Overtime Calculator South Africa

How to use this calculator

1. Enter salary and ordinary weekly hoursOrdinary hours is what your contract sets as normal, not what you actually worked. It is the divisor that produces the hourly rate, so getting it right matters more than any other input.
2. Split the hours by typeOrdinary overtime, Sunday hours and public holiday hours attract different multipliers. Lumping them together as "overtime" understates what is owed.
3. Check the Sunday multiplierDouble time applies where Sundays are not ordinarily part of your working week. If they are, the rate drops to one and a half. Open the assumptions and set it to match your contract.
4. Watch the weekly capThe calculator flags overtime beyond ten hours in a week. Exceeding it does not void the pay, but it does mean the arrangement falls outside what the Act permits.

Deriving the hourly rate the way the Act does

The most common error in South African overtime disputes is not the multiplier. It is the hourly rate the multiplier is applied to.

Dividing a monthly salary by four to get a weekly figure is wrong, and it understates the rate by about 8%. There are not four weeks in a month — there are 52 weeks in twelve months, which is 4.333 weeks per month.

The correct derivation annualises first: monthly × 12 gives the annual salary, ÷ 52 gives the true weekly figure, ÷ ordinary weekly hours gives the hourly rate. On R18,000 a month at 45 hours, that is R18,000 × 12 ÷ 52 ÷ 45 = R92.31.

Using the divide-by-four shortcut gives R100 a week per hour on a wrong weekly base of R4,500, producing R100 — which happens to look higher here, but the error runs the other way whenever the shortcut is applied to a weekly rather than monthly figure, and either way it is not the Act's method.

Ordinary hours matter as much as salary. The BCEA maximum is 45 hours a week for most employees, and 40 or 42 is common in practice. An employee on 40 ordinary hours has a higher hourly rate than one on 45 at the same salary — and therefore a higher overtime rate. Contracts that quietly set ordinary hours at the maximum are reducing the overtime rate, legally but not innocently.

Worked example: eight overtime hours and a Sunday shift

R18,000 a month, 45 ordinary hours a week, eight hours of overtime and six hours on a Sunday where Sundays are not ordinarily worked.

Hourly rate: R18,000 × 12 ÷ 52 ÷ 45 = R92.31.

Overtime: 8 × R92.31 × 1.5 = R1,107.69.

Sunday: 6 × R92.31 × 2 = R1,107.69.

The two are identical, which makes the point neatly. Six Sunday hours are worth exactly the same as eight ordinary overtime hours, because the Sunday premium is a third higher. An employee choosing between shifts, or an employer costing a roster, should be pricing them that way.

Total premium pay: R2,215.38. Gross for the month: R20,215.38.

The eight overtime hours are within the ten-hour weekly cap if they fell in one week. If they were spread across two weeks, there is more headroom still. If twelve hours had fallen in a single week, the arrangement would have exceeded what the Act permits regardless of whether the employee agreed to it.

The premium rates at a glance

Public holiday treatment is the one that surprises people. If a public holiday falls on a day you would ordinarily work, you are paid for it whether you work or not. If you do work it, you get that ordinary payment plus payment for the hours worked — which is why the effective rate is double rather than the holiday simply being paid at 2×.

The earnings threshold, and who these rules do not protect

Sections 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17(2) and 18(3) of the BCEA — which is to say ordinary hours, overtime, compressed weeks, averaging, meal intervals, daily and weekly rest, Sunday pay, night work allowances and public holiday pay for days not ordinarily worked — do not apply to employees earning above the ministerial earnings threshold.

This is the single most consequential fact about South African overtime, and it is barely mentioned on most calculator sites. An employee above the threshold has no statutory entitlement to overtime pay at all. What they have is whatever their contract gives them, which is frequently nothing.

The threshold is set by the Minister and revised periodically. It is expressed as annual earnings, and "earnings" for this purpose means regular annual remuneration before deductions, excluding employer contributions to benefit funds, and excluding subsistence and transport allowances, achievement awards and overtime payments.

Senior managerial employees, sales staff who travel and regulate their own hours, and employees working under 24 hours a month are excluded from these provisions regardless of earnings.

Annual leave, sick leave, family responsibility leave and notice are not affected by the threshold. Those provisions apply to every employee covered by the Act. Assuming that crossing the threshold removes all BCEA protection is as wrong as assuming it removes none.

Overtime also cannot simply be imposed. It requires agreement, and an agreement in a contract of employment concluded at the start of employment is valid for one year only. Beyond the ten-hour weekly cap, a collective agreement is needed to go to fifteen, and even that is limited in duration.

Assumptions and limitations

• Applies BCEA statutory minima — contracts and bargaining council agreements may provide more
• Does not check whether you fall above the ministerial earnings threshold, which disapplies these provisions
• Uses basic salary, whereas remuneration under the Act may include the value of some regular benefits
• Public holiday treatment is simplified — the Act distinguishes days you would ordinarily work from days you would not
• Does not calculate night work allowances, which are set by agreement rather than a fixed multiplier
• Gross figures before PAYE, UIF and other deductions
• Not legal advice — for an underpayment dispute, the Department of Employment and Labour or the CCMA is the route

Questions people ask about this in South Africa