Overtime Tracking

Overtime tracking is the process of recording when a worker's hours exceed a standard threshold — typically 40 hours in a workweek under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, or 8 hours in a workday under California and certain other state laws. The purpose is to give your payroll provider clean, accurate data so it can apply overtime rates correctly. Overtime tracking is a data quality problem. Overtime calculation and compliance are your payroll provider's problem.

What Overtime Tracking Is — and Isn't

The distinction matters because fabrication shops routinely conflate them.

Overtime tracking means capturing clock-in and clock-out times with enough precision and attribution that a downstream system can determine when a threshold was crossed. If a worker clocks in at 6:00 AM and out at 6:30 PM with a 30-minute lunch break, that's 12 hours captured for that day. Whether that triggers daily overtime depends on the state. Whether it triggers weekly overtime depends on the week's total. Whether it affects the paycheck depends on the payroll system doing the math.

Overtime compliance means correctly classifying workers, applying the right exemptions, calculating blended rates for workers paid at multiple rates, and staying current with state law changes. That's what ADP, Gusto, and QuickBooks Payroll do. FabWise doesn't do it, and shouldn't — that's specialized work with legal consequences.

FabWise captures accurate time records per worker, per job, per shift and exports clean data to your payroll provider via structured payroll export. The provider takes it from there.

Why Fabrication Shops Get This Wrong

Generic time tracking tools — the kind designed for office workers or field service — pool hours by employee without job context. A worker splits a day between two jobs, and the tool records one block: 7:00 AM to 3:30 PM, 8.5 hours. The job attribution has to be reconciled manually at week's end, often from memory or paper notes.

This creates two problems for shop-floor time tracking:

1. Threshold detection becomes ambiguous. If you're tracking hours by job and worker separately, you need to aggregate correctly to determine when the 40-hour weekly threshold is crossed. Tools that weren't designed for this often force you to export to a spreadsheet and do the calculation yourself.

2. Errors compound. When job attribution is reconstructed from memory days later, hours get assigned to the wrong jobs. The overtime hours are still counted correctly for payroll purposes, but the job cost data is corrupted — you can't tell what a job actually cost to produce.

FabWise solves this at capture time. Workers clock in and select the job they're working on. Hours are attributed at the moment they're earned. No weekly reconciliation step, no memory required.

Weekly Overtime vs. Shift-Based Overtime

Most shops operate under FLSA weekly overtime rules: 1.5x pay for hours over 40 in a workweek. Some shops employ workers in states with daily overtime thresholds (California is the most common: 1.5x after 8 hours/day, 2x after 12 hours/day; similar rules apply in Alaska, Nevada, and Colorado).

The Department of Labor's FLSA overtime guidance covers the federal baseline. State labor departments publish their own rules; your payroll provider should handle the state-level complexity.

What this means for time tracking: weekly overtime requires accurate weekly hour totals per worker. Daily overtime requires accurate shift records — start time, end time, break duration — per worker per day. FabWise captures both. Every shift has a start, end, and break record that your payroll provider can interpret according to the applicable rules for your state.

What FabWise Tracks

• Clock-in and clock-out time per worker, per shift
• Break start and end time (meal and rest breaks tracked separately)
• Job attribution for every hour worked
• Edit history when a supervisor corrects a time record

What FabWise does not do: calculate overtime pay, determine exemption status, or apply state-specific rules. That's your payroll provider's domain. The payroll export gives the provider the raw hour totals it needs.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does FabWise calculate overtime pay?

No. FabWise captures accurate time records — who worked, when, and on what job. ADP, Gusto, QuickBooks Payroll, and similar systems take those hour totals and apply the correct overtime rates, exemptions, and state rules. This division of labor is intentional: overtime compliance is a legal domain with state-specific rules and classification requirements. FabWise's job is to make sure the underlying time data is accurate and clean before it reaches the payroll system.

What's the difference between overtime tracking and overtime compliance?

Overtime tracking is data collection: recording the hours so someone can determine whether a threshold was crossed. Overtime compliance is legal and financial: correctly classifying employees, applying the right multipliers, handling blended rates for multi-rate workers, and keeping up with state law changes. Your payroll provider handles compliance. You need accurate tracking data to feed it. A shop that uses sloppy time records — paper timesheets, reconstructed from memory, no job-level attribution — puts its payroll provider in an impossible position and increases compliance risk even if the payroll system itself is sound.

How does shift-based overtime differ from weekly overtime?

Weekly overtime (the federal FLSA standard) is triggered when a worker exceeds 40 hours in a workweek. Daily or shift-based overtime is triggered when a worker exceeds a daily threshold — commonly 8 hours per day under California law. For weekly overtime, you need accurate weekly totals per worker. For daily overtime, you need accurate shift-level records: start time, end time, break duration. FabWise captures both. The distinction matters if you employ workers in California, Alaska, Nevada, or Colorado, where daily overtime rules apply on top of the federal weekly rule.