Assumptions, method and limits
Hitchday estimates gross pay and, if you turn it on, take-home pay, for planning only. It is not payroll software, and it is not tax, accounting or legal advice. If your pay stub disagrees, your employer's payroll records and your employment agreement decide, not this site. If you think you are underpaid, contact your payroll department, your union, the U.S. Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division or your state labor agency.
What it calculates
- Shifts. Each date in your pattern is a day shift, swing shift, night shift or day off, counted from your anchor date. A shift starts at the clock time you set (in your time zone) and lasts the shift length. Marked days off are removed, extra shifts are added.
- Paid time. The unpaid break is taken out of the middle of the shift. Time is counted in whole minutes. A break at least as long as the shift is ignored.
- Splitting. Paid time is split at midnight, at each workweek boundary, and at the edges of a night-differential window, so every piece belongs to one calendar date and one workweek.
- Overtime. Pieces are placed in time order within each fixed workweek. Minutes beyond the threshold (default 40 hours) are overtime. The workweek is a fixed 7-day span starting at the day and time you choose; the pay period is never used to decide overtime.
- Pay. Straight-time pay is the base rate for every paid hour, plus any night differential for hours inside the window. The overtime premium is added as the extra (multiplier − 1) on overtime hours, priced one of two ways (below). A holiday premium is added for hours worked on a holiday date.
- Pay periods. Hours and dollars are assigned to the pay period containing the calendar date they were worked (or, if you choose, the date the shift started).
- Rounding. Amounts are carried as exact whole millionths of a dollar, summed for the workweek or pay period, and rounded half-up to the cent once per component (regular, differential, overtime premium, holiday premium). The estimated gross is the sum of those rounded components. Weekly figures and pay-period figures are each rounded independently, so weekly totals may differ from a period total by a cent.
Overtime pricing methods
- Federal regular-rate method (default). Regular rate = the workweek's straight-time pay (including night differential) divided by all hours worked in the workweek. Overtime premium = (multiplier − 1) × regular rate × overtime hours. This follows the Department of Labor's regular-rate rules (29 CFR 778.109, 778.207(b)).
- Per-hour method. Each overtime hour is paid at the multiplier times the rate that hour earns (base plus any differential for that hour). Some employers and agreements do this. It can differ from the federal method by a few dollars when differentials are involved.
Official sources
- U.S. Department of Labor, Fact Sheet #23: Overtime Pay Requirements of the FLSA
- U.S. Department of Labor, Fact Sheet #22: Hours Worked
- 29 CFR 778.104 (each workweek stands alone), 778.105 (determining the workweek), 778.106 (time of payment), 778.109 (regular rate), 778.207 (nonovertime premiums) — published through Cornell Law School's Legal Information Institute.
What is not handled (and where your rules may differ)
| Topic | Treatment |
|---|---|
| State daily overtime and seventh-day rules (for example California, which pays 1.5x after 8 hours and 2x after 12 in a day) | Not calculated. Only weekly overtime is computed. If you work in a state or jurisdiction with daily overtime, estimates will be too low. |
| Union contracts, employer policies, and premiums for weekends, shifts or call-outs | Not modeled except a night differential and holiday premium. Enter hours/rates as your contract defines them where possible. |
| Exempt (salaried) employees, fluctuating workweek, commission, bonuses, shift premiums other than those entered | Not modeled. Bonuses and some premiums must be included in the regular rate under federal law; this site does not do that. |
| Healthcare 8/80 and fire-protection work periods | Not modeled. |
| Time-clock rounding, grace periods, paid meal breaks, travel and waiting time | Not modeled. The calendar assumes you work exactly the scheduled minutes. |
| Timing of overtime payment | Federal rules generally call for overtime to be paid on the regular payday for the period in which the workweek ends (29 CFR 778.106). Hitchday instead places each hour, with its overtime, in the pay period of the day it was worked. When a workweek straddles two pay periods, your employer may pay the whole week's overtime on the later paycheck. Totals over both periods will agree; individual paychecks may not. |
| Holiday premium | Treated as extra pay on top of the hour's normal pay, excluded from the regular rate and not counted as overtime. Whether a holiday premium can count toward overtime or be excluded depends on how it is structured (see 29 CFR 778.203; not checked in this tool). |
| Overlapping shifts | An extra shift that overlaps a scheduled shift is counted in addition, so hours in the overlap are double counted. Avoid overlaps. |
| Clock changes | You choose whether a shift keeps its length or ends at the scheduled clock time. A shift time that does not exist (skipped hour) is moved to the equivalent time after the change; a repeated time uses the first occurrence. |
| Taxes, withholding, deductions, net pay | Estimated only when you turn on the optional take-home estimate. Federal income-tax withholding follows IRS Publication 15-T (percentage method, 2020-or-later W-4); Social Security and Medicare, including the wage-base cap and Additional Medicare Tax, use the year-to-date pay worked out from your schedule or entered by you. State income tax is estimated per paycheck from each state's 2026 brackets, standard deduction, personal exemption and income phase-outs, annualized; states with no tax on wages are $0. Your own rate or amount replaces the estimate. Local and county taxes always use your own figure. Gross pay is never changed by this estimate. |
| State withholding tables (the estimate uses annual brackets), dependents, state tax credits other than personal exemption credits, federal-tax subtractions (Alabama, Missouri, Oregon), state payroll programs (disability, paid leave, long-term care), garnishments, employer match, 401(k) annual limits, flat-rate withholding on bonuses, year-end true-up | Not modeled. Overtime is treated as regular wages for withholding. Take-home figures are estimates, not payroll results; a pay-stub figure you enter replaces the estimate for that line. |
| Outside the United States | Federal rules described here are U.S. rules. Overtime rules elsewhere differ; the calendar works anywhere but the pay estimate may not. |
How the calculations were checked
The project includes automated tests with hand-computed answers, and a separate minute-by-minute implementation written in another language that is compared against the calculator on 72 randomized schedules including clock changes. These checks show the calculator does what this page says. They cannot show that this page matches your employer's payroll rules.