Pay & overtime
Owner-only pay rules from business to site to person: overtime, bank-holiday, Sunday and night premiums, breaks, role rates and scheduled rises.
Pay & overtime is where you set the rules that turn clocked hours into estimated pay for your payroll: overtime thresholds and multipliers, bank-holiday, Sunday and night premiums, how breaks are treated, sleep-ins and role rates. It’s built as a cascade so you set sensible defaults once and only override where reality differs.
The pay-policy cascade
A pay policy can live at three levels. The most specific one that applies to a person wins, so you rarely repeat yourself.
- Organisation
- Your business-wide default policy, set here on Pay & overtime, the baseline everyone inherits.
- Site
- A location that pays differently (e.g. a London venue) overrides the org default for its staff. Set it in Locations → Edit site → Pay & overtime for this site.
- Person
- An individual on a bespoke arrangement overrides both. Set it in the person’s Edit sheet under Overtime & breaks.
Inherit or customise (overrides)
On a site or person, each rule (overtime, premiums and breaks) is its own block with an Inherit / Custom switch. Left on Inherit, the block shows the value it’s inheriting (“Inherited · 1.5× after 8h”, “Inherited · Unpaid”) and changes automatically if you later change the org default. Flip to Custom to reveal the same controls described below and pin a bespoke rule for just that site or person.
Overtime bands
Turn on Pay overtime, then build a ladder of bands. WagePilot handles two windows, per day and per week, because UK teams use both.
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Enable overtime
Toggle Pay overtime on to reveal the Daily and Weekly band editors.
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Add a band
Tap Add band under Daily overtime (or Weekly). Each band has an “After hours” threshold and a multiplier, e.g. 8 hours at 1.5×.
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Escalate
Add more bands to escalate: 1.5× after 8h, then 2× after 10h. Each multiplier applies only to the hours past its threshold, up to the next band. Remove a band with the ✕.
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Weekly bands
Weekly bands work the same way but on the week’s total, and they only top up hours not already paid as daily overtime, so nothing is double-counted.
- Daily overtime is worked out per shift as the timesheet is built: hours past a daily threshold are paid at that band’s multiplier and stored on the entry.
- Weekly overtime is reconciled across the whole week at report time, because a week’s total isn’t known until the week is done.
Bank-holiday premium
If you pay extra on UK bank holidays, turn on Bank-holiday premium. WagePilot already knows the England and Wales bank holidays (by UK date), so hours worked on one are priced with the premium automatically, no manual flagging. There is no legal right to extra pay for working a bank holiday: this is a contractual choice.
How it’s paid
- × rate
- A multiplier on the hourly rate (e.g. 1.5× on bank-holiday hours). Set the multiplier in the box below.
- + £/hr
- A flat cash uplift added to the hourly rate (e.g. +£2.00/hr) on bank-holiday hours.
Overtime on the uplift (+ £/hr mode only)
- Compounds
- Overtime multiplies the whole uplifted rate: the +£/hr also earns overtime.
- Added flat
- Overtime multiplies only the base rate, and the +£/hr is paid once per hour on top.
Sunday and night premiums
- Sunday premium adds enhanced pay for every hour worked on a Sunday, as a multiplier or a flat extra per hour. If a Sunday is also a bank holiday, the bank-holiday premium applies instead, never both.
- Night premium adds enhanced pay for the minutes a shift falls inside your night window (From and To), by UK clock time, so a shift across a clock change is paid for the hours actually worked. It is not added on top of a Sunday or bank-holiday premium.
Paid and unpaid breaks
Set whether breaks are paid with the Breaks are paid by default toggle. When breaks are unpaid, they pause the earnings clock and are subtracted from paid hours automatically, so a clocked 8-hour shift with an unpaid 30-minute break becomes 7.5 paid hours everywhere (live cost, timesheet and export) with no manual maths.
Role rates
A role rate applies to anyone working a rota shift with that role, for example a Stand-by or call-in rate, or a higher rate for supervisors. Each has an Effective from date. Role names groups near-duplicate role spellings on your rota so you can merge them into one.
Scheduled rate changes
Role rate history lists every change with its effective date, who made it, the reason and its status (Scheduled, Applied, Cancelled or Starting rate). Tap Schedule a change to set a new role rate from a future date with a reason. A scheduled change can be cancelled until it starts. Individual pay rises are scheduled the same way from the person’s Pay and rates tab.
Preview a shift
Try a shift against your rules before or after you save. Pick a bank holiday, a Sunday or a night to see each premium worked out.
Bank holidays and premium days
The Bank holidays and premium days card lists every date recognised for pay: the built-in England and Wales calendar merged with any dates you’ve added. The next upcoming date is marked Next. Built-in dates are read-only; dates you add are tagged Added and can be removed.
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Add a date
Under Add a date, pick the Date and optionally a Name (optional) (for example “State funeral”), then tap Add. It applies to your organisation only. Quick-add buttons under Premium days cover days such as Christmas Eve. See Premium days.
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Remove one
Tap the bin on any row tagged Added. Built-in dates can’t be removed.