The standard rule is time-and-a-half after 40 hours in a workweek. If your regular rate is $20/hour and you work 45 hours in one week, the first 40 hours pay $20 and the extra 5 hours pay $30 — that's $150 more than straight time for the same 5 hours.
A workweek is a fixed, recurring 7-day period, not the calendar week or your pay period. Payrollix uses a Sunday-through-Saturday workweek by default. That matters if you're paid every two weeks: overtime is figured separately for each of the two workweeks in the period, not by adding up 80 hours and comparing to some total. Working 45 hours one week and 35 the next still earns 5 hours of overtime, even though you averaged 40.
The standard rule: 40 hours a week
For most employees, hours 41 and up in a single workweek pay 1.5× your regular rate. Hours 40 and under pay your normal rate. Payrollix figures this per workweek, so a heavy week and a light week don't cancel each other out.
Two rules some employers use instead
Your employer picks the overtime policy that applies to you. Besides the standard weekly-40 rule, there are two others Payrollix supports:
- Biweekly 80. Overtime kicks in after 80 hours across the two-week pay period instead of 40 per week. This is only legal for specific employers — hospitals and some public-safety jobs (police, fire) under a federal exception. If your employer uses it and you're not in one of those roles, ask them why, because the standard weekly rule may owe you more.
- State daily overtime. A handful of states pay overtime based on hours in a single day, not just the week. Payrollix applies daily rules for California, Alaska, Nevada, Colorado, and Oregon. In California, for example, hours past 8 in one day pay 1.5×, and hours past 12 in one day pay double. Alaska and Nevada also use an 8-hour daily trigger; Colorado uses 12. Oregon's daily rules are industry-specific, so most Oregon employers just follow the federal weekly rule.
When both a daily and a weekly rule could apply to the same hour, you get the larger of the two — never both. One hour can't be counted as overtime twice.
How it shows on your paystub
Overtime is a separate line, not folded into your regular pay. In the Earnings section of your paystub you'll see Regular Pay and, when you worked any, Overtime Pay on its own line with its own hours and dollar amount. If you didn't work overtime that period, the line doesn't appear. In California and other daily-overtime states, hours paid at double time are tracked separately from time-and-a-half hours.
To open a paystub and see the breakdown, follow the steps in Paystubs & tax documents. Your hours themselves come from the timesheet you submit — see Time & leave for how to clock in and submit one.
Related: Time & leave · Paystubs & tax documents · Gross pay vs. net pay