Understanding premiums

Premiums are included from the Starter plan onwards. They are calculated from the recorded times — you do not enter anything by hand.

What Zeitflex calculates

The rates are suggestions from the industry template. Change them under Settings → Premiums to whatever applies in your business or collective agreement.

For individual calendar days — for example an increased rate on Christmas Eve or on 1 May — there is no separate premium type. If you need something like that, create a custom allowance with a time window there and enter the affected days separately in the shift plan.

Custom allowances: site, dirt, hardship

Everything the business pays beyond the three statutory premium types is created under Settings → Premiums in the Custom allowances card. Three forms:

Each allowance can be limited to one site. It then only applies to times for which exactly this site was clocked as well — times without an assignment do not get it.

Custom allowances come on top of night, Sunday and public holiday premiums; they do not displace one another. Anyone who creates two custom allowances that match the same time gets both.

Removing: delete or deactivate

If an allowance already appears in a closed month or in the Wage type mapping, it is only deactivated when removed, not deleted. Otherwise the payroll export for that month could no longer be generated. Zeitflex tells you before the click which of the two cases applies.

In the payroll export

In the DATEV export, custom allowances get wage type 330 (“other payments”), as long as you do not enter a number of your own under Settings → Payroll & export. If you have several custom allowances, they therefore appear in the payroll program as a single total — Zeitflex points this out. The numbers are assigned by your tax adviser; Zeitflex does not invent any.

How premiums overlap

The rule that is most often misunderstood:

An example:

Public holidays come automatically

Zeitflex calculates the statutory public holidays of all 16 federal states itself — including the movable holidays via the Easter formula. You do not maintain a public holiday list.

What counts is the federal state entered under Settings → Business.

Tax-free is not the same as paid

This is the second place where things regularly get stuck. Premiums are tax-free up to certain rates and limits (§ 3b EStG). Anything above that is taxable pay — it is paid all the same.

Zeitflex calculates both and shows them separately:

• the total premium
• the tax-free portion under § 3b EStG

The details — the rates, the €50 and the €25 limit on base pay — are explained under § 3b: tax-free premiums.

Where you can see the premiums

• In the timesheet, per day, with a breakdown
• In the month-end close preview, per person
• In the CSV and DATEV export, as separate wage types
• In the PDF payroll summary

Frequently asked questions

Why is the temp not getting a premium? Check whether an hourly wage has been stored. Without base pay, no percentage premium can be calculated.

We pay a flat rate, not per hour. Create a custom allowance with a fixed amount per hour or per working day (see above). If you prefer to keep the flat rate in your payroll program, set the premium rates to 0 — Zeitflex does not force a system on you and then only supplies the hours.

Does the premium count towards the mini-job limit? The tax-free portion does not count. That is exactly the mistake many tools make. See The mini-job limit. Custom allowances are not tax-free and therefore count in full.

Why can't I make our site allowance tax-free? Because § 3b EStG only favours Sunday, public holiday and night work. An allowance for the place of work is ordinary pay — regardless of what it is called in the business.

Still stuck?

If a figure does not look plausible, open the day detail in the timesheet. There the calculation is broken down step by step.