Extra Hours and Overtime

Introduction

Extra hours (Überstunden) refer to the additional working hours that employees work beyond their regularly agreed contractual working hours.

Overtime (Überzeit), on the other hand, occurs when an employee exceeds the legally stipulated maximum weekly working hours. From this legally determined threshold — in this case (L-GAV) 50 hours per week — the additional working hours are counted as overtime. By law, overtime must be reported separately.

It is important to note that the calculation is made on a weekly basis — always from Monday to Sunday, with overtime calculated at the end of Sunday.

Exception: In the case of a contract change, overtime is calculated on the last day of the old contract. If the last day is a Wednesday, the calculation runs from Monday to Wednesday.

Build-up

The following illustration shows the weekly build-up of extra hours and overtime.

In week 1, 3 extra hours were worked, exceeding the weekly target of 42 hours.
In week 2, an additional 4 extra hours were worked, bringing the extra hours balance to 7 hours.
In week 3, 10 hours more than the target of 42 hours were worked. Of those 10 hours, 8 are counted as extra hours and 2 as overtime, since 2 hours more than the legal maximum (L-GAV) of 50 hours were worked. The extra hours balance is now 15 hours, while the overtime balance is 2 hours.

Reduction

The following illustration shows the weekly reduction of extra hours and overtime.

In week 4, 1 hour less than the target of 42 hours was worked. This 1 hour is first deducted from the overtime balance. The extra hours balance therefore remains unchanged at 15 hours, while the overtime balance is reduced to 1 hour.

In week 5, 3 hours less than the target of 42 hours were worked. Since overtime is reduced first, the overtime balance is reduced by 1 hour to 0 hours, and the remaining 2 hours are deducted from the extra hours balance, which now stands at 13 hours.
In week 6, 4 hours less than the target of 42 hours were worked. Since the overtime account is already at 0 hours, this results in a reduction of 4 hours from the extra hours balance, bringing it to 9 hours.

Overtime Build-up with Negative Extra Hours Balance

In week 1, 7 hours less than the target of 42 hours were worked, resulting in an extra hours balance of -7 hours.

In week 2, 6 hours less than the target of 42 hours were worked. The extra hours balance is now -13 hours.
In week 3, 10 hours more than the target of 42 hours were worked. Overtime applies above 50 hours, so 2 hours are recorded as overtime; the remaining 8 hours are offset against the extra hours balance.

Extra Hours Build-up

In week 4, 6 hours more than the target of 42 hours were worked. These are added to the extra hours balance.