You installed the biometric readers. Your staff are checking in and out every day. The Hikvision access control is feeding data into ZKT BioTime. You run the monthly report — and everyone's overtime column reads zero. Or the numbers look completely off.
This is one of the most common support calls we receive from businesses in Dubai and across the UAE. The hardware is working perfectly. The issue is that ZKT BioTime does not calculate overtime automatically unless you configure it specifically to do so. A default installation records attendance — it does nothing with overtime until you tell it how.
This guide explains exactly how BioTime calculates overtime, why the default setup produces no overtime data, and the precise steps you need to take to get accurate reports.
ZKT BioTime requires overtime to be enabled and configured inside each shift timetable. It does not count late stays or early arrivals as overtime unless you have switched on "Overtime After Work" (Post-OT) and/or "Overtime Before Work" (Pre-OT) in the timetable settings, and set a minimum overtime threshold. Without this configuration, BioTime records attendance hours correctly but calculates zero overtime in all reports.
Why BioTime Works This Way
ZKT BioTime is a centralised time and attendance management platform. It collects check-in and check-out punches from connected devices — including ZKTeco biometric readers and Hikvision access control panels — and calculates working hours, late arrivals, early departures, and overtime based on your configured shift rules.
The key word is "configured." BioTime is not pre-loaded with any assumption about your organisation's working hours, overtime policies, or UAE Labour Law rules. It applies only the rules you define. This is actually a strength — it supports a wide range of shift patterns, from standard 9-hour office shifts to rotating 24-hour rosters — but it means every overtime parameter must be set up deliberately.
In many installations across Dubai and Sharjah, the hardware is professional and the cabling is clean, but the software configuration stops at "create the employees and assign them a basic timetable." The overtime module is left untouched. The system works — but the overtime is invisible.
The Three Components That Control Overtime in BioTime
Understanding overtime in BioTime requires understanding three things: timetables, overtime levels, and work codes. These work together and need to be configured as a complete set.
1. The Shift Timetable — Where Overtime Is Defined
Every employee in BioTime is assigned to a timetable (shift). The timetable defines when the working day starts, when it ends, and — critically — whether overtime is allowed before and after those boundaries.
Inside the timetable settings, you will find two specific overtime fields:
- Overtime Before Work (Pre-OT) — Minutes worked before the shift start time that should be counted as overtime. Example: if your shift starts at 9:00am and "Overtime Before Work" is enabled with a threshold of 30 minutes, a staff member who checks in at 8:20am will have 0 minutes of Pre-OT (40 minutes early, but under the threshold — adjust threshold to match your policy). Without enabling this field, early arrivals are never counted as overtime, regardless of how early the employee arrives.
- Overtime After Work (Post-OT) — Minutes worked after the shift end time that should be counted as overtime. This is the field that controls the most common overtime scenario: staff staying late. If your shift ends at 6:00pm and "Overtime After Work" is enabled with a minimum threshold of 30 minutes, a staff member who checks out at 6:45pm will have 45 minutes of Post-OT recorded.
Both of these fields are disabled or set to zero by default in a fresh BioTime timetable. This is why installations that have never been adjusted show zero overtime in reports.
2. The Minimum Overtime Threshold
Each of the overtime fields above has a "minimum duration" setting — sometimes labelled as "OT Start After" in different BioTime versions. This sets the minimum number of minutes a staff member must work beyond the shift boundary before any overtime is recorded.
For example, if you set the Post-OT minimum to 30 minutes:
- Staff member checks out at 6:20pm (shift ends 6:00pm) — 20 minutes late: no overtime recorded
- Staff member checks out at 6:40pm — 40 minutes late: 40 minutes of overtime recorded
This is intentional — it prevents minor clock-out variations from inflating overtime figures. The right threshold depends on your HR policy. Most Dubai businesses use 30 minutes as a practical minimum. Some use 60 minutes to reduce administrative noise in monthly payroll calculations.
3. Overtime Levels (Level 1 and Level 2 OT)
BioTime supports two overtime levels (OT Level 1 and OT Level 2) within a single shift. This allows you to treat the first two hours of overtime differently from extended overtime — which is directly relevant to UAE Labour Law, where standard overtime carries one rate and overnight work (between 9pm and 4am) carries a different rate.
For example, a common Dubai setup might look like this:
| Overtime Level | BioTime Setting | Typical UAE Application |
|---|---|---|
| OT Level 1 | First 120 minutes after shift end | Standard evening OT — reported separately for 1.25x payroll calculation |
| OT Level 2 | Minutes beyond Level 1 limit | Extended OT or night work — reported separately for 1.5x payroll calculation |
The actual pay rate multipliers — 1.25x, 1.5x, 2x — are not applied inside BioTime. BioTime records the hours in each level. Your payroll system or HR team applies the UAE Labour Law rates to those hours during monthly payroll processing.
Step-by-Step: Configuring Overtime in ZKT BioTime
Here is the configuration sequence to follow. These steps apply to BioTime versions 8.x and 9.x — the most widely deployed versions in the UAE market as of 2026.
-
Go to Attendance → Timetable (or Shift) → Edit your existing shift
Do not create a new shift unless the employee group genuinely works different hours. Editing the existing timetable will apply the change to everyone assigned to it. -
Locate the "Overtime Before Work" section
Enable it if your organisation pays for early arrivals. Set the minimum duration (typically 30–60 minutes). Leave disabled if you do not count early check-ins as overtime. -
Locate the "Overtime After Work" section
Enable this field. Set the minimum overtime duration (30 minutes is the most common setting in UAE businesses). This is the most important field for most organisations. -
Set OT Level 1 and OT Level 2 durations (optional but recommended)
Define how many minutes of overtime belong to Level 1 before Level 2 kicks in. If you use only one rate, set Level 1 to a high value (e.g., 480 minutes) and leave Level 2 at zero. -
Save the timetable and trigger a recalculation
BioTime will not retroactively recalculate old records unless you run a manual recalculation. Go to Attendance → Calculate → select the date range you want to recalculate → run. This is essential — without this step, past months will still show zero overtime even after the timetable is corrected. -
Run an Overtime Report
Go to Reports → Attendance Report → select "Overtime Report" or "Daily Attendance Report" (which includes OT columns). Verify the figures match your manually tracked records for a known period before trusting the output for payroll.
Weekend and Public Holiday Overtime in BioTime
UAE Labour Law distinguishes between standard weekday overtime, rest day work, and public holiday work — each carries a different pay requirement. BioTime handles this through its scheduling and exception management module.
To ensure weekend or public holiday attendance is captured and reported separately:
- Configure the weekly schedule correctly — in the employee's schedule settings, designate Friday (and Saturday if applicable) as a "Day Off." BioTime will then treat any attendance on those days as rest day overtime rather than normal attendance.
- Add UAE public holidays to the Holiday calendar — go to System → Holiday → add the UAE National Day, Eid Al Fitr, and other public holidays for the year. When staff attend on these dates, BioTime flags the hours as holiday overtime in reports.
- Run a Holiday Overtime Report — BioTime's reporting module has a dedicated holiday/exception report that shows attendance on designated off days separately from normal overtime.
This requires someone to update the holiday calendar each year. It is a small administrative task that has a large impact on payroll accuracy — skipping it means public holiday attendance is incorrectly totalled as regular weekday overtime.
How Hikvision Access Control Feeds BioTime
If your organisation uses Hikvision access control systems alongside ZKT BioTime for time attendance, the integration works via Hikvision's ISAPI protocol or the Hikvision SDK. Once connected, every door event — badge swipe, fingerprint, or face recognition — is sent to BioTime as an attendance punch.
Key points for this setup:
- Hikvision DS-K series access control panels (including the DS-K2604, DS-K2802, and DS-K1T341 terminals) support BioTime integration natively.
- The device must be added to BioTime as a connected device under the Device Management module — it does not auto-discover.
- Employee cards or biometric templates need to be enrolled once and synced across both Hikvision's access control configuration and BioTime's employee database. Mismatched employee IDs between the two systems are the single most common cause of missing attendance records.
- Once the integration is live, BioTime handles all overtime calculation from the Hikvision-generated punches using the timetable rules you have configured.
This combined setup — Hikvision hardware for physical access control plus BioTime for attendance and overtime reporting — is the most common configuration we deploy for businesses in Dubai, Business Bay, Deira, Al Quoz, and Sharjah Industrial Area.
What BioTime Does Not Do — And What Needs to Happen in Your Payroll System
A frequent misconception is that BioTime will produce a final number that goes directly onto the payslip. It does not. BioTime produces accurate, categorised overtime hours. Your payroll process needs to apply UAE Labour Law rates to those hours.
Under UAE Labour Law Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021, overtime is compensated as follows:
- Work beyond standard hours on a normal workday: base hourly rate + 25% (1.25x)
- Work between 9:00pm and 4:00am: base hourly rate + 50% (1.5x)
- Work on a designated rest day: equivalent rest day + 50% (or payment at 150% if rest day cannot be granted)
- Work on a public holiday: equivalent holiday + 150% (or payment at 250% if the holiday cannot be rescheduled)
BioTime's OT Level 1 and OT Level 2 categorisation maps directly to this structure when you configure the timetables correctly. Export the overtime report as CSV or Excel, and apply the relevant multipliers in your payroll software or HR spreadsheet.
Getting Your BioTime Configuration Right from Day One
ZKT BioTime is a capable platform. The overtime module works well once it is configured — but the configuration is not obvious, the documentation is dense, and most installation teams focus on hardware rather than software setup. The result is thousands of businesses across the UAE running BioTime every day with accurate attendance records and completely invisible overtime data.
At SAS IT Services, we supply and configure access control and time attendance systems for businesses across Dubai and the UAE. Our deployment includes full BioTime configuration — timetables, overtime parameters, Hikvision device integration, employee sync, and report walkthrough — so your HR team can run accurate overtime reports from day one, not six months later when someone notices the numbers are wrong.
If you are currently running BioTime and your overtime data is blank or unreliable, the fix is usually straightforward. WhatsApp us at +971 52 886 7253 — we can review your timetable configuration remotely and get your reports producing accurate data.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is overtime showing as zero in ZKT BioTime reports even though my staff stayed late?
The most common reason is that the overtime parameters inside the shift timetable were never configured. BioTime does not automatically count any time beyond a shift end as overtime unless "Overtime After Work" (Post-OT) is enabled in the timetable settings, and the minimum overtime threshold is set to an appropriate value. A fresh BioTime installation records check-in and check-out times correctly but calculates zero overtime until these settings are explicitly configured.
Does ZKT BioTime automatically apply UAE Labour Law overtime pay rates such as 1.25x or 1.5x?
No. ZKT BioTime calculates and records overtime hours — it does not apply pay rate multipliers. The overtime hours from BioTime reports need to be exported and fed into your payroll system, where UAE Labour Law multipliers (1.25x for normal overtime, 1.5x for late night work, and applicable rates for rest days and public holidays) are applied. BioTime is a time and attendance platform, not a payroll engine.
Can ZKT BioTime calculate overtime differently for Fridays, weekends, and UAE public holidays?
Yes. BioTime supports exception-based scheduling. You can designate specific days as "Day Off" or "Holiday" within the scheduling module. When staff check in on a designated day off, BioTime records those hours as a separate overtime category, allowing you to distinguish between standard weekday OT and rest day or public holiday OT. This requires the holiday calendar to be configured in BioTime before the relevant dates arrive.
How do I set a minimum overtime threshold in ZKT BioTime so short late stays do not count?
Inside the timetable settings, there is a field for "Minimum Overtime Duration" (sometimes labelled "OT Start After" depending on BioTime version). Setting this to 30 minutes means staff must stay at least 30 minutes beyond the shift end before any overtime is recorded. Stays shorter than this threshold are ignored and do not appear in overtime reports. This prevents minor clock-out delays from inflating monthly overtime figures.
Can Hikvision access control readers connect directly to ZKT BioTime for time attendance?
Yes. Hikvision DS-K series access control panels and card readers integrate with ZKT BioTime via the ISAPI or SDK connection method. SAS IT Services configures this integration as part of our access control and time attendance deployments across Dubai and the UAE. Once connected, Hikvision attendance events push directly into BioTime, so all overtime and attendance reports are generated from a single platform without manual data entry. WhatsApp us at +971 52 886 7253 for a free consultation on your setup.