Overtime on a prevailing wage job

Overtime is the most common reason a certified payroll comes back.

Not because it's hard.

Because the wage has two parts, and only one of them gets multiplied.

Two minutes, and you'll never get it wrong.

The wage determination gives you a basic hourly rate, and a fringe rate.

Here, forty-two fifteen, and eighteen forty.

This worker did forty-four hours.

Overtime starts after forty in the week.

Four hours, and they land on Friday, because that's where the forty-first hour fell.

Time and a half applies to the BASIC rate only.

Forty-two fifteen becomes sixty-three twenty-two and a half.

The fringe does NOT get multiplied.

Eighteen forty, on every hour, straight or overtime.

So an overtime hour paid in cash is eighty-one sixty-two and a half.

The gross for the project comes out to two thousand, seven hundred forty-eight fifty.

That's the number for column 7A.

Two ways this goes wrong.

First, multiplying the whole thing.

That overpays by thirty-six eighty this week, and the reviewer will ask which rate you're actually paying.

Second, and worse: paying fringe on the first forty hours only.

That underpays by seventy-three sixty.

Those are back wages, and the payroll comes back for a revision.

One more thing people miss.

The forty hours count EVERY job the worker did that week, not just this one.

Sixteen hours somewhere else on Monday and Tuesday, and overtime on this project starts Wednesday.

If the fringe goes into a plan instead of the paycheck, same rule.

The credit rides along on every hour, it just lands in column 6B instead of the gross.

Time and a half on the basic rate.

Fringe on every hour.

The forty counts all jobs.

The calculator is free at certified hours dot com, and the payroll editor does this split for you as you type.