Article 36 Agreement & Overtime Kit

When this helps

You want to handle overtime and Article 36 filings, but breaches surface only at month-end and the paperwork is easy to get wrong

What it does

Drafts an Article 36 agreement filing and checks it before submission (reasons too broad, a representative chosen the wrong way, and more). Feed it a monthly timesheet and it counts hours by the legal rules — down to the minute — against the daily/weekly limits, the 45-hour and under-100-hour monthly caps, the 2-to-6-month 80-hour average, and the 720-hour, 6-times-a-year annual caps, handling holiday work and overnight shifts correctly. It lists who is over the limit and, in risk order, who is close. It also drafts overtime request forms, showing how many hours remain this month for each request. Hour limits and approval decisions are always left to you and your manager.

The fixes baked into this kit

1. Overnight shifts (10pm-6am) came out as 0 minutes of overtimeThe actual attendance system computed hours as end minus start minus break, so overnight shifts crossing midnight came out negative and were read as 0 minutes. The fix treats an end time before the start time as the next day, splits the shift at midnight, and only counts the part that falls on a statutory holiday as holiday work.
2. Saturday/Sunday/holiday work was all counted as statutory holiday workThe same system grouped 'weekends and holidays' together as days off, but only the one statutory rest day per week counts as holiday work under the law. Work on the company's other days off is now counted as regular overtime (40-hour week), and the statutory holiday is set by the company's own rule.
3. Timesheet exports with English column headers couldn't be readThe export used English column names like date, staffName, startTime, endTime and breakMinutes, so the headers for name and time weren't recognized. English column names are now read as well.
4. Paid-leave rows got mixed into overtime hoursSome paid-leave rows still had clock-in and clock-out times. Leave rows are now excluded from the count, while hours actually worked on a half-day of paid leave are still counted.
5. The week didn't start on the day the company's rules specifyThe attendance system counted weeks starting Monday, but the start of the week depends on each company's work rules. The week's start day is now set per company, defaulting to Sunday if not specified.
6. The 2-to-6-month average missed months from the previous agreementPer the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare's guidance, the 2-to-6-month average must include months under the previous year's agreement. Months from the earlier agreement are kept rather than discarded, so the average is tracked across the agreement's base date.
7. Fixed overtime pay masked actual limit breachesThe payroll system treated missing timesheet data as zero overtime, and a fixed overtime allowance (20 hours worth) was also in place. The kit was set to always judge limits by actual hours worked, and the workflow notes that this is unrelated to the fixed overtime allowance.
8. Checked against the Ministry's official example and worked calculationsTranscribing the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare's Article 36 filing example (with a special clause) and checking it produced zero fix/verify items. The worked example in their overtime-limit guidance was also matched exactly and added to the self-test.

What's inside

• The flow (first setup → agreement → monthly check → overtime requests)
• A draft Article 36 agreement filing, checked before you submit it (fix / verify items)
• A tool that counts overtime and holiday work from timesheets using the legal rules
• A tool that ranks people over or nearing the limit by risk, and sums it up in Excel
• An overtime request template, and 'how many more hours this month' for each request
• A self-test checked against the Ministry's official filing example and worked examples
• A full fictional factory sample (agreement, timesheets, overtime requests, all runnable)
• Where the legal counting trips people up, and how it's handled

The first three decisions

1. Company name, worksite and industry
2. Which day is your statutory day off (how many are decided per week)
3. How you keep timesheets (CSV, Excel, a shift-scheduling kit, etc.)

What you need

• No extra costNode.js 18 or newerNeeded to run the tools
• No extra costGoogle Chrome or Microsoft EdgeTo generate the Article 36 agreement PDF. Without it, open it in a browser and print instead
• Extra costExcel or NumbersTo view the check results and open timesheets. Numbers is free

How to use

Just paste this into your AI.

I want to use the nice to have kit "Article 36 Agreement & Overtime Kit". Follow https://nicetohave.app/en/g/FS8W2B8F-•••••••••• and set it up.

Works the same in Claude Code or Codex.
Read what this tells your AI to do, before you paste it

FAQ

Can it count hours for people on variable working hours or flextime?

Not from day-by-day records. Each month, give it the monthly summary from your timekeeping system (statutory overtime and statutory day-off hours) instead.

Is it OK to start using it partway through a month?

Please include the previous months' timesheets as well — they are needed for the 2-to-6-month average and the 40-hour week. For any month you can't provide, it will tell you that part is unknown.

Will it file the agreement with the Labor Standards Inspection Office?

No. The kit stops at producing the PDF; a person files it, either by printing it and taking it to the office or by e-filing. The agreement must be filed by the day before its validity period starts.

Does it check the separate limits for doctors and professional drivers?

No. Doctors fall under separate rules that this kit does not count, and it does not check the improvement standards for motor vehicle drivers (such as restraint hours) either.

Can I delete the records of people who have left?

Article 36 filings and working-hour records are kept for 5 years (3 years for the time being). People who have left have no new records, so they won't show up in this month's check even if you keep them.

Supporters

Once support opens, the people who backed this kit will be listed here.