How do you setup Payment Profiles?

A payment profile is the set of rules SmartBarrel uses to decide how a worker's hours are split into Regular Time, Overtime and Double Time. Every worker is calculated against a payment profile, and everything downstream depends on it: the timesheets your team approves, your reports, and the hours sent to your payroll or ERP system.

Most companies build a handful of profiles: one for the standard crew, one for a union agreement, one for a job with a longer working day. You can create them company wide, or on a single project when one job follows different rules from the rest.

What you'll need

The View Payment Profiles permission to see them, and Edit Payment Profiles to create or change them.
Your earn codes set up, if you want to override them per profile. See How do I Create and Manage Earn Codes?

Where do you find payment profiles?

There are two places, depending on the scope you want.

Scope	Where	Applies to
Global (company wide)	Company → Payment Profiles	Any worker in the company who is assigned to it
Project	Open the project, then Payment Profiles in the project menu	Only shifts on that project

The company page lists both kinds. A Project column tells them apart: a globe icon plus "Global" means company wide, and a project name means the profile belongs to that job.

How do you create a payment profile?

Go to Company → Payment Profiles (or the project's Payment Profiles page).
Click + Add.
Enter a Name.
Choose Global or Project. If you pick Project, choose the project from the dropdown. This step is skipped when you start from inside a project, because the scope is already set.
Turn on Default if this profile should be the fallback. See below.
Work through the settings, which are covered section by section further down.
Click Save.

What does the Default toggle do?

The default profile is the fallback for anyone who has not been given a profile of their own.

A global default covers every worker in the company with no profile assigned.
A project default covers every worker on that job with no project assignment.

You can have one default per company and one default per project.

You cannot switch a default off, and you cannot delete a default profile, because that would leave the company or the project with no fallback. To move the default, turn Default on for a different profile instead, and it will move across on its own.

Daily Rules

Daily Rules set the point in a single day where hours start paying at a premium.

Tick Overtime and enter the hour it starts at. An entry of 8 means anything past the eighth hour of the day is overtime.
Tick Double Time and enter its starting hour, if the agreement has one.
Leave either box unticked if the rule does not apply.

Hours below the overtime cutoff are Regular Time. PTO shifts do not count toward these totals.

Weekly Rules

Weekly Rules work the same way, but across the whole work week. A common setup is overtime after 40 hours.

Two extra options live here:

Deduct hours for Holidays. Reduces the weekly cutoffs by a set number of hours for every holiday in that week. If your overtime cutoff is 40 hours, you deduct 8, and a holiday falls in the week, the cutoff drops to 32 for that week.
Require Weekly Threshold to be met. On the Daily Rules, this makes daily overtime conditional on the worker first reaching the weekly threshold.

Worked Lunch Break

Tick Worked Lunch Break when a worker who works through their break should be paid a premium for it, then choose OverTime or DoubleTime.

Those break hours are classified as a block at the rate you pick, separately from the daily cutoffs.

Travel Time

Exclude Travel shifts from working hours keeps travel shift hours out of the payment profile calculations entirely, so they do not push a worker toward an overtime cutoff.

Earn Code Configuration

By default a profile uses your company's default earn codes. Turn on Enable Company Override to set different codes for the workers on this profile, for Regular Hours, Overtime Hours, Double Time Hours, Salary and Travel.

Anything you leave empty falls back to the company default. A working shift can override this again at the shift level.

Rates

The multipliers applied to the worker's base rate for Regular, OverTime and DoubleTime. The usual values are 1, 1.5 and 2, but you can set any multiple of 0.5.

Early Start

Early Start pays time worked before a set time of day at a premium, no matter how long the shift ends up being. It is covered in full in its own section below.

WeekDay Configuration

Overrides a whole day of the week. For each day you can set:

OT, so every hour that day is overtime.
DT, so every hour that day is double time.
CUSTOM, which gives that day its own overtime and double time cutoffs instead of the profile's normal Daily Rules.

This is how a Saturday that always pays overtime, or a Sunday that pays over time and double time after 8 hours, is set up. Use the red button beside a day to clear the override.

Holiday Configuration

Pick specific dates on the calendar and set each one to overtime or double time. Use this for the calendar holidays your agreement treats differently.

How do you give a worker a payment profile?

From the worker's own record:

Open Workers and select the worker.
Go to Payroll Information.
Pick a profile from the Payment Profile dropdown.
Save.

This dropdown lists global profiles only. A worker with nothing selected here falls back to the company default.

Can you assign several workers at once?

Yes. On the Payment Profiles page, use the workers action on the profile row to open the assign workers panel, filter to the people you want, and assign them together.

Which profile does a worker actually get?

SmartBarrel works down this list for every single shift and stops at the first match.

Order	Profile	When it applies
1	Project profile assigned to the worker	The worker is assigned to a profile on the project the shift belongs to
2	Project default	That project has a default profile and the worker has no assignment of their own
3	Worker profile	A profile is set on the worker's Payroll Information
4	Company default	Nothing else matched

Because this runs per shift rather than once per pay period, one worker can be paid under two different sets of rules in the same week, and even on the same day, if they worked on two projects.

What is a project payment profile?

A payment profile that belongs to one job instead of the whole company. It holds exactly the same settings as a global profile, but it is only available on that project, and it only affects shifts worked there.

Use it when a single job runs under its own agreement: a prevailing wage job, a union job, or a site with a longer working day. The rest of the company keeps running on your global profiles, untouched.

How do you create one?

From the project:

Open the project and choose Payment Profiles in the project menu.
Click + Add and build the profile exactly as you would a global one. There is no Global or Project choice here, because it is already set.
Turn on Default if it should cover everyone on the job who has no profile of their own.

Or from the company page: Company → Payment Profiles → + Add, choose Project, then pick the project.

A project can hold as many profiles as it needs. One of them can be the project default.

Can you change a profile from Global to Project later?

No. The choice is locked once the profile is saved, because the profile may already be attached to timesheets that have been recorded and approved. Changing its scope would retroactively change how those hours were calculated.

If you need the same rules on a different scope, use Duplicate and set the scope you want on the copy.

How do you assign workers on a project?

From the Project Workers page:

Open the project and go to Project Workers.
Find the worker and use the Payment Profile column.
Pick a profile from the dropdown, or search by name.
Choose Unassigned to take the assignment away again.

This dropdown lists that project's profiles only. Global profiles never appear here.

A worker holds one profile per project. Assigning them to a different one on the same project replaces the old assignment automatically, so there is nothing to undo first.

You can also open the profile on the project Payment Profiles page and assign several workers at once.

What does the column show when nobody is assigned?

If the project has a default profile, the worker shows that profile with a default tag underneath.
If the project has profiles but no default, the worker shows Unassigned and falls back to their global profile or the company default.
If the project has no payment profiles at all, there is nothing to choose.

Can you assign payment profiles in bulk?

Yes. The project workers bulk upload template has a Payment Profile column.

Enter the profile name as it appears on the project. Capitals and stray spaces are forgiving, but the profile has to exist on that project.
Leave the cell empty to leave the worker's current assignment alone.
A name that does not match a profile on that project rejects the row with a validation error, so nothing is assigned by accident.

The project workers download also includes a Payment Profile column showing the profile each worker is actually being paid by, whether that came from their own assignment or from the fallback.

What does Early Start do?

Early Start pays time worked before a set time of day at a premium rate, regardless of how many hours the worker ends up putting in. It is useful when an agreement says anything before, say, 7:00 AM is overtime even on a short day.

It is available on both global and project payment profiles.

How do you turn it on?

Open the payment profile and find the Early Start section.
Turn on Enable Early Start at and set the threshold time.
Choose Count as Overtime or Count as Double Time for the hours worked before that time.

Example: the threshold is 7:00 AM set to Overtime, and a worker clocks in at 5:30 AM. The first hour and a half is paid as overtime, and the rest of the shift is split by the normal Daily Rules.

Do Early Start hours use up regular time?

No. Early Start hours are paid at their premium rate and are held out of the regular time budget, for the day and for the week. A worker does not lose regular hours because they came in early.

Worked example, on a profile with overtime after 8 hours and double time after 10 hours, for an 11 hour shift with 1 hour before the threshold:

Early Start set to	Regular	Overtime	Double Time
Overtime	8	2	1
Double Time	8	2	1

Regular time gets its full 8 hours either way. The difference is where the early hour sits above it. An early overtime hour takes one of the two overtime slots between 8 and 10 hours, which pushes the 11th hour up into double time. An early double time hour sits above both bands and pushes nothing, so the overtime window fills normally.

What if the day is already set to overtime or double time?

Early Start only ever moves hours up, never down. On a day that the WeekDay or Holiday Configuration has set to a single fixed type:

Early Start set to Double Time promotes the early hours to double time.
Early Start set to Overtime leaves them as they are, because overtime cannot demote double time.

On a day set to CUSTOM, Early Start works against that day's own cutoffs rather than the profile's normal Daily Rules.

Who does Early Start not apply to?

Salary workers and daily rate workers never receive it, because their hours are not split this way.
Travel shifts are skipped when the profile has Exclude Travel shifts from working hours turned on.
Worked Lunch Break is unaffected. Break hours are still paid at the rate set there, separately from Early Start.

How do you copy an existing profile?

On the company or the project Payment Profiles page, open the actions menu on the profile you want to copy.
Click Duplicate.
Give the copy a new name and save.
The edit panel opens so you can adjust anything before you finish.

The copy takes every setting from the original. It does not take the workers. It is a brand new profile with its own ID, so changing it later has no effect on the one you copied from.

This is the quickest way to roll the same rules onto another job, or to create a project version of a global profile.

Why it didn't work?

A worker's hours were split by the wrong rules. Check the four step order above. A profile assigned directly to the worker on that project always wins, and a project default always beats anything set at the company level.

A profile I want is missing from the Project Workers dropdown. That dropdown only lists profiles belonging to that project. Global profiles do not appear. Create the profile on the project, or set it as the project default.

A profile I want is missing from the worker's Payroll Information. That dropdown lists global profiles only. A project profile is assigned from the Project Workers page instead.

I cannot delete a profile. A default profile cannot be deleted, at either scope. Make another profile the default first, then delete the old one.

I cannot turn the Default toggle off. A default cannot simply be switched off, because it would leave nothing to fall back on. Turn Default on for a different profile instead, and it moves across.

I cannot change a profile from Project to Global, or the other way round. Scope is fixed when the profile is created. Duplicate the profile and set the scope you want on the copy.

A bulk upload row was rejected for the payment profile. The name in the Payment Profile column has to match a profile that exists on that project. Check the spelling, and check you are not using a global profile name.

Overtime is not appearing even though the worker passed the daily cutoff. Check whether Require Weekly Threshold to be met is on. If it is, daily overtime only starts once the weekly threshold has been reached.

FAQ

How many payment profiles can I have? As many as you need, at both scopes. Only one can be the company default, and only one can be the default on any given project.

Can one payment profile be shared across several projects? No. A project profile belongs to a single project. Use Duplicate to copy the rules onto another job, or use a global profile when the rules are the same everywhere.

Does a project profile override the worker's global profile? Yes, but only for shifts on that project. Their global profile still applies everywhere else.

Will changing a profile update timesheets that are already approved? Changes apply going forward. Speak to SmartBarrel support before changing a profile mid pay period.

Who can create and edit payment profiles? Anyone with the Edit Payment Profiles permission. View Payment Profiles allows read only access.

Do PTO hours count toward the overtime cutoffs? No. PTO shifts are excluded from the hours worked calculations.