Recipe: hours, overtime and pay from a timesheet¶
Give Hermes your team's clock-in and clock-out times. It works out the hours per week, the overtime and the pay of each person, and saves the result as a spreadsheet file.
| Time needed | 5 minutes |
| You need | A Hermes agent connected to an AI model, a timesheet as a CSV file (date, employee, start, end, break) and the hourly rate of each person |
| Result | Hours, overtime and pay per person and per week, and the total payroll, saved in payroll-nov.csv |
Use your own rules, and check before you pay
Hermes applies the rules you write in the message, nothing else. It does not know your contracts, collective agreements, taxes or social security. Use the result as a working sheet for you or your accountant, not as the final payslip.
1. Upload your timesheet¶
One line per person per working day: the date, the name, the start and end times, and the break in minutes. Save it as CSV from your spreadsheet and upload it in FILES → workspace (see Hermes reads a contract for you).
Our test file, timesheet.csv, has 43 lines for 4 employees over two weeks (2 to 14 November 2026). The first lines:
date,employee,start,end,break_minutes
2026-11-02,Paulo,08:00,17:30,60
2026-11-02,Sérgio,08:30,17:30,60
2026-11-02,Tiago,09:00,18:00,60
2026-11-02,Miguel,08:00,16:30,30
2026-11-03,Paulo,08:00,18:00,60
...
Some people work on Saturdays, some have a day off in the week, and one person works exactly 40 hours in one week (no overtime, but easy to get wrong).
2. Give the rates and the rules¶
Write the hourly rate of each person and your overtime rule in the message. In CHAT we wrote:
Now workspace/timesheet.csv: the hours of my 4 employees for the weeks of 2 and 9 Nov 2026 (start, end, break in minutes). Hourly rates: Paulo 14.00, Sérgio 12.50, Tiago 11.00, Miguel 8.50 EUR. Hours above 40 in a week are overtime, paid at 1.5 times the rate. Give each person's hours per week, overtime hours and pay, and the total payroll. Save it as workspace/payroll-nov.csv.
- The file is saved and the total payroll for the two weeks is €3,925.13.
- One line per person and per week: hours worked, overtime hours and pay. Paulo, Sérgio and Miguel each have one week with overtime.
- How Hermes did it: hours are end minus start minus break, weeks run Monday to Sunday, overtime is above 40 hours. It also tells you that one amount (€410.125) was rounded to €410.13.
The file payroll-nov.csv has the same lines, plus the normal hours and the rate, and a total line. You can open it in Excel or LibreOffice:
employee,week_starting,total_hours,regular_hours,overtime_hours,hourly_rate_eur,pay_eur
Paulo,2026-11-02,48.00,40.00,8.00,14.00,728.00
Paulo,2026-11-09,39.00,39.00,0.00,14.00,546.00
...
Miguel,2026-11-09,45.50,40.00,5.50,8.50,410.13
TOTAL PAYROLL,,,,,,3925.13
Check that it worked¶
We worked out the payroll ourselves before asking Hermes. Every number matched:
| Employee | Week 1 hours | Week 2 hours | Overtime hours | Pay for both weeks |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Paulo | 48.00 | 39.00 | 8.00 | 1,274.00 |
| Sérgio | 40.00 | 46.00 | 6.00 | 1,112.50 |
| Tiago | 36.50 | 37.50 | 0 | 814.00 |
| Miguel | 37.00 | 45.50 | 5.50 | 724.63 |
| Total | 3,925.13 EUR |
Hermes gave the pay per week; add the two weeks of each person and you get the column above. Sérgio's first week (exactly 40 hours) correctly has no overtime.
To check your own result, redo one week with a calculator. For example Paulo, week 1: 48 hours = 40 normal hours × 14.00 (560.00) + 8 overtime hours × 21.00 (168.00) = 728.00.
Make it yours¶
- Every two weeks or every month: schedule it after you export the timesheet.
- Your own rules: "Overtime is above 8 hours in a day", or "Saturday hours are paid at 1.5 times the rate."
- Spot problems: "List any day with no break, or any shift longer than 10 hours."
- Ask for one short summary per person that you can send them to confirm their hours.
Common problems¶
The hours are wrong by the length of the break
Say in the message that the break is in minutes and must be taken off, as we did. If your file has no break column, say how long the break is.
Overtime is counted per day instead of per week (or the other way round)
Write your rule in plain words with numbers: "Hours above 40 in a week (Monday to Sunday) are overtime." Hermes tells you which rule it used under the table: read that line.
A name appears twice with different spellings
"Sérgio" and "Sergio" are two different people for a computer. Fix the names in your file, or tell Hermes they are the same person.