Are you actually getting paid for overtime?

Au Pair Pay 101 · NannyTank

If you've ever finished a long day, looked at the clock, and thought "that was way more than I signed up for" — this one's for you.

What counts as overtime?

Overtime is simple in principle: it's every hour you work beyond the normal hours you agreed to with your host family. If your contract says you work 45 hours a week and you end up doing 52, those extra 7 hours aren't a favour — they're overtime, and they should be paid at your overtime rate (usually higher than your normal rate).

The tricky part isn't the rule. It's the proof.

Why au pairs miss out

Most au pairs lose overtime money for one boring reason: nobody is counting. The late pickups, the "can you just stay an extra hour," the weekend that turned into work — they blur together, and at month-end you're trying to reconstruct four weeks from memory. So you round down, or you don't mention it at all, because you can't prove it without feeling like you're starting a fight.

That's not fair, and it adds up fast. An extra few hours a week, unpaid, is real money over a year.

How to make sure you're paid

1. Know your normal hours. Get the agreed number in writing (your contract is the place — more on that in another post).
2. Log every day as it happens. Not at month-end. The day you work it, while it's fresh.
3. Let the maths happen for you. Overtime is just hours worked − normal hours. You shouldn't have to do that by hand.
4. Bring a record, not an argument. When you can hand your host family a clean breakdown, the conversation stops being "I feel like I worked more" and becomes "here are the numbers." Much easier for everyone.

Where NannyTank fits

NannyTank was built for exactly this. You log your start and end time each day — about two minutes — and at month-end it calculates your overtime automatically against your agreed normal hours, then builds the claim you send your host family. No spreadsheets, no guessing, no awkward "I think it was about…" conversations.

You can't claim what you don't track. So track it.

Start your 14-day free trial at nannytank.co.za.