Shift Differential Calculator
Night, weekend and holiday premiums for one shift or a whole timesheet, with the question most policies leave open answered all three ways.
Reads .xlsx and .csv inside your browser. Nothing is uploaded.
The timesheet
Drop a spreadsheet here
One row per shift: who, the date, the start and end times, and ideally the unpaid break and the base rate.
Your premiums
Examples to replace with your policy. A window that ends at or before it starts runs past midnight, and its days are the days it starts on.
Check one shift
Under the premiums above, all three readings side by side.
7.5 paid hours, 3.75 inside nights, 7.5 inside weekends.
| Reading | Add them together | Pay the higher one only |
|---|---|---|
| Only the hours inside the window | $20.63yours | $15.00 |
| The whole shift, when most of it is inside | $15.00 | $15.00 |
| The whole shift, when it starts inside | $15.00 | $15.00 |
A shift from 6pm to 2am is four premium hours, eight, or none
A night premium for work between 10pm and 6am is clear until a shift straddles the window. Paid on the hours actually inside it, the 6pm shift earns four premium hours. Paid on the whole shift when most of it falls inside, it earns none, because four is exactly half. Paid on the whole shift when it starts inside, it earns none again. Move the start to 7pm and the second reading flips to eight.
Policies are written all three ways, and payroll systems are set up all three ways, not always the same way as the handbook. So the tool pays by the reading you choose and prints the other two beside it. The difference is exactly what the choice is worth, and it falls on the people whose shifts straddle the window, who are usually the swing shift.
A Saturday night earns two premiums, or one
An hour can qualify for the night premium and the weekend premium at once. Some policies add them together and some pay the higher one. Both totals are shown whenever any hour qualifies twice, so the policy can say which in writing.
Midnight, breaks, holidays and the clock
A shift whose end time is earlier than its start ends the next morning, and its hours are split across both days, so a Friday night shift earns a weekend premium for the hours after midnight. An unpaid break is spread across the shift, because a timesheet rarely says when it was taken. A holiday counts from midnight to midnight on the dates you list. And a shift across a daylight saving change is an hour longer or shorter than its clock times say, so those shifts are named rather than quietly mis-paid.
What this does not do
It applies the premiums you set to the hours in the file. It does not know whether any premium is required where your people work, and it does not calculate overtime. Where somebody has more than 40 hours in a week, it says that a premium usually changes the overtime rate as well, and leaves that to payroll. It is not payroll or legal advice.
To turn the premium totals into annual or hourly figures, the Pay Converter & Proration works from the same kind of rates. For a cost that includes premiums alongside taxes and benefits, see the Fully Loaded Cost Calculator.