Billing
How do you handle overtime as a freelancer?
As a freelancer you have no statutory right to overtime pay; you have whatever your contract says. So the answer is to agree in advance what counts as out-of-hours or rush work and what it costs, before the first weekend request arrives. Track those hours separately so the surcharge is applied to a measured figure rather than a remembered one.
Why
Overtime for the self-employed is a pricing decision, not an entitlement, and pricing decisions are far easier to make before the urgency exists. A clause naming evenings, weekends and same-day turnaround, with a stated multiplier or a flat rush fee, converts an awkward conversation into a line item. Without one, you are negotiating a premium at the exact moment the client feels they are doing you a favour by giving you work.
Do this
- Define out-of-hours in the contract: which hours, which days, and what the premium is.
- Track rush and out-of-hours work as its own project or with its own note, so the split is recorded.
- Say the premium out loud when the request comes in, before the work starts.
- Review at the end of a project how much of it happened outside normal hours; that is a scoping signal.
Avoid this
- Assuming a client will pay a premium you never mentioned.
- Absorbing weekend work to keep a relationship warm, repeatedly.
- Applying a surcharge retroactively on an invoice.
- Treating chronic overtime as a rate problem when it is usually a scope problem.
What it looks like in the log
The same advice, as the row a tracked session actually leaves behind.
Halcyon — out of hours
- Date
- Sat 18 Apr
- In / out
- 20:10 → 23:35
- Note
- Agreed rush — release fix
- Tracked
- 3h 25m
All of this is easier when the hours were written down as they happened. Punch O'Clock is a free tracker that does it in one tap, works offline, and exports the range you are billing.
Free. No ads, and no account unless you want sync.
Related questions
Can I charge more for weekend work?
You can charge whatever you and the client agree to, and a premium for evenings, weekends and same-day turnaround is entirely normal. What matters is that it is agreed before the work happens, because a surcharge introduced on the invoice reads as a penalty rather than a price.
Is unpaid overtime ever worth it?
Occasionally, as a deliberate investment in a relationship you have decided is worth it. It stops being worth it the moment it is expected rather than noticed, and the way to tell the difference is to have tracked it: a project that is quietly running a day a week over is a scoping conversation, not a work ethic.