How your hours are paid
This page explains what Muster does with what you record, so that a figure on the timesheet is never a surprise. The defaults below are the ones Muster ships with; yours are whatever is in Settings › Overtime rules, and that group is the authority.
Muster applies the rules; your employer decides them
The timesheet form totals what you type and works out no overtime itself. So the rules below were worked out from a real completed timesheet and checked against real figures, and where a rule is uncertain Muster warns at export rather than choosing quietly.
If your payslip and Muster disagree, neither is right by default. On hours, your record is the evidence; on rates, your employer's written policy decides. See When your payslip does not match.
The week
Overtime is weekly. Anything beyond 39 hours in a Monday–Sunday week is overtime, not hours beyond a contracted day.
- All Sunday hours are at the Sunday rate, whether or not the week passed 39.
- A worked bank holiday's normal day counts toward the 39, as an ordinary working day would. The hours past it do not: they are claimed apart. A bank holiday you do not work adds nothing. See Bank holidays.
- The remainder is the over-the-week rate.
- Saturday is not special. It counts toward the weekly 39 like any other day.
What counts toward the 39
| Counts | Does not count |
|---|---|
| Labour | Lieu Day |
| Travel (unless you have switched that off) | Sick |
| Holiday | Bank Holiday |
| Not worked | |
| Rest Day |
Holiday counts. Lieu days and sickness do not. Bank Holiday counts only as far as its normal day, and only when worked.
Sickness in the week
Any sickness in a week routes the remainder to plain rate. The guidance is that enhanced rates need the full 39 hours actually worked.
Rounding
Each entry's paid time, after the unpaid break has come off, is rounded up to the next quarter of an hour. Every screen shows an entry's hours rounded, the way the timesheet counts them; the times themselves stay as they were.
Rounding is per entry, not per day, so two clock-outs in one day round twice and can claim up to fifteen minutes more than one continuous session would. That was chosen knowingly. It also means a timer started and stopped by accident is a claim for fifteen minutes; anything under five minutes is flagged at export rather than silently inflated.
A journey through midnight is two days' work
The day decides what an hour is worth, so an entry that runs through midnight is split between its two days: a flight home leaving on Saturday and landing on Sunday is Saturday hours and Sunday hours, each at its own day's rate.
- The split is taken on your clock, the one the entry was started on.
- The later day is its own time, rounded up to the quarter, like every hour: 16 h 43 on the Sunday is 16.75.
- The earlier day takes the rest. The entry is still rounded once, as a whole, so no hour is invented and none goes missing.
The Log shows the journey as a row on each day, continues Sun and from Sat.
The activities, and what each one is for
| Activity | What it means |
|---|---|
| Labour | Work. The default |
| Travel | Getting there. Counts toward the week unless you switch that off, and unfolds the journey block on the entry form |
| Holiday | Counts toward the 39 |
| Lieu Day | A day taken back. Outside the 39 |
| Bank Holiday | The normal day at plain rate, counted toward the 39; the hours past it in the x2.0 column; a day in lieu owed. See Bank holidays |
| Sick | Outside the 39, and demotes the week's remainder to plain rate |
| Rest Day | A weekend day away from home but not worked: on site, in a hotel, waiting. A flat 8 hours at plain rate, never the hours on the clock |
Standby cover was removed from the list in version 1.16.0. An entry that used it still shows it, outside the 39.
An activity HR or an admin adds under a new name - Survey, say - is paid as whichever of the above they chose for it when they added it, shown in the console as paid as. One you add yourself (see Jobs) is always paid as Labour.
Rest Day exists so that the answer is not inferred from a missing tick. Reading an absent onsite tag as "not worked" meant a forgotten tick silently changed what you were paid, and produced an entry that looked identical to a worked one. Choosing Rest Day cannot happen by accident, and it still reads correctly months later.
Weekends and the onsite tick
Hours you log on a Saturday, Sunday or bank holiday are worked, onsite tick or not: a Saturday counts toward the 39, a Sunday takes the Sunday rate. That is how HR pays them.
If you were away but not working - kept on site, waiting, in a hotel - say so, because nothing else will:
- Not worked today marks the day as not worked: plain rate and outside the 39, on any day of the week. On a salary, a weekday's contracted hours are the salary's and only the hours past them are claimed.
- Rest Day is a weekend day away from home and not worked: a flat 8 hours at plain rate, whatever the clock says.
Until 2 October 2026 a missing onsite tick at a weekend was read as kept on site, not worked. Your payslip of 28 September showed HR paying those days as worked, so Muster does too. On a Sunday it is the difference between eight hours of pay and sixteen.
Bank holidays
A worked bank holiday is paid the way HR pays it, split at your normal day: the contract hours for that weekday, 8.5 Monday to Thursday and 5 on a Friday unless Settings says otherwise.
- The normal day is claimed in the plain-rate column (O/T x1.0). Your salary already pays the weekday; working it earns one more day.
- It still counts toward the 39, as an ordinary working day would, so the rest of your week is paid exactly as if the bank holiday had been a normal Monday. Counted is not paid twice: none of the week's x1.5 lands on it.
- Any hours past it are claimed in the x2.0 column (O/T x2.0), and stay out of the week.
- A day in lieu is reported as owed. It is never written to the timesheet, because lieu claims go through your employer's HR system. You have to add it to your entitlement yourself.
Eleven hours on a bank holiday Monday is therefore 8.5 hours at x1.0, 2.5 at x2.0, a day owed, and 8.5 hours toward the week's 39.
That is the Working a bank holiday also earns a day in lieu switch in Settings, which is on as Muster ships. Switched off, every hour of a worked bank holiday is claimed in the Bank holiday column chosen in Settings (Bank Hol unless it is changed), none of it enters the week, and no day is owed. Nothing on the entry decides it: there is no tag to add or forget.
Where this comes from: your payslip of 28 September 2026 paid 31 August, sent as 11 hours in the Bank Hol column, as 8.5 at O/T x1.0 and 2.5 at O/T x2.0, with that week's Saturday at x1.5. Earlier sheets on a form whose column said Overtime x 2 (Bhol) were paid at x2 as written; the company form's Bank Hol column names no rate, and on it HR applies this split.
The form names the columns but not what each is worth, so the app and the export warnings always name the column, never a multiple: Bank Hol, not "double time". What a column pays is your employer's to say.
A bank holiday you do not work adds nothing to the week: no contracted hours are assumed for it.
⚠ With the switch on, a worked bank holiday of a normal day and one booked Not worked today put the same 8.5 hours in the plain-rate column. The worked one also counts toward the 39 and owes a day in lieu; the export's warnings say which is which.
Allowances
One allowance per night, and a night is either UK or overseas, never both. A night is paid at the rate of the country where it is spent: on a travel day that crosses borders, the country you arrive in, so a night in Atlanta on the way to Mexico is overseas even though the day began in Manchester. The rates and the list of countries counted as UK are in Settings › Features › Nights away.
An untagged day cannot claim a night away, because the allowance follows the country tag. That is one of the things Before you send it checks.
Mileage
Muster counts miles; it does not price them. The rate is your employer's to set, so none is applied. The figure is there for you to claim with.
The pay period
The payroll period runs from a day of the month to the day before the next one: by default the 11th to the 10th, with the claim due on the 15th.
That is not a free choice: HR's workbook has one sheet per period, and days outside the sheet you have uploaded have nowhere to be written. The export still runs and says so loudly at the top.
Contract hours
What you are contracted to work each day: by default 8.5 hours Monday to Thursday and 5 on Friday, which is the 39.
A weekday with no entry is assumed at contract, so a week is never read as short simply because a day has not been entered yet. That is also why Summary lists working days with nothing on them before you send: an assumption is fine for arithmetic and is not a record.
When your payslip does not match
A payslip is your employer's reading of the sheet you sent. Muster keeps that sheet, and the record behind every hour on it, so a difference can be put to HR as a question with evidence. First decide which kind of difference it is: how many hours, or what an hour is worth.
On hours, your record is the evidence
Whether you worked an hour, and when, is something Muster wrote down at the time, in four places that nothing afterwards rewrites:
- Your presses. Every clock-in, clock-out and pause is stamped with your phone's own clock at the moment you pressed, and the zone it was in. Open the entry: As tapped shows both presses and the time that passed between them.
- The clock log. Each press, and every edit and correction to an entry since, is in a permanent log that is only ever added to. The one thing ever taken out is where you were: GPS positions go after a fortnight. Times, zones and words stay.
- What an entry said before. A change by HR or an admin keeps the entry as it was, with who changed it, when and why. The entry says Corrected since by someone else when that has happened.
- The record of what was sent. When you send a period with Download for HR and choose Record as sent, Muster keeps the sheet exactly as it left, its fingerprint (a SHA-256 of the file's bytes), the total of every column, which rules it was built on and the name it carries, and locks the period. Download it again and you get the same sheet, byte for byte. If building it again now would give something different, Muster says what changed - the day, the column, the figure before and after - and why: a correction (who, when, their reason), the rules, the name, the form, or the weeks the period shares with the periods either side. See Send to HR.
After a period is sent you cannot change it yourself. If you find an hour missing in it, an admin corrects it, and the correction is written down against them, with their reason, and shown to you.
On rates, your employer's written policy decides
Which column an hour goes in, and what each column is worth, is your employer's to say, in its written policy. Muster applies rules, and every rule on this page says where it came from where that is not HR's written guidance - a payslip it was read from, or a decision made with a date (see the bank holiday's Where this comes from). The rules your sheets use are in Settings › Overtime rules, and the record of a sent sheet names which of them it used.
If HR's written policy says something different from Muster's rule, the policy wins, and Muster's rule is the thing to change: tell your admin. If HR paid differently from their own written policy, that is the question to ask them.
What to show HR
- The period and what was sent. On Reports, Send to HR, choose the period: it says Sent to HR on the date, the fingerprint, and the total in each column. Download for HR gives you the same sheet again.
- Your payslip's lines beside those totals, column by column: O/T x1.0, x1.5, x2.0, Bank Hol, Travel, and the UK and overseas nights.
- For an hour in question, the entry: its times, As tapped - the two presses and the time between them - and That day, Muster recorded on the entry form.
- For a rate in question, the rule as Muster has it, and the sentence in HR's guidance - or the payslip - it came from.
- For anything changed after it was sent, the correction: who made it, when and why, which Download for HR lists when it gives you the sheet again.
The comparison is in hours. None of it needs your salary or a pound figure from your payslip.
The 48-hour week
Separate from pay: Muster also watches the Working Time limit, which is an average of 48 hours a week over 17 weeks, and one a person may opt out of. The strip under the header turns amber when a single week passes 48, and red when your average does. See Recording time.
The limit is a worker's. If you are self-employed (Settings › Pay), Muster says nothing about it and offers no opt-out, because the Regulations do not apply to you. Your hours are counted the same.
Next: Reports · When it goes wrong