How to Configure Fortnightly Overtime Rules

What This Feature Does

Fortnightly Overtime Rules pay overtime once a worker's hours cross a threshold measured over a fortnight (two payroll weeks) instead of a single day or week — for example, overtime after 76 hours per fortnight, a common structure in fortnightly-paid enterprise agreements.

They complement the existing daily and weekly overtime thresholds: daily and weekly rules apply first, and a fortnightly rule then re-codes any hours still classified as ordinary time that fall past the fortnightly threshold. Hours that already earned a premium (daily overtime, weekly overtime, weekend or public holiday day rates, shift rule segments, RDO, minimum engagement) always keep that classification and pay — a fortnightly rule can never pay a premium twice on the same hour.

Fortnightly overtime rules are configured per Rule Group inside a pay rate document, in the Fortnightly Thresholds section.

Key Concepts

Two Tiers

A rule group supports up to two fortnightly threshold rules:

• Fortnightly Overtime (first tier) — e.g. 1.5× after 76 hours
• Fortnightly Second Overtime (second tier) — e.g. 2× after 86 hours

The rule with the lower threshold is always the first tier. Two configured thresholds must be different — the system rejects a duplicate so the tier order is never ambiguous (two parked rules with no threshold are allowed).

A rule with an empty After Hours value never triggers; use this to park a rule without deleting it.

What Counts Toward the Threshold

The Count only normal hours toward threshold setting (on the first tier) controls the counting basis:

• On (default) — only ordinary-rate hours count toward the fortnightly threshold. Hours paid as daily or weekly overtime do not advance the count. Weekend, public holiday, shift-rule and time-of-day hours still advance the count (they are ordinary-rate hours carrying a separate premium) — they keep that premium and are never re-coded.
• Off — all worked hours count, including daily and weekly overtime. Use this when the agreement defines the fortnightly cap over total hours worked rather than ordinary hours.

Either way, only hours still classified as ordinary time are ever re-coded — the counting basis changes when the threshold is crossed, never which hours can be re-coded. The second tier always counts ordinary hours plus daily overtime, matching how weekly second-tier thresholds work.

How the Fortnight Is Determined

Fortnightly overtime uses the same fortnight windows as fortnightly allowances — two consecutive payroll weeks on the account's week grid, paired according to the payroll cycle:

Within each fortnight, the first week starts fresh (the previous week's hours belong to the previous fortnight) and the second week accumulates the first week's hours, so a threshold crossed mid-fortnight is paid correctly even though weeks are processed one at a time.

Interplay With Weekly Thresholds

When a rule group has both weekly and fortnightly thresholds, hours the weekly rule already re-coded to weekly overtime are not counted as ordinary hours toward the fortnightly threshold in the default counting mode — the two thresholds never stack a double premium on the same hour. (With Count only normal hours off, all worked hours count toward the fortnightly threshold regardless of classification, but re-coding still only applies to hours that remained ordinary time.)

Application Method: Replacement vs Loading

Like weekly overtime rules, each fortnightly rule pays in one of two ways:

• Replacement (default) — the re-coded hours are paid at base rate × multiplier on a single Fortnightly Overtime line.
• Loading — the re-coded hours stay priced at the base rate (1×) and a separate, additive loading line is emitted at the configured percentage of base, coded to the rule's loading cost code. Use this when your payroll system expects the overtime premium as a distinct loading item. A loading rule requires both a positive Loading Rate (%) and a Loading Cost Code.

How to Configure

1. Go to Pay Rates → Pay Rate Documents and open a document
2. Click the Rule Groups tab and select a rule group
3. Find the Fortnightly Thresholds section and click Add Rule
4. Fill in the rule:
   • Name — descriptive label (e.g. "Fortnightly OT after 76h"); display only
   • After Hours — fortnightly hours after which this rate applies (leave empty to disable the rule)
   • Multiplier — e.g. 1.5 for time-and-a-half
   • Count only normal hours toward threshold — first tier only; see What Counts Toward the Threshold above
   • Application Method — Replacement or Loading (with loading rate and cost code)
5. Click Save
6. Optionally add a second rule for the higher tier (a different threshold is required)

Fortnightly threshold rules are always added manually — the AI document extraction never creates them, so existing documents are unaffected until you add one.

Cost Codes

When a rule group has a configured fortnightly threshold rule, the Rate Tree tab shows Fortnightly Overtime and Fortnightly Second Overtime cost code tiles on each rate node. Link a dedicated cost code per tier, or leave them unlinked to fall back to the node's daily Overtime / Second Overtime cost codes. See Cost Code Linking.

Custom Activity Rules using the rate tree can also code matched activities directly to the Fortnightly Overtime / Fortnightly Second Overtime tiers (the tier only resolves when the rule group has a fortnightly rule at that tier).

Ask Milo

Milo can manage fortnightly threshold rules conversationally — for example:

• "Add a fortnightly overtime rule at 76 hours and 1.5x to the Full Time rule group"
• "Change the fortnightly threshold to 80 hours"
• "Delete the fortnightly second overtime rule"

Milo creates Replacement rules; switch a rule to the Loading method in the rule dialog if needed.

Examples

Overtime After 76 Hours per Fortnight

• Payroll cycle: Fortnightly, anchored Monday June 15
• Rule: "Fortnightly OT after 76h", After Hours 76, Multiplier 1.5, count normal hours only
• A worker does 40 ordinary hours in week 1 and 40 in week 2. Week 1 pays entirely at ordinary rates (40 < 76). In week 2, the fortnight total crosses 76 during Friday — the last 4 hours of the fortnight re-code to Fortnightly Overtime at 1.5×.

Counting All Hours, With Daily Overtime

• Rules: Daily overtime after 8h/day at 1.5×; fortnightly threshold 76h with Count only normal hours off
• A worker does 10-hour days (8 ordinary + 2 daily OT each). Every worked hour counts toward the 76, so the threshold is crossed earlier than it would be on ordinary hours alone. The daily overtime hours keep their daily classification and pay — only the ordinary hours past the crossing point re-code to Fortnightly Overtime.

Tips

• Set the fortnight anchor first: on a weekly cycle, configure the Fortnight Anchor Date in Payroll Cycles before adding fortnightly rules — without an anchored grid the rules are skipped (with a note in the calculation reasoning).
• Reprocess the second week after changing the first: the second week's calculation reads the first week's hours at processing time. If you edit or reprocess week 1 after week 2 was already processed, re-apply rates to week 2 so its fortnightly overtime reflects the change.
• Distinct thresholds: two configured tiers must use different threshold hours; the save is rejected otherwise (parked tiers with no threshold are allowed).
• Premiums are safe: weekend/holiday day rates, shift rule segments, and daily/weekly overtime are never demoted or double-paid by a fortnightly rule — if results look different than expected, check which premium classified the hours first.

What's Next

• Pair the fortnight window with your pay period in Payroll Cycles
• Compare with once-per-fortnight payments in Allowance Rules
• Link the fortnightly tiers to cost codes in Cost Code Linking
• Explore the other rule types in Rule Groups