Ordinary time earnings (OTE)

Ordinary time earnings (OTE) is what an employee earns for their ordinary hours of work — and it's the base the superannuation guarantee is calculated on. Get OTE wrong and every super payment built on it is wrong too, which is why this quiet definition matters more than it looks.

What's in and what's out

Broadly, OTE includes:

• base pay for ordinary hours,
• casual loading and shift loadings on ordinary hours,
• most allowances, commissions and bonuses,
• paid leave taken (annual, personal, long service while employed).

And it generally excludes:

• overtime worked outside ordinary hours, where the overtime is genuinely identifiable as such,
• expense reimbursements,
• termination payments like unused leave paid out at the end.

The ATO publishes a detailed OTE checklist, and the edge cases are real — for instance, if someone's hours are so irregular that ordinary and overtime hours can't be separated, the whole lot may count as OTE.

Why rosters decide OTE

The in/out boundary follows your roster: ordinary hours and overtime have to be distinguishable in your records for the exclusion to hold. Clear rostered hours, clean time capture, and overtime identified as it happens keep the super calculation honest — and auditable years later.

Superannuation Guarantee (Administration) Act 1992 (Cth) s 6(1) — see the ATO's ordinary time earnings checklist and Superannuation Guarantee Ruling SGR 2009/2.

Related terms

• Superannuation guarantee
• Overtime
• Payday super