. Every figure says which rule it came from.

Why a timesheet app needs the rules

Most timesheet forms add up what you type and work out nothing. The overtime is done by hand, at the end of the month, against an agreement nobody wrote into the spreadsheet. That is where a Sunday gets paid as a Saturday, or a sick day quietly turns a week's overtime into plain time.

Muster keeps the agreement as a set of rules and applies them every time, to every hour, the same way.

The rules it ships with

These are the defaults. Your employer's agreement replaces them, and a difference in your own contract can be recorded on top of that.

Overtime is weekly. Hours beyond 39 in a Monday to Sunday week are overtime, not hours beyond a contracted day.
The rest of the week's overtime goes in the time-and-a-half column (OT x1.5).
Every Sunday hour goes in the double-time column (OT x2.0), whether or not the week passed 39.
A worked bank holiday is split at the normal day for that weekday: the normal day at plain rate and counted towards the 39, the hours past it in the double-time column, and a day owed in lieu. Or every hour in its own column, if your settings say so.
Saturday counts towards the 39 like any other day.
Travel counts towards the week, or is kept out of it and claimed in its own column, and Sunday travel can have a column of its own, for an agreement that enhances it without doubling it. Those are settings too.
Sickness in a week sends that week's overtime to plain rate, because the enhanced rates need the full 39 actually worked.
Each entry is rounded up to the next quarter of an hour after the unpaid break comes off. Anything under five minutes is flagged rather than paid.

Hours logged at a weekend are worked hours. A weekend day spent on site but not worked, waiting or in a hotel, is booked as exactly that, as not worked or a rest day: paid at plain rate and kept out of the 39, so it cannot enhance anything else.

The full set, with the reasons, is in How your hours are paid.

Your employer's rules, not a default somebody assumed

Under Settings › Overtime rules are the weekly threshold, the column for each kind of hour, Sunday travel, bank holidays, the pay period and contract hours. They are kept on the server, not on the phone, so a phone and a laptop can never disagree about what counts as overtime.

The agreement is set for everyone at once by whoever runs your Muster.
A difference in one person's contract is recorded for that person alone.
You can change your own, and the change goes in the audit log with what it was before.

Each row says where its value came from: the shipped rules, your employer, or yourself. A figure that cannot name the agreement it was worked out under cannot be checked against one.

Columns, not multiples

The app always names the column an hour went into, such as Bank Hol, rather than calling it double time. What a column pays is your employer's to say, in its written policy. On how many hours, your record is the evidence: Muster keeps every press as it was made, and each sheet you send to HR exactly as it left, with a fingerprint and the total in every column. If your payslip and Muster disagree, you can show your employer where each hour went, and that the sheet they hold is the one you sent.

Self-employed

There is no 39 if you work for yourself. You can set overtime of your own, from a number of hours a week at a multiplier you choose, and it is charged on your invoices week by week. See Invoices for the self-employed.

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