Accounting for Overtime Spent on Project Tasks

Overtime work isn’t defined the same way in every organization. In some organizations, overtime is considered any work totaling more than 40 hours in one week. In other organizations, overtime is considered any work beyond eight hours in one day. Overtime sometimes is calculated on a monthly basis, and other times, extra hours don’t count as overtime costs because the resources are salaried. Even within one organization, there may not be a single hard-and-fast rule about overtime. Some resources may be salaried; other resources may record overtime on a daily basis; and others may account for overtime weekly.

Because of this, Project makes no assumptions about overtime. If a resource reports that he or she has worked 10 hours in one day, Project records those 10 hours as regular work. It’s up to the project manager to determine whether two of those 10 hours are actually overtime work. After the project manager has manually changed the reported work to eight hours of regular work and two hours of overtime work, the overtime rate for the resource will apply for those two hours, and costs will be accounted for correctly.