Full-Time Employee Service Hours: How to Add Them Up

Yesterday, we gave you the basic formula for calculating your employees’ total hours worked so that you could assess how many full-time equivalent employees (FTEs) you employ. It’s important to know the exact number of FTEs working for you for the sake of filing your Affordable Care Act return. When totaling your employees’ hours worked, you’ll want to make sure you’re calculating them in one of the three IRS-allowed ways to ensure your ACA compliance.

Before we get down to the types of calculation, let’s clarify what’s included in hours of service. Obviously, it’s hours spent working by the employee, but hours of service also include hours for which the employee is paid for:

• vacation or holiday,
• illness or incapacity (including disability),
• layoff,
• jury duty, and
• military duty or leave of absence.

When calculating your total hours of service, do not include hours for seasonal employees (who work less than 120 days).

Actual Hours Worked
The most straight-forward method, the Actual Hours Worked calculation method determines the actual hours of service from records of hours your employees worked and were paid. So if your payroll records indicate an employee worked 2,000 hours and was paid for an additional 80 hours (for vacation, holiday, and illness leave), the employee would have worked 2,080 hours of service for the year.

Days-Worked Equivalency
If you use the Days-Worked Equivalency method, you’ll credit an employee with eight hours of service for each day the employee was required to work at least one hour of service, including hours of paid leave. In other words, if you use this method and you have an employee who works from 8:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. each day for 200 days, the employee would be credited with 1,600 hours of service (8 hours for each day worked, multiplied by 200 days).

Weeks-Worked Equivalency
This method is a little similar to our previous one, only it goes by weeks instead of days. When you use the Weeks-Worked Equivalency method, you credit an employee with 40 hours of service for each week for which payment is made or due (including weeks of paid leave). For example, if you have an employee who worked 49 weeks and took two weeks of vacation with pay, the employee must be credited with 2,040 hours of service (51 weeks x 40 hours/week).

E-filing With ExpressIRSForms
When you e-file with ExpressIRSForms, you have access to our full-time employee calculator, making your ACA e-filing that much easier. To get started, just create an account, then follow the steps to generate and e-file your forms. If you run into any problems or have a question, you can give our expert customer service team a call at (704) 684-4751 Monday through Friday, 9;00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. ET or send us an email anytime to support@ExpressIRSForms.com.