Maximum PC

Hey all, I'm making a Java program for my programming class to calculate payroll.

For overtime (assuming overtime is 40 hours or greater), I'm using the following equation:




grossPay is just the grossPay, before insurance is taken out
rateOfPay is the amount the person gets paid per hour
workHours is the amount of hours the person works

Did I do this overtime calculation correct? I can supply my full code if needed, I'm just making sure this formula doesn't have any logical errors in it.

It works, assuming the employee puts in at least 40 hours per week. Lets pretend our employee takes a day off, or is only part time. Using that formula for the calculation, he would still be paid for 40 hours, regardless of how much time he actually out in. . Something like this may do you better:

You'll probably need to add some additional logic in there so you don't end up adding negative numbers to the gross pay.

Another issue you may want to think about is how you are awarding overtime. Correct me if I'm wrong, but dont most employers calculate overtime in daily increments?

Here is a scenario. Lets pretend our employee works mon-wensday normal hours. On Thursday he works 3 hours overtime, and takes off Friday. With your current pay stricture, he wouldn't be paid extra for that overtime he put in on Thursday. Of course, the method for awarding overtime is completely up to you.

Hack -- your equation is fine, however gamer's has an error in it.

Hackman, your equation is fine, but you need to handle work weeks with less than 40 hours. I'm sure your instructor is sneaky enough to throw a short work week into the data. gamerfreak's equation is not correct, but that looks liek the kind of equation the IRS will use on me come April 15.

Blah, I see that. That was at 1:00 AM -- ignore the equation and read the rest. It gives him the right idea, I never meant it to be 100% functional.

So long as workHours >= 40, your equation works just fine.

If worksHours < 40, though, you will end up subtracting overtime pay from grossPay for each hour less than 40 .. not a good thing. So, you'll need a conditional statement to ensure correct input or a more robust equation to handle workHours < 40.

I probably should have mentioned that I'm using a loop here. (I messed up the spacing of the brackets so just ignore the spacing on them).

It would just normally be a 40 hour work week 5 days a week, 8 hours a day. But some people worked overtime and some worked less than 40.

Sorry if I wasn't more clear to begin with.

If you assume valid input (i.e. non-negative hours worked), then you could simplify it down to this:



The second if would always return true (with valid input), and then it would save you a conditional check.

Will do. Thanks cat.


And thanks to everyone else for the help

Personally, I would recommend losing the if-else structure and replace the 40 with a variable... 40, after all, is a magic number. I believe the French start getting overtime after 20 hours of work, right? And French-Canadians probably after 22 hours.



The 1.5 is obviously another magic number that should be replaced.

And before someone goes and does it, I didn't suggest removing the if-else block to 'improve performance'. If anybody starts that "It'll save 2 instructions per iteration" crap and I work in a (sur)real-time enviroment where we don't have a nano-second to spare, I'll throw a compiler book at 'em. Not the dragon book either -- one of the lame ones.