This article explains how to:

• Review and adjust your employees' overtime balances
• Compensate overtime as a payout or as time off

If you created your Personio account after 8 July 2026, or if you never tracked overtime before 29 July 2026, you have access to the new overtime experience. If neither applies to you, read Manage overtime instead.

Before you start

• To review an employee's overtime balance, edit the overtime balance, and convert it to extra time off, you need edit permissions to the employee's Attendance data section.
• To pay overtime out, you need edit permissions to the employee's Attendance data and Salary information sections.
• To adjust employees’ overtime balances via an import, you need edit permissions for Overtime balances import. You also need edit permissions for the relevant employees’ Attendance data section.

Overtime balance recalculation cut-off point

By default, our system recalculates the overtime balance up to 1 November 2025. This means that any changes that impact the overtime balance only affect it up to this cut-off date. You can’t deactivate this setting or edit the cut-off point.

This is to limit the frequency and impact of unintentional changes, ensuring overtime balance accuracy. The overtime balance recalculation cut-off date applies to changes due to:

• The creation, import (including those via API), or edit of attendance and time off entries.
• The edit and assignment of work schedules and time off types.
• The edit of hire and termination dates.
• The creation or edit of public holidays.
• The update of an employee leave status.

The system still applies any manual adjustments of the overtime balance, regardless of their effective date. You can also pay out or convert overtime past the cut-off point.

If you need to recalculate the overtime balance past the cut-off point:

• For small adjustments and for single employees, use a manual adjustment.
• For more extensive adjustment or for many employees, get in touch with us.

Review your employees’ overtime

To see an overview of an individual employee’s overtime information:

1. Go to the relevant employee profile and click Attendance. 
2. Open the Overtime widget on top of the timesheet by clicking Balance details. 

You can see various details on the page, as shown in the table below.

Review the overtime balance of multiple employees

If you want to review the overtime balance for multiple employees at the same time, follow these steps:

1. Go to Organization > People List.
2. At the top of the list, click Columns and type "Overtime balance".
3. Select the column.
4. The overtime balance column appears on the right. It shows all employees you have access to. You may need to scroll to the right to see it.

Adjust an employee's overtime balance

You can change an employee’s balance via a relative or absolute adjustment. 

Adjust the current balance (relative adjustment)

You can add or subtract overtime manually to an employee’s balance. Follow these steps:

1. Go to the relevant employee profile and click Attendance. 
2. Go to the Overtime widget on top of the timesheet and click Balance details.
3. In the employee's overtime overview, click Change balance.
4. Select Adjust balance.
5. Choose whether to add or deduct overtime.
6. Type the amount of overtime to add or deduct.
7. By default, the effective date is set to today. Choose another date in the past, as needed. The system applies relative adjustments to the overtime balance right away, so you can't select a future date. If the adjustment relates to a future event or date, add that context in the reason field instead.
8. Confirm the adjustment.

Set a new balance (absolute adjustment)

You can set an employee’s overtime balance to a specific value on a specific date. This action overrides the previous overtime balance, monthly overtime thresholds, and other transactions on the effective date. This is known as an absolute adjustment.

Absolute adjustments can impact how the system calculates the monthly overtime threshold. If you make an absolute adjustment within the month:

• The system treats it as the starting balance for that month when calculating the monthly overtime threshold.
• The system ignores all overtime or deficit before the adjustment when calculating the monthly overtime threshold.

To manually set a new overtime balance (absolute adjustment):

1. Go to the relevant employee profile and click Attendance. 
2. Go to the Overtime widget on top of the timesheet and click Balance details.
3. In the employee's overtime overview, click Change balance.
4. Select Set a new balance.
5. Choose whether to set a positive or negative balance. You can also set the value to zero.
6. Enter the new balance amount.
7. By default, the effective date is set to today. Choose another date as needed.
8. Optional: Add a reason for the override.
9. Confirm the adjustment.

You can also set a new overtime balance (absolute adjustment) via an import. Follow the steps in our dedicated article. This is particularly useful if you need to set new overtime balances for multiple employees at once. 

What happens to the Current balance card

If you set a new balance within the current month, it also changes what the Current balance card shows for that month:

• The Starting balance is replaced with a Reset balance entry showing your new value.
• The breakdown of overtime worked, adjustments, monthly overtime threshold, and compensations only includes items recorded after the reset date. It doesn’t list the absolute adjustment itself as a separate adjustment.

Note:
If you make the reset partway through the month, earlier activity from that month doesn’t appear in the breakdown. Only the reset and anything after it appears. The totals are still accurate, but the view may look incomplete. This is a known limitation.

Review your adjustments

Any current or past changes appear in the overtime overview as a balance adjustment. Future-dated adjustments appear in the Upcoming section until their effective date. Relative adjustments apply to the overtime balance right away, based on today's date.

To delete an adjustment, click the three dots on its left and confirm. 

Compensate an employee's overtime as time off

You can compensate your employees for overtime with time off in lieu. You can only convert overtime to extra time off to time off types with a time off policy with limited entitlement assigned to the employee. 

Follow these steps:

1. Optional: If you want to keep extra time off separate from normal leave, follow these instructions before continuing.
2. Go to the relevant employee profile and click Attendance. 
3. Go to the Overtime widget on top of the timesheet and click Balance details.
4. Click Compensate overtime and select Compensate as time off.
5. Fill in the compensation details:
   • Time off type: Select the time off type to credit. The dropdown shows all time off types that have a time off policy with limited entitlement assigned to that employee.
   • Compensation date: Select when the time off applies. By default, the compensation date is set to today. Choose another date as needed. The system caps retrospective time off in lieu at the start of the previous calendar year. Future-dated time off in lieu can't go beyond the end of the current calendar year.
   • Hours to compensate: Enter how many overtime hours and minutes to convert. You can't enter more than the available balance.
   • Conversion factor: Enter the multiplier to apply when converting overtime hours to time off days. Learn more about the conversion factor below.
   • Time off days being compensated: The system calculates this value automatically based on the hours and conversion factor. This is a preview only.
   • Reason for compensation: You have the option to enter a comment, which appears in the transaction history. Note that employees may see the comment.
6. Click Compensate.

The system automatically reduces the overtime balance when you make the conversion. The employee’s time off type balance increases by the projected number of days on the compensation date. 

To delete a time off in lieu entry, find it in the transaction history and click the three dots. You can't delete time off in lieu entries created before the start of the previous calendar year.

Keep time in lieu separate from normal leave

1. Create a new, dedicated time off type for the extra time off. For example: Time in lieu.
2. Create a time off policy for it and set the annual entitlement to zero. Choose the other settings according to your company’s policies.
3. Assign the time off policy to your employees.
4. When converting overtime, select this time off type.

Extra time off conversion factor

To calculate the additional time off the employee receives, the system multiplies the amount of overtime to convert by the conversion factor.

The default factor is 1. This means that the employee gets 1 day off every 8 hours of overtime. With a factor of 2, the employee needs 4 hours of overtime to get a day off, and so on.

The system applies the extra time off the same way to all employees, regardless of their daily work hours. If an employee works 4 hours a day, they still receive a full day off.

Pay out an employee's overtime

You can calculate and record overtime payouts for employees in the Overtime widget.

1. Go to the relevant employee profile and click Attendance. 
2. Go to the Overtime widget on top of the timesheet and click Balance details.
3. Click Compensate overtime and select Compensate as pay.
4. Fill in the payout details:
   • Compensation date: Select when the payout applies. This can be a past, current, or future date. The system caps retrospective payouts at the start of the previous calendar year. Future-dated payouts can't go beyond the end of the current calendar year.
   • Hours to compensate: Enter the number of overtime hours and minutes to convert. You can't enter more than the available balance.
   • Conversion factor: Enter the multiplier to apply. For example, if you pay your employees time and a half for overtime, enter 1.5.
   • Hourly rate: Personio prefills this with the employee's current hourly rate, but you can edit it if needed. If your rate differs from the expected rate, Personio shows a warning.
   • Projected payout amount: The system calculates the amount using the formula described below. This is a preview only.
   • Reason for payout: You have the option to enter a comment, which appears in the transaction history. Note that employees may see the comment.
5. Click Compensate.

The payout reduces the overtime balance on the date you create it—not the effective date. The effective date tells your payroll tool which payroll period to attribute it to.

To delete a payout, find it in the transaction history and click the three dots icon. You can't delete payouts created before the start of the previous calendar year.

Overtime pay-out conversion formula and hourly rate

To calculate the additional payout, the system uses this formula:

(Amount of hours) x (Hourly rate) x (Conversion factor)

If the employee is on an hourly salary, the system uses that as the hourly rate. If the employee is on a fixed annual or monthly salary, the system uses this formula to calculate the rate per hour:

(Annual salary / 12 months) x 3 months / 13 weeks / employee’s weekly working hours

Or

Monthly salary x 3 months / 13 weeks / employee’s weekly working hours

Limitations

• All time off and payout compensations are manual, one employee at a time. You can't bulk compensate or schedule automatic compensations. This is planned for a later release.
• You can't edit a payout or time off compensation entry after creating it. To correct one, delete it and create a new entry.
• Overtime payouts are not available for Personio Payroll customers. This is planned for a later release.
• The work schedule widget on the Attendance page shows the work schedule from the start of the week, not a mid-week change. Use the timesheet for accurate target hours.
• Pending overtime is not shown in the overtime widget on the Attendance page. The widget only reflects approved overtime.
  Monthly and custom overtime calculation periods are not supported. Overtime is tracked daily or weekly.