When a nondiscretionary bonus is settled after the weeks it covers, it can raise the regular rate for those weeks after the fact. Enter each covered workweek, pick the allocation model your facts support, and see the added federal overtime the bonus produces, one week at a time.
This tool starts from the point where the bonus is already known to count toward the federal regular rate. It does not sort bonuses into discretionary, nondiscretionary, or otherwise excludable payments.
This figure is only the added overtime that comes from the bonus. It is not the full overtime pay for the covered period.
—Full precision is kept during the math, and dollar results are rounded to the cent only for display. A payroll system may round intermediate steps in another permitted way, so a difference of a cent or so is possible.
| Week | Hours | Hours past 40 | Bonus share | Rate increase | Added overtime |
|---|
An includable bonus that spans more than one workweek often can’t be measured when the original overtime is paid. Federal rules let the employer wait until the bonus can be determined, but then the bonus must be spread back across the workweeks that earned it and the overtime it adds must be paid for each overtime week.
It is called a true-up because the straight-time pay and the original overtime premium are treated as already paid. The calculator isolates only the extra overtime the later bonus allocation creates.
The math turns on how the bonus can reasonably be tied to the covered period. The calculator shows every step, but it intentionally leaves the choice of legal allocation method to you.
When you know how much of the bonus was earned in each week, enter those weekly amounts. Each week’s share is divided by that week’s hours, and the added half-time is applied to that week’s modeled overtime hours.
Where the weekly earnings can’t be identified, federal guidance treats an equal share per covered workweek as a possibly reasonable and equitable approach, if the facts back it up. The calculator splits the bonus evenly across the weeks you enter.
When an even weekly split wouldn’t fit — say, hours swing widely from week to week — federal guidance describes an equal-per-hour spread as another possibly reasonable and equitable option. The bonus is divided by every hour worked in the covered period.
Discretionary versus nondiscretionary turns on the facts and the governing law, and calling a payment a “discretionary bonus” doesn’t settle it. Use this calculator only once the bonus treatment and its earning period have been established elsewhere. It also leaves aside FLSA coverage and exemptions, state daily overtime, industry-specific rules, collective-bargaining formulas, fluctuating-workweek methods, piece-rate and commission methods, and whether an overtime premium can be credited under another rule.
A true-up matters when a payment that feeds the regular rate isn’t known until after one or more covered weeks have already been paid. How it is handled depends on what the payment is for and when it was earned.
A bonus tied to a preset production, quality, efficiency, attendance, safety, or similar formula may be nondiscretionary and so may feed the regular rate. When it spans several weeks, paying it later can call for a retroactive overtime adjustment in the overtime weeks.
An incentive can stretch over several pay cycles. If you can tell which part belongs to which workweek, use those amounts directly. If not, the federal framework expects a reasonable and equitable spread instead of loading the whole bonus onto the week it was paid.
Employers, bookkeepers, accountants, and employees can rebuild the math behind a bonus-related overtime correction. Seeing each week laid out makes it easier to set a true-up beside the hours and bonus period it actually involves.
U.S. Department of Labor guidance explains that nondiscretionary bonuses are generally part of the regular rate unless a statutory exclusion applies. When an includable bonus covers more than one workweek and can’t be determined until later, 29 CFR 778.209 calls for spreading the bonus back over the period that earned it and paying an added amount for every overtime workweek. If actual weekly bonus earnings can’t be identified, the regulation points to another reasonable and equitable allocation, including equal-per-week or equal-per-hour spreads where the facts support them.
Sources last checked: August 30, 2026. The calculator reproduces arithmetic from the federal framework cited above; recheck the official sources whenever the rules or guidance change.
What the calculator does, how each spread works, and where it deliberately stops.
An includable bonus can lift the regular rate for the weeks that earned it. If the employee worked federal overtime in those weeks, the higher rate means an extra half-time amount is owed once the bonus is known.
Not always. For a bonus earned across more than one workweek, federal guidance generally looks back to the weeks that earned it, so the bonus may have to be spread over those weeks rather than treated as pay for the payment week alone.
If you know how much was earned in each week, actual weekly amounts are the most direct input. If you don’t, the federal regulation calls for another reasonable and equitable method. Equal-per-week and equal-per-hour are examples from federal guidance, but whether either assumption fits depends on the facts.
The model treats straight-time pay for every hour, plus the original overtime premium on the pay known at the time, as already paid. The later bonus lifts the regular rate, so the extra federal overtime it creates is generally one more half of that rate increase for each overtime hour.
The bonus may still be owed, but under this basic model a week without hours beyond 40 has no bonus-related overtime true-up, so those weeks show zero added overtime.
Some percentage-of-earnings bonuses can be handled differently, because the formula may already lift straight-time and overtime pay in proportion. The calculator doesn’t decide whether that treatment applies; it is built for a bonus that has to be spread back over covered weeks with added overtime worked out.
No. It doesn’t classify workers, decide FLSA coverage, or decide whether overtime is legally owed. The weekly math assumes the basic federal hours-beyond-40 rule applies to what you enter.
No. It shows the arithmetic openly, nothing more. State and local overtime law, industry rules, collective agreements, special pay plans, payroll rounding practices, and other facts can all change the required result.
The math runs in your browser. Bonus amounts and hours are not sent to a PayStubCheck server for calculation, kept in browser storage, or included in analytics events.