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A report can show several hour figures side by side, and they answer different questions. This page says what each one counts, and why a calculated total may not match the rows above it.

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Planned, worked, and the norm

Three figures describe a person’s period before any overtime rule applies. Norm hours is the yardstick. It comes from the person’s contract and their country’s working-time rules, not from anything they did. Overtime and undertime are measured against it.

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Overtime and undertime

Overtime and undertime are two positive columns. Overtime/undertime is the same information as a single number: positive above the norm, negative below it. Use the pair for payroll, where hours owed and hours short are separate conversations, and the combined column when you only want the net position.

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The period balances

Some overtime policies accrue over a multi-month window — a quarter, for example — rather than resetting every month. Three columns describe that window.
The period balance is a running figure. It reports the accounting window that contains the end of your date range, not the range itself. On a rolling range such as Last 30 days, the period columns will describe a different window than every other column on the same row. Set the range to a whole calendar month before you read them.
If nobody on the report accrues overtime over a period, the columns say so instead of repeating the monthly pair:
Period overtime and undertime are unavailable because nobody on this report accrues overtime over a period. Their period figures would repeat the monthly ones.

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When a figure is unavailable

An empty hour cell is not always a zero. Begin distinguishes “we measured nothing” from “we refused to compute this”, and explains the refusal. You will meet these:
  • Not grouped by person — the calculator works one person at a time, so a position, location or label group has nothing to sum.
  • A filter is applied — a norm covers the whole contract, so a filtered subset cannot divide it.
  • The country of work is not supported — norm and overtime are unavailable. Scheduled and worked hours are unaffected.
  • You cannot see draft shifts — norm, overtime and premium hours are unavailable, because each would count hours you cannot open.
  • The person has left the workspace — calculated figures stop. Their shift count and recorded hours are unaffected.
In every case the report tells you which figures are affected and which are not. Read the message before assuming a number is missing.

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Why a total may not equal the rows above it

This is the question that generates support tickets, so it is worth a minute. Hour totals are calculated. Break, count and time-off columns are summed. A calculated total is not the arithmetic sum of the rows above it, because policies and rounding apply to the calculation rather than to each visible row. Concretely, a total can differ from its source records because of:
  • planned unpaid breaks, paid breaks and unpaid breaks
  • public holiday classification
  • evening and night premium rules
  • total-result rounding, which rounds the period total to a set number of minutes
None of these is an error. Each is a policy your workspace configured, applied where it belongs. To see the difference for yourself, open Why totals differ on a summary row. The Hours reconciliation panel lists each metric, the adjustment applied, and the calculated result — for one person, or across everyone on the report. When nothing was adjusted it says so plainly:
Calculated hours match the source rows.
Rounding is applied once, to the total. Begin does not round each row and add the rounded numbers up — that would drift. So a column of rounded-looking rows can legitimately add to a different total than the one shown.

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Charts read a different path

A chart block reads the source records directly rather than the hours calculator, and says so:
These figures come from the source records, not the hours calculator, so they may differ from a table block over the same period.
For payroll figures, read the table.

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Next

Downloading a report

Decimal hours, and what happens when a report is too large.

Building a report

Sources, columns, and the record-versus-summary choice.

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