Flexitime and overtime: how the time account is calculated

Where the target comes from

In Zeitflex, each person has exactly one number that everything is calculated against: the Weekly hours (target). The owner and management enter it under Employees when adding or editing a person, for example “10” for a temporary worker or “38.5” for a full-time employee. If it says 0, there is no target — and every minute clocked becomes a plus hour.

The working-time models under Settings → Working-time models are templates for this number: name, hours per week, days per week and the type of working time. The templates come from your business’s industry. A fixed assignment “person X works according to model Y” does not currently exist; what counts is the number of weekly hours on the person. The basic settings per person are described under Target hours, working-time model, rounding.

How the overtime account is calculated

The account is a simple chain:

1. For each calendar week, the actual time is determined — clocked time without breaks, with the business’s rounding rule.
2. The weekly target is subtracted from it.
3. The differences are added up week by week. The result is the balance.

In the app under My times, employees see their Overtime account as an annual balance: it counts from 1 January or from the start date, if that is later. Below it is the trend for the current month — actual minus the pro-rata target up to today. In the browser, this personal tile does not currently exist; there, the Timesheets page shows the week.

The owner and management see the accounts of all people in the Overtime accounts tab under Reports — there cumulated month by month, with target = weekly hours times 4.33. This is a Pro feature, see Reports.

What happens to overtime in payroll

Zeitflex prepares payroll; it does not run payroll. For the account, this means:

• The Month-end close calculates the difference between actual and monthly target for each person. It is not shown on screen as a separate column; it appears as the Overtime column in the payroll summary (PDF) and in the CSV export. Positive overtime is passed on in the DATEV export as a separate wage type so that the payroll bureau recognises it.
• Basic pay is always clocked time times hourly wage — every hour at basic pay. Zeitflex has no overtime premium: the premium rules depend on time of day and calendar day (night, Sunday, public holiday, the business’s own time windows), never on the number of hours above the target, see Understanding premiums.
• Whether overtime is paid out, compensated with time off or forfeited **is decided by the business** — in the employment contract or in a works agreement. Zeitflex pays nothing out, caps nothing and lets nothing lapse. It only tells you how high the balance is.

The flexitime account: the same balance with limits

In Zeitflex, a flexitime account is not a second account. It is the same balance, just with an agreed upper and lower limit in front of it — as is usual in works agreements (“up to +40 h is carried over, anything above that is forfeited”).

The limits are attached to the working-time model. The industry template Flexitime (40 h, core hours 10–15) comes with +40 h and −10 h, the Part-time flexitime (30 h) template with +30 h and −10 h. In the list of models it then says “Flexitime account max. ±40 h”. In the form for your own model there are currently no fields for these limits; they come with the template. If a limit applies in several models, Zeitflex takes the first model with limits for the whole business.

The engine checks the balance against these limits in four levels:

This flexitime check runs in the background with the personal account. There is currently no separate display of the warning level in the app or browser — what is visible is the balance itself.

Four types of working time

The type in the working-time model determines which checks make sense for the business:

Core hours only exist with flexitime; a new flexitime model comes with core hours of 10–15 preset. If a working day does not cover the core hours, that is a notice, not a breach of the law. With flexitime and trust-based working time, the check does not report missed shifts — there the person decides the timing of their working hours themselves, and the Shift plan shows the core hours bar and the contractual weekly hours instead of a shift grid.

Which type applies to your business’s check is set by Zeitflex at registration based on the industry — it is the type of the first model in the industry template. There is currently no setting in the interface to change it later; creating a new model with a different type does not change the check either.

Still stuck?

For questions about a specific balance, Support can help; the basic settings per person are under Target hours, working-time model, rounding, and the report on all accounts under Reports.