How to Track Hours, Overtime, and Premiums Across Multiple Locations

When all your hours come from one site and one rate, the payslip is mostly a check. When you move between properties, roles, or premium bands, the payslip becomes a puzzle. Errors are more common and harder to spot after the fact. A light personal record makes them visible while there is still time to fix them.

What to record

For each shift:

• Date and times
• Property / location
• Role or station
• Whether any premium applied (night, weekend, holiday, overtime)
• Whether it was a traded shift or an original scheduled one

That is enough to reconstruct a week and to compare against the payslip.

A system that survives contact with real life

Options that people actually maintain:

• A note app with one line per shift
• A simple spreadsheet
• The calendar you already use, with a consistent short code in the title or notes

Update it the day you work the shift, not at the end of the pay period. Memory is unreliable once you are past a dozen shifts.

How to use it when the payslip arrives

Check three things:

• Total hours match what you recorded.
• Premiums appear on the shifts that should have them.
• Overtime has been calculated the way you expected for that week.

If something is off, you have the dates and locations ready. Raising a query with specific shifts is much more effective than “I think my hours are wrong.”

Why this matters more when you trade

Swaps and pickups are where payroll mistakes cluster. A shift worked at a different rate, or recorded under the wrong person, or missing a premium, is easy to miss in a long payslip. Your own record is the only independent check most workers have.

You do not need forensic detail. You need enough to notice when the numbers diverge and to point to the exact shifts that are wrong. That is usually sufficient to get them corrected.