Daily & Hourly Rate Calculator South Africa

What this calculator does — and why every other number depends on it

Almost every payroll question in South Africa collapses into one prior question: what is one day of this person's pay worth? Leave payouts, notice pay, severance, unpaid absence, a mid-month start, a public holiday shift — none of them can be worked out until the monthly salary has been converted into a daily and hourly rate. Get that conversion wrong and every downstream figure is wrong by the same proportion, quietly, on every payslip.

This tool does the conversion the way the BCEA does it, then applies the statutory premium rates and checks the result against two floors most calculators ignore: the national minimum wage, and the earnings threshold that decides whether those premium rates are legally owed at all.

The conversion chain, exactly as the Act states it

The reason the Act goes via the week rather than straight to the day is that a month is not a fixed unit. Twelve months contain 52 weeks; individual months contain anywhere from 20 to 23 working days. Routing through the week produces a constant daily rate, so an employee who starts on the 15th of February is paid on the same basis as one who starts on the 15th of March.

Why South African payroll says “divide by 21.67”

Ask any SA payroll administrator for a daily rate and they will tell you to divide the monthly salary by 21.67. That is not a different method — it is the same formula, pre-collapsed:

And so monthly × 12 ÷ 52 ÷ 5 is arithmetically identical to monthly ÷ 21.67. Both appear on this page because searchers use both, and a manager who has been told “21.67” by their accountant needs to see that it matches the statute rather than contradicting it.

The equivalent divisor changes with the work pattern, and this is where the shorthand becomes dangerous. On a six-day week it is 26 (52 × 6 ÷ 12); on a four-day week it is 17.33. Applying 21.67 to a six-day-week employee overstates their daily rate by about 20% — a costly error on a leave payout, and an underpayment in the other direction if you use it to dock unpaid absence.

A worked example you can check by hand

A warehouse supervisor on R18,000 a month, five days a week, nine ordinary hours a day:

At R92.31 an hour this employee sits comfortably above the R30.23 national minimum, and at R18,000 a month they are below the earnings threshold — so every premium rate above is a legal entitlement, not a contractual courtesy.

Ordinary hours: the caps that decide what counts as overtime

Section 9 sets the ceiling on ordinary time, and it is the boundary that turns an hour into an overtime hour:

• 45 ordinary hours a week, for everyone below the earnings threshold.
• 9 hours a day where the employee works five days a week or fewer.
• 8 hours a day where the employee works more than five days a week.

On a 45-hour week the average month holds 195 ordinary hours (45 × 52 ÷ 12) — the figure hourly-paid payroll runs on. Overtime under Section 10 is capped at 10 hours a week and requires agreement, and total working time may not exceed 12 hours in a day. A meal interval of one hour is required after five continuous hours, and it is unpaid unless the employee is required to work through it.

Sunday and public holiday work: two different rules, routinely conflated

Sunday pay under Section 16 depends on whether Sunday is an ordinary working day for that employee. If it is not — the typical Monday-to-Friday case — every hour worked on a Sunday is paid at double the ordinary hourly rate. If Sunday isan ordinary working day, the rate is one and a half times. Either way the payment may not come to less than the employee's ordinary daily wage, so a two-hour Sunday call-out still costs a full day.

Public holidays run on Section 18 and behave differently. If the holiday falls on a day the employee would ordinarily work and they do not work, they are paid their ordinary wage for it — a paid day off, not an unpaid one. If they dowork, they must receive at least double the ordinary day's pay. Treating a public holiday as an ordinary overtime day at 1.5× is one of the most common underpayments in South African payroll.

The earnings threshold: when none of this applies

From 1 May 2026 the BCEA earnings threshold is R269,600.90 a year — R22,466.74 a month, up from R261,748.45. Employees earning above it are excluded from Sections 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17(2) and 18(3). In plain terms: for a manager on R30,000 a month, the overtime, Sunday and public-holiday premiums are not owed by law at all. They are owed only if the employment contract or a collective agreement says so.

The calculator flags this automatically, because it cuts both ways. Employers routinely pay premiums they do not owe out of habit, and just as routinely refuse premiums they do owe to somebody who has quietly crossed the threshold since the last increase. The threshold moves most years; a rate card built in 2024 is now wrong.

Testing against the national minimum wage

The national minimum wage is set per ordinary hour, which is why a monthly salary cannot be tested against it directly — it has to be converted first. From 1 March 2026 the rate is R30.23 an hour, up from R28.79. Domestic workers and farm workers are on the full rate; only Expanded Public Works Programme workers sit lower, at R16.62.

On a 45-hour week that floor works out to roughly R5,894 a month — a number worth knowing, because an employee on a “R5,500 all-in” monthly arrangement is being underpaid even though the figure sounds generous next to an hourly rate. The penalty for underpayment is twice the underpayment or twice the employee's monthly wage, whichever is greater, and it is recoverable for the whole period of the breach. Full sector detail is in our 2026 minimum wage guide.

Remuneration, not basic: what goes into the number you type in

The BCEA works on remuneration, which is broader than basic salary. Regular allowances that form part of the package count — a housing allowance, a fixed travel or car allowance, an employer medical contribution paid in cash. Genuine reimbursements of actual expenses do not, and neither do discretionary once-off payments. Variable pay such as commission or regular overtime is brought in on a 13-week average.

Entering bare basic where the employee also receives a fixed monthly allowance understates every rate on the page, and understates the leave payout and severance that flow from it. Where an exit is involved, run the numbers through the leave payout calculator and the retrenchment package calculator, which apply the same remuneration base to the Section 41 and Section 37 entitlements.

SOUTH AFRICAN DAILY / HOURLY RATE — THE STATUTORY METHOD (BCEA)

THE CONVERSION CHAIN
Weekly rate = monthly remuneration x 12 / 52            (BCEA s35(4))
Daily rate  = weekly rate / ordinary working days per week
Hourly rate = daily rate / ordinary hours per day

THE "DIVIDE BY 21.67" SHORTHAND
On a 5-day week, monthly / 21.67 gives the SAME daily rate:
  52 weeks x 5 days / 12 months = 21.67 average working days per month
  monthly x 12 / 52 / 5 = monthly / 21.667
On a 6-day week the equivalent divisor is 26 (52 x 6 / 12).
Use the constant, NOT the actual days in the calendar month — that is what
keeps February and March producing the same daily rate.

ORDINARY HOURS (s9)
Max 45 ordinary hours per week.
Max 9 hours per day where the employee works 5 days a week or fewer.
Max 8 hours per day where the employee works more than 5 days a week.
Average ordinary hours per month on a 45-hour week = 45 x 52 / 12 = 195.

PREMIUM RATES
Overtime (s10) .............. 1.5 x hourly. Capped at 10 hours/week, by agreement.
Sunday, not ordinarily (s16(1)) .. 2.0 x hourly.
Sunday, ordinarily (s16(2)) ...... 1.5 x hourly.
Public holiday worked (s18(2)) ... at least 2 x the ordinary DAY's pay.
Public holiday not worked ........ ordinary day's pay, if it falls on a work day.

THE EARNINGS THRESHOLD
From 1 May 2026: R269,600.90 per year (R22,466.74 per month), up from
R261,748.45. Employees ABOVE the threshold are excluded from ss9, 10, 11, 12,
14, 15, 16, 17(2) and 18(3) — the premium rates above are then contractual, not
statutory.

NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE
R30.23 per ordinary hour from 1 March 2026 (was R28.79). Domestic and farm
workers are on the FULL rate. EPWP workers: R16.62 per hour.
Penalty for underpayment: twice the underpayment, or twice the employee's
monthly wage, whichever is greater.

WORKED EXAMPLE
R18,000/month, 5-day week, 9 ordinary hours a day:
  Weekly:  18,000 x 12 / 52   = R4,153.85
  Daily:   4,153.85 / 5       = R830.77   (= 18,000 / 21.67)
  Hourly:  830.77 / 9         = R92.31
  Overtime: 92.31 x 1.5       = R138.46
  Sunday (not usual): x 2     = R184.62
  Public holiday: 830.77 x 2  = R1,661.54

Source: Synthro — Daily & Hourly Rate Calculator (South Africa)
https://www.synthro.io/tools/daily-rate-calculator-south-africa
Figures last reviewed August 2026 against the BCEA, the 1 March 2026 national
minimum wage and the 1 May 2026 earnings threshold.