Settling overtime in Poland gets easier in Time Harmony 3.20. We're expanding the existing working time settlement module in Poland with a new settlement period list, visual overtime analysis and a redesigned overtime screen that recognises the type of each overtime hour and routes it to the right process. If your team manages employees in Poland — whether from a local office or remotely — this article walks through exactly what's changing and why it matters for day-to-day HR work.
Overtime under the Polish Labour Code — a quick refresher
Before looking at the product changes, it's worth recapping how overtime works under Polish law, since every mechanism described below is built around these rules.
Under the Labour Code, overtime is any hour worked beyond an employee's standard working time norms — generally 8 hours a day and an average of 40 hours a week over a five-day working week. Overtime falls into several categories, and the category determines how it's settled:
- daily overtime — hours worked beyond the daily norm on a regular working day,
- weekly average overtime — occurs when the average weekly norm is exceeded over a settlement period, even if no single day exceeded the daily limit,
- work on Sundays and public holidays — treated separately and usually requires a day off in return,
- work on a day off arising from the average five-day working week — also requires compensatory time off,
- night work — settled with a separate allowance.
Employees are entitled to their normal pay plus an allowance of 50% (daily overtime on regular working days) or 100% (night work, Sundays and public holidays, and overtime from exceeding the weekly average norm). Instead of paying the allowance, an employer can grant time off — at a 1:1 ratio if requested by the employee, or 1:1.5 if granted on the employer's initiative. The Labour Code also caps overtime arising from an employer's special needs at 150 hours per calendar year (a works agreement or employment contract can raise this limit), and total working time including overtime cannot exceed an average of 48 hours a week.
In practice, this means every overtime hour first has to be correctly classified before it can be settled — paid out with the right allowance, or converted into time off. In Poland this compensatory time off is often referred to by two shorthand terms: WW5, a day off arising from the average five-day working week, and WNŚ, time off granted for work on a Sunday or public holiday. Tracking all of this manually in a spreadsheet is one of the most common sources of payroll and compliance errors for companies operating in Poland.
What's new in Time Harmony 3.20
Version 3.20 expands the existing working time settlement module with a set of features built to make settling overtime in Poland faster and less error-prone. Here's what's changing.
1. Settlement period list with key data at a glance
A new screen brings together the most important data for every employee in one place: the applicable working time norm, registered and credited working time, the balance against that norm, and the number of discrepancies and errors detected. Instead of switching between several reports, managers can immediately see which employees in a given settlement period need a closer look.
2. Visual overtime and working time analysis
Time Harmony now shows actual work against the schedule in clear charts. You can see overtime worked before a shift starts, after it ends, and on days with no scheduled shift at all, broken down into daily overtime, holiday work, night hours and weekly average overtime. The same data is also shown day by day, so it's easy to see exactly when night hours or 50%/100% overtime occurred. Where overtime was worked outside the schedule, the system also shows which activities the employee was carrying out during that extra time — useful context for anyone reviewing the entry rather than just a total number of hours.
3. A redesigned overtime settlement screen
This is the centrepiece of the release — the most developed part of the new approach to settling overtime in Poland. The system automatically recognises the type of overtime — daily overtime settled hour for hour, overtime worked on a day off arising from the five-day working week, or on a public holiday — and routes the employee straight to the right request: clicking "Claim" from the settlement screen opens the correct time-off or payment request, ready to fill in and submit for approval. The overtime row only appears in the settlement table when overtime has actually occurred, so the view doesn't get cluttered for employees who have none.
Below that sits a detailed table listing every block of overtime recorded in the settlement period — for example, 2 hours at the 50% rate and 1 hour at the 100% rate, plus any overtime worked on a day off arising from the five-day working week. Each entry carries one of three statuses:
- reserved — a time-off request has been submitted but not yet approved,
- available for payout — the time-off request has been approved; these are the overtime hours still to be settled with the employee,
- due for payment — appears once an overtime entry is manually flagged as due, which automatically queues it for payment in the current month.
That last status matters most in settlement periods longer than one month, letting an employee be paid for overtime in the current payroll run even though the settlement period itself hasn't closed yet. Administrators can also submit a request for overtime, WW5 or WNŚ time off directly from an employee's settlement.
4. Overtime in a task-based working time system
The update also covers overtime for employees settled under a task-based working time system — relevant when completing assigned tasks pushes an employee beyond their average weekly norm of 40 hours. Because overtime isn't recorded automatically in this system, administrators can add it manually from the employee's settlement whenever work genuinely was carried out beyond that norm. Work on Sundays, public holidays and days off arising from the average five-day working week is settled exactly as it is under the basic working time system, including the option to claim WW5 and WNŚ time off.
Benefits for HR teams and managers
Every feature above shares one goal: making it faster and safer to settle overtime in Poland, without the manual back-and-forth that used to fall on HR teams.
- Less manual work at settlement period close — one place with key data per employee makes it easy to catch discrepancies before payroll closes.
- Fewer overtime classification errors — automatic detection of overtime type reduces mix-ups between the 50% and 100% allowance.
- Full visibility into settlement status — it's clear at a glance which overtime is still waiting on a request and which has already been settled, which helps with payout planning in longer settlement periods.
- Consistent rules for task-based employees — companies with staff on a task-based working time system get the same overtime settlement mechanics as employees on the basic system, without a separate manual process running alongside it.
Settling overtime in Poland - summary
Settling overtime in Poland becomes noticeably more transparent in Time Harmony 3.20 — from automatic overtime classification, through visual schedule analysis, to consistent handling of overtime for employees on a task-based working time system. Want to see how the working time calculation module in Time Harmony could simplify overtime settlement for your team in Poland? Get in touch and book a free walkthrough of the system.
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