Via an Overtime Recommendation Flag included on Checks, Zeal helps you manage overtime compliance by automatically determining and calculating any overtime (and double-time) hours and rates. This ensures hourly employees are paid correctly according to federal and state jurisdictions.
Note: Zeal's Overtime Recommendation Flag is a recommendation tool. Please review the overtime calculation applied to checks for accuracy.
What is Overtime?
Overtime pay is essentially additional compensation that an employee is owed for working extra hours. At the federal level, overtime is defined in the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) as any hours worked over 40 in a workweek (see Department of Labor for definition of a workweek).
Zeal’s Overtime Recommendation Flag on checks helps determine:
- The correct overtime hours an employee qualifies for
- The regular rate of pay for the applicable overtime (and double-time) rates
- The jurisdictional (Federal and State) rules governing overtime pay
Setting Up Overtime Eligibility
Before enabling the Overtime Recommendation Flag on a check, ensure that the Employee's workweek start date and time is set up correclty. This defines the 168-hour workweek period used to calculate their overtime eligibility.
To view or update a worker’s workweek:
- Go to the Dashboard → Employee Profile → Payment Settings.
- Locate the Work Week Start Date and Start Time fields.
- Select Edit, then select the day and time you would like their daily and weekly time to reset (e.g., Monday, 12:00 AM), then Save Changes.
- The time applied will be in the Employee's default work location's state time zone.
Once saved, the new workweek start will determine how overtime and double-time hours are calculated for that worker.
Enabling the Overtime Flag on Checks
When running payroll, you can enable the Overtime Recommendation Flag on checks for workers with a defined workweek start time.
To enable the flag when using the CSV Upload tool:
- Navigate to Pay → Run Payroll → Run Off-Cycle Payroll.
- When uploading a CSV, ensure a True/False column for OT Exempt is included to map it to Zeal's OT exemption field.
- Mark as FALSE for the Employees you would like the Overtime Recommendation calculation included.
Zeal will perform the OT calculations automatically when the payroll is processed.
Review Pending Checks
You can confirm a Check has the Overtime Recommendation Flag set to true in the Pay -> Pending tab.
Clicking into an individual check will let you the Overtime Recommendation field status.
If No you can click the pencil icon edit the check and Calculate and Apply Overtime for This Check.
If necessary, you can remove the overtime recommendation directly from the Pending Check page. This is useful when resolving certain processing errors.
Handling Historical Ovetime Errors
A historical shifts error occurs when a check includes a shift time that conflicts with a prior processed workweek check. Because the past check had a regular rate of pay calculated for overtime provided, new shifts that will overlap with that same workweek period cannot be processed as Zeal cannot alter previous overtime pay.
To resolve this error:
- Move the check back to Pending.
- Remove the overtime recommendation flag.
- Manually calculate and add any overtime hours the worker qualifies for on that pending check.
This ensures payroll remains accurate and compliant without retroactively modifying past checks.
Viewing Overtime Calculations
Once a check has been processed, you can review the overtime calculations directly on a check in one of two locations.
- Pay -> History -> Select Employer Check -> Select Employee Check
- People -> Select Employee -> Processed Checks -> Select Check
The Check Breakdown view will show per shift:
- Regular hours: All standard hours worked (including those qualifying for overtime).
- Overtime hours: Hours paid at an additional 0.5× the regular rate of pay (since the base 1× rate was already paid as regular wages).
- Per-shift overtime details: Daily and weekly overtime breakdowns by shift.
- Note: Weekly Overtime hours remaining that the Employee qualified for will show on the last shift of the check.
Summary
Zeal’s Overtime Recommendation Flag feature streamlines compliance and ensures accurate payroll processing by:
- Calculates overtime automatically based on the Employee's regular hours and workweek start
- Supports jurisdiction-specific overtime rules
- Allowing you to manually adjust or remove overtime recommendations when necessary
- Provides transparent overtime breakdowns for processed checks
Please contact Zeal Support to get set up with the Overtime Recommendation Flag.
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