Recording and calculating overtime: rules, premiums and a worked example

Recording overtime means logging each hour worked beyond the agreed working hours as a separate entry, with the date, start and finish times, hour type and reason, so that it is paid or compensated correctly. You calculate overtime per hour type: payable hours = hours worked × the percentage set in the collective agreement or employment contract. In the Netherlands the law does not prescribe an overtime premium, but it does cap total working time: as a baseline, 12 hours per shift and 60 hours per week.

What counts as overtime, and what are extra hours?

Overtime is time worked at the employer's request beyond the agreed working hours. That sounds clear-cut, but the Dutch Working Hours Act (Arbeidstijdenwet) does not use the term at all: it simply adds up all working time, normal or extra. What counts as an overtime hour, and what it pays, is set by the collective agreement (cao) or the employment contract, and the definitions vary.

A common distinction in Dutch collective agreements:

• Extra hours (meeruren) are hours above your own contract hours but within the full-time working week. They mainly concern part-timers and are often paid at the normal hourly rate.
• Overtime hours (overuren) are hours above the full-time working day or week, or on days you are rostered off. These often carry a premium.

Under that distinction, a planner at a distribution centre on a 32-hour contract who works 38 hours in a busy week has worked 6 extra hours; overtime only starts above the full-time 40 hours. But the threshold can also be set per day or per year. For example, the Metalektro collective agreement (in Dutch), which covers the metal and electrical engineering industry, defines overtime as hours above the daily roster when you work more than 8 hours that day, plus hours on rostered-off Saturdays and Sundays and on public holidays. Extra hours there are hours above the annual working time.

Whether the threshold is daily or weekly makes a difference. If a technician works 10 hours on Monday, 6 on Friday and 8 on the other days, that is 2 hours of overtime under a daily threshold and none under a weekly one.

Extra hours for part-timers are under legal pressure

In 2023 and 2024 the Court of Justice of the EU ruled that paying part-timers an overtime premium only for hours above the full-time threshold treats them less favourably in principle (joined cases C-184/22 and C-185/22). In answers to parliamentary questions in January 2025, the Dutch Minister of Social Affairs and Employment wrote that these rulings can serve as an interpretation of the Dutch ban on distinguishing between employees by working hours (Article 7:648 of the Civil Code), and that any justification must meet high standards. So record extra hours and overtime as separate hour types. That way you can recalculate if your agreement changes or if someone claims a premium on their extra hours.

How much overtime is allowed? Dutch working time limits

Overtime counts towards maximum working time like any other hour. For employees aged 18 and over the baseline is 12 hours per shift and 60 hours per week, plus two averages: 55 hours a week over 4 weeks (a collective agreement may differ) and 48 hours a week over 16 weeks. The law sets no maximum number of overtime hours as such; the limits apply to the total. All the limits, including those for night shifts, rest periods and breaks, are in the table in time tracking for technicians.

Because of those averages, a week that is allowed can still be too much as a pattern. The example week below adds up to 53 hours, within the 60-hour weekly limit. Sixteen such weeks in a row would exceed the 48-hour average. A record that only looks at single weeks misses that, so add up over 4 and 16 weeks as well.

Recording overtime in six steps

To pay overtime correctly, check it and account for it later, record four things for every overtime hour: when it was worked, which hour type applies, why it was needed and who asked for it. Why you have to record hours in the first place and how long to keep them is covered in is time tracking mandatory.

1. 1Pin down the rules. Check the collective agreement or contract: is the threshold daily or weekly, what counts as an extra hour, which percentage applies to which day and time, and who may ask for overtime?
2. 2Create an hour type for each premium. For example normal hours, extra hours, overtime 125%, overtime 150%, and Sundays and public holidays. Use the names from the agreement, so payroll has nothing to translate.
3. 3Record times, not totals. Start, finish and break for each day; if a day has a normal part and an overtime part, use two lines.
4. 4Note the reason and the job. Breakdown, urgent job, overhaul or planned weekend work, with the project or work order. That lets you recharge the overtime and see later where it comes from.
5. 5Have the week approved. The manager checks: is the hour type right, was the overtime requested, are the limits still met? How sign-off and approval work is covered in timesheet sign-off.
6. 6Choose between pay and time off in lieu, and track the balance. Per employee, with the date by which accrued hours must be taken or paid.

Calculating overtime: a worked example for a full week

Take a technician in the maintenance team of a waste-to-energy plant on a 40-hour contract: Monday to Friday from 07:00 to 15:30 with a 30-minute break, 8 hours a day. In this example, overtime means hours above 8 on a working day and all hours on Saturday and Sunday. We use the example hour types from our free Excel template, as they are explained there: the first overtime hours on a working day at 125%, overtime in the evening and on Saturdays at 150%, and work on Sundays and public holidays at 200%. They are only examples; the hour types and percentages that apply to you are in your collective agreement or employment contract.

The week goes like this:

• Tuesday: a waste bunker crane breaks down and the technician works on until 17:30: 2 hours of overtime.
• Thursday: a job overruns until 16:30: 1 hour of overtime.
• Saturday: planned work on a conveyor that cannot be stopped during the week, from 07:00 to 13:30 with a 30-minute break: 6 hours of overtime.
• Sunday: the technician is called out from the on-call rota and works from 10:00 to 14:00: 4 hours.

The diagram below shows the normal hours and the overtime for each day, with the contract's 8 hours per working day as the threshold.

The technician worked 53 hours: 40 normal hours and 13 hours above the contract. For payroll, multiply the hours for each hour type by its percentage:

At an hourly wage of €24, the 60.75 payable hours come to €1,458 gross for the week: €1,272 for the 53 hours worked and €186 in premiums. Together the premiums are worth 7.75 hours (0.75 + 3.00 + 4.00), a figure you will see again below. What an hours overview with payable hours per hour type looks like in practice is shown under time tracking in TimeQeeper.

Paying overtime or giving time off in lieu

Overtime can be paid or compensated with time off in lieu (in Dutch: tijd voor tijd). Which options are allowed is set by the collective agreement or contract. Under the Metalektro agreement, for example, an overtime hour earns an hour off, or by agreement the hourly wage in cash, with a premium on top for certain overtime hours. For the example week the options look like this:

Time off in lieu needs a balance for each employee, with agreements on when it is taken; a balance that keeps growing is deferred pay. For the minimum wage, Dutch law adds a deadline. You must pay at least the minimum hourly wage for hours beyond the agreed working time no later than the next pay period, unless the collective agreement allows compensation in time off and you agreed this in writing with the employee in advance. The balance must then be taken before 1 July of the following year, or paid in the first pay period after June (Article 13a of the Minimum Wage Act).

The choice also feeds through to the payroll tax return. Paid extra hours and overtime count as paid hours (verloonde uren); hours compensated with time off do not. That matters for employees on a contract of 30 hours a week or less on average: if they are paid for more than 30% more hours than agreed in a calendar year, the employer has to pay the high unemployment insurance (WW) contribution retroactively (payroll tax handbook of the Dutch Tax and Customs Administration).

Overtime premiums, minimum wage and tax: what Dutch law covers

There is no statutory overtime premium in the Netherlands. As business.gov.nl, the government portal for entrepreneurs, puts it, the law does not specify how much extra pay an employee must receive for overtime. Premiums come from the collective agreement, the employment contract or a company scheme, and they are rarely round numbers: the Metalektro agreement, for example, pays 24.1% of the hourly wage for the first two hours directly before or after the working day, rising to 82.8% on Sundays and public holidays.

What the law does cover:

• Hourly minimum wage. Since 1 January 2024 the statutory minimum wage has applied per hour worked. Employees are entitled to at least the minimum wage for extra hours and overtime too, as the Dutch government explains. Anyone earning close to the minimum wage who works unpaid overtime soon drops below the hourly minimum.
• Holiday allowance. Employees generally build up holiday allowance on paid overtime, calculated on its full value, premium included.
• Payroll taxes. Paid overtime is wages, and the employer withholds payroll taxes on it.

Overtime in maintenance teams: breakdowns, shutdowns and night work

In maintenance, overtime rarely goes to plan. Four situations need extra attention.

Breakdowns and on-call duty. Work after a callout is working time, and for the on-call rules it counts from the moment of the call. So record the time of the call, the start and finish of the work, the travel time and the installation involved. On-call duty (consignatie in Dutch law) comes with extra limits, such as a maximum of 13 hours' work in any 24 hours and, twice in every four weeks, 48 hours with neither work nor on-call duty (Article 5:9 of the Working Hours Act). Whether a minimum number of hours is paid per callout, and whether travel counts as overtime, is set by the collective agreement or the on-call scheme.

Shutdowns. Long days are normal during a shutdown. Six days of 10 hours is 60 hours: exactly the weekly limit. Four such weeks in a row are only possible if a collective arrangement, such as the collective agreement, deviates from the average of 55 hours over 4 weeks. The 48-hour average over 16 weeks still applies, even under a collective agreement: after four weeks of 60 hours, the other twelve weeks in that period can average no more than 44 hours. So plan the shutdown with that limit in view, not just with the hours the work requires.

Night work. A night shift may last 10 hours as a baseline. An 8-hour night shift that overruns by 3 hours because of a breakdown goes beyond that. Up to 12 hours is only allowed as an exception: no more than five times in two weeks and 22 times in 52 weeks, followed by 12 hours' rest. If the work cannot be postponed and there is no reasonable alternative, a shift or night shift may also run to 14 hours once every two weeks (Article 4.3:1 of the Working Hours Decree).

Persistent overtime. If the same people work overtime week after week, that is usually a capacity question for maintenance planning. If it keeps coming from the same installation, look for the cause with a root cause analysis. It also has legal weight in the Netherlands: once an employment contract has lasted at least three months, the working hours are presumed to equal the monthly average over the previous three months (Article 7:610b of the Civil Code). An employee who consistently works 45 hours on a 40-hour contract can rely on that.

Common mistakes with overtime

• Only a weekly total. Without start and finish times you cannot check the daily rule in the agreement, the 12 hours per shift or the rest periods.
• Overtime without a request or reason. Afterwards nobody knows whether the hours were agreed, or whether they belong to a client or a breakdown.
• A break that never happened. Automatically deducting 30 minutes while the technician worked through a breakdown makes half an hour of overtime disappear.
• A time-off balance with no end date. It keeps growing, is never taken and lands on the payslip in one go when someone leaves.
• Percentages copied from another company or template. Take premiums from your own agreement or contract, not from an example, including the one in this article.
• A system without hour types. Time tracking that only knows totals leaves payroll doing the sums by hand; look out for this when choosing a time tracking app.