This is essentially the same question you asked previously. You mentioned that this was for "registering overtime." Have you asked your HR department about the company's policy regarding this?

I can see that you're trying to give us context, but we still don't really understand why you need to calculate overtime. If it's to try to determine how much you should be getting paid, or for other contractual reasons, you should calculate it according to what is laid out in your employment contract. It will detail what constitutes overtime, and what the associated rates are.

If your question is related to the legalities of working overtime on some days, you should look at relevant legislation that exists.

We still don't really understand the purpose of associating the overtime hours to days. If I were to guess it's because there are different overtime rates on different days, and you need to calculate how much you should be getting paid. But it's just a guess. I think you've gone out of your way to try to be as opaque as possible, but I don't really understand why. If you tell us what the data is for, we can be more precise with telling you how it should be calculated.

@zmike: This is not in context of a specific company; thus there is no HR to ask.

"people will not just be able to see their grand total overtime, but will also be able to print a sheet detailing their overtime for each day individually" What people?

@JustinCave: Unfortunately not. That question was downvoted to hell and closed and as such is not usful.

@GregoryCurrie: This is not for different overtime rates, at least not directly. It might be used for that purpose though. What people? All the people that want to keep track of their hours of work and avoid unpaid overtime and don't trust their employer in that regard.

Unfortunately, it was downvoted and closed because it's not on topic. At best, it may be asking about country-, company-, and role-specific guidelines. Simply reposting what is functionally the same question will likely produce functionally the same result.

@JustinCave: This question is strongly related to the workplace which in my opinion makes in on-topic here. Since nobody seems to be able to explain to me how to ask this question in a non offensive way it seems that all I can do is try and error until I get it right.

My best guess-- if you are building a product that is supposed to work for people at multiple companies is that you want to add configuration options that allow users to choose where these hours get attributed and then rely on your users to know how their company handles overnight hours. That's not going to be helpful if, say, a company's accounting method doesn't comport with some local regulation though.

@user1785730 Different people will have different employment contracts detailing how overtime is calculated. For instance, where I worked, hours after midnight were paid at higher rate, but other places will pay overtime if it's over a certain number of hours regardless of when those hours occur. So basically you are asking us for an answer when the answer will not be suitable for some people, but suitable for others.

@JustinCave: Actually, that would be an acceptable answer. I was hoping however to receive input from nightworkers who already did try to attribute their hours of work resp. their overtime to a date.

And when you very first posed this question, you were asked why you wanted to collect the data. And you said, "no reason". It's now been revealed that a motivation is create a general purpose spreadsheet to ensure people are getting paid the correct amount, and that businesses are correctly recording hours worked.

@GregoryCurrie: I disagree. This is not about calculating wages at different rates, depending on the hour. I don't get why you insist on that point. It is simply about calculating overtime. And overtime is overtime, no matter where.

@GregoryCurrie: As a programmer you might've heard of the concept of a minimal working example. The first question was asked in that spirit.

@user1785730 There is not a single definition of overtime. Even within the same country what the law considers overtime for one particular purpose, your employer can consider overtime as being defined differently for a different purpose. And you may again have a different purpose for calculating what overtime is. This has been expressed a lot of different ways to you.

@user1785730 If you want to define a spreadsheet as being suitable for tracking overtime, you'll have to accept that without it being parameterised, it's going to be ill-suited for some purposes.

That overtime is not simply overtime is new to me. I've just attempted to ask a new question about it and realized that I'm blocked from asking any more questions. Thank you very much. So could you give some examples of different types of overtime?

Overtime could be: Working more hours than formally rostered. Working more hours that the contract stipulates. Working more hours than a legal maximum. Working hours after a certain time. Working hours before a certain time. Working hours on certain days of the week. Working hours in excess of a weekly maximum. Working hours in excess of a fortnightly maximum. Working hours in excess of some specified interval. Working hours without a sufficient break since previous shift. Sometimes there is also a grace period before overtime is triggered, like 30 minutes.

Ok. Though I think I will still just use this simple formula: overtime = actual_hours_of_work - due_hours_of_work. I'm sure that all the types of overtime you mention are important in a certain context; but I just want to count the apples in the box and I don't care that some are big or small or pricy or just picked up from the street. Is this wrong or even offensive?

@user1785730 There is nothing offensive with your question, it just can't be answered. Put the apples in whatever box you want. There is no correct box.