How to track hours for multiple jobs

Working more than one job — two clients, three houses you clean, a day job plus weekend shifts — multiplies the bookkeeping. Each job has its own rate, its own pay schedule, often its own overtime rules, and may need its own record at the end of the period. The failure mode is always the same: hours from one job blur into another, and you undercharge someone or can’t explain a total. Here is what a clean setup looks like.

Keep each job’s record separate from day one

A single running list of hours is not enough, because pay is computed per job: different rates, different overtime thresholds, different pay periods. Whatever tool you use, you want each job to be its own container — its own rate history, its own week, its own export — so that “how much does the Smith residence owe me this period” is a number you can read, not a filtering exercise.

Keep overtime inside the right job

Keep unrelated employers in separate records instead of treating them as one overtime total. If two roles or locations belong to the same employer, the hours may need to be combined under that employer’s rules.

A tracking tool cannot determine the legal relationship for you. Confirm how the work is treated before deciding whether two roles belong in one job record or two.

How Valio handles multiple jobs

In Valio, each job is a separate record. Overtime is calculated within that job; the app does not pool hours across separate job records.

• Separate jobs, each with its own rules. Every job gets its own pay rate, overtime tiers, premium rules, and pay period — weekly, biweekly, twice monthly, four-weekly, or monthly, matched to how that job actually pays you.
• Overtime counted within each job. Hours are not pooled across separate jobs or employers.
• One active job at a time. Clock out of one job before starting another, or add and correct shifts manually so each entry belongs to the right record.
• One timesheet per job. Export a PDF or CSV scoped to a job and its pay period, with your name and contact details on it, ready to send to that client and no other client’s hours anywhere near it.
• A raise never rewrites the past. Rates carry their history, so updating one job’s rate today doesn’t change what last month’s shifts were worth.

The jobs list shows this week’s hours on every job at a glance, and the pay screen totals what you’ve earned — and what is still unpaid — across all of them, in your local currency.

Whether hours must be combined for overtime depends on your employment relationship and local rules. Valio applies the per-job rules you configure; this guide is general information, not legal advice.