Check Whether a Pay Stub Actually Pays Your Overtime — Free
Paste a pay stub and your hours, and read what the effective hourly rate has been against the salary that is supposed to cover it.
The proof surface
A salary is not evidence that hours were covered. The gauge converts the stub into a rate per hour worked, which is the number payroll can be asked about in writing.
Why the flat version breaks
Annual-salary thinking
A $46,800 salary is $22.50 an hour across 2,080 hours — a figure that collapses to $14.20 once 92-hour periods are counted.
Waiting for the annual review
Payroll queries are answered period by period; by the annual review the records needed for the first quarter are usually gone.
Comparing against a job advert
A market rate says nothing about this stub. The only usable comparison is the rate your own contract states against the hours your own timesheet shows.
How to work the overtime gauge
Gross, hours paid, hours worked and any overtime line; one period is enough to see the shape.
The rate you were engaged at anchors the gauge; it is not used as a legal test.
The needle crosses three named zones — rate holds, gap forming, exposure — and the verdict sentence names the zone you landed in.
Send payroll the period, the hours gap and the effective rate; ask which period the unpaid hours will appear in.
What the gauge replaces
| Question | Before | On the gauge |
|---|---|---|
| Am I short | compare salary to a job advert | effective rate against your stated rate |
| Which weeks | scroll back through stubs | per-period reading kept side by side in the paid layer |
| What to ask payroll | 'I think I'm owed' | the hours gap and the period it falls in |
The reading is arithmetic on one period; it is not a legal conclusion about exemption, and it says so on the face of the card.
Run it on the samples, right here
FIRST-LOAD
Data note: Everything runs in this browser tab on the overtime gauge: your pay stub and hours stays on this device, nothing is uploaded, and the reading is rebuilt only when you press run.
Go deeper: the companion app files the same reading as a meter band gauge
The article demo above runs without limits. The companion app keeps a local history, exports the rows as CSV, prints the ready-to-mail packet, and holds your drafts on this device — one free run, then $ 9 one-time for the layer that keeps filing.
The gauge and the effective-rate reading are free. The paid layer keeps six weeks on file and prints a dated hours record.
Open the overtime exposure gauge companionBoundary
This overtime gauge works only on the pay stub lines and hours you paste you paste. It does not decide your legal exemption status, does not value a claim or predict an outcome, and does not read your employer's payroll system. The figures describe what you supplied, not what is true in the world. Confirm anything you plan to act on with an employment adviser or a qualified employment lawyer before you rely on it.
What this is built on
- Every figure comes from the pay stub lines and hours you paste you paste; nothing is looked up, scraped or asserted as verified.
- Method: effective rate = gross pay ÷ hours worked, with the overtime premium shown separately from the base rate you supply
- Sample values are labelled samples — illustrative by design, not your data and not a quotation of any organisation's policy.
Before: the reader assumed a salary covered the extra hours. After: they can see an effective rate of $14.20 an hour for the weeks they worked 52 hours.