Overtime pay calculator

Before any overtime can be calculated, standard working hours must be established. Article 98 sets eight hours a day or forty-eight hours a week, reduced to six hours a day or thirty-six a week for Muslim employees during Ramadan.

Every hour worked beyond that limit is an overtime hour and earns a specific rate. Work on weekly rest days and official holidays also falls under overtime treatment.

A fixed monthly salary does not change this. The monthly wage is consideration for standard hours, and anything beyond them has its own separate consideration.

Article 107 provides that the employer pays the employee for overtime hours an additional amount equal to the hourly wage plus fifty percent of their basic wage, and that with the employee's agreement paid compensatory leave may be credited instead at no less than one and a half hours per overtime hour.

In plainer terms, an overtime hour is worth one and a half times an ordinary hour. Where the hourly wage is SAR 50, the overtime hour is worth SAR 75.

The common method divides the monthly wage by thirty days to get the daily wage, then divides the daily wage by eight hours. That is equivalent to dividing the monthly wage by 240 hours directly.

It is not the only method, though. Some establishments divide by actual working days in the month rather than by thirty, which raises the hourly wage. What settles the matter is the establishment's approved work regulations or the employment contract, because the term more favourable to the employee is the one that applies.

Article 107 states that the uplift is computed on the basic wage. Many contracts and internal regulations nonetheless compute overtime on the gross wage including fixed allowances, which is permissible because it is more favourable to the employee.

What matters is that the basis be declared and stable in the work regulations, and applied the same way to everyone. Variation from one employee to another with no written basis is what opens the door to claims.

The employee is entitled to a weekly rest day on full pay of no less than twenty-four consecutive hours, and the default day is Friday. It may be substituted with another day for certain categories of employees.

Where the employee works on their weekly rest day or on an official holiday, they earn either additional pay or a compensatory rest day for that day, as the work regulations provide. The employer should not both withhold the rest and withhold the consideration for it.

Overtime is not open-ended. The Regulations cap overtime at seven hundred and twenty hours a year, which may be exceeded with the employee's consent, and exceeding it without consent exposes the establishment to a penalty.

More important than the cap itself is documentation. An overtime hour not recorded in a reliable attendance system is a deferred claim. The attendance record showing actual clock-in and clock-out times is what settles the dispute before the labour court.