Buddy Punch vs Deputy for Renewal Season Overtime

An hourly employee who works extra hours, whether asked to or not, is generally owed overtime pay for that time under federal and most state wage laws, and the fact that the agency didn't formally request it does not remove the obligation once the employer knew or should have known the work happened. A pattern of unrecorded evening hours during every renewal cycle is exactly the kind of fact that looks different in a wage claim than it does in the office, where it's understood as normal seasonal effort. Confirm the specific rules for your state with an employment attorney, since the details of what counts as employer knowledge vary.

Buddy Punch's simple mobile clock-in lets an account assistant log a late evening from their phone or desk without any extra friction, which matters because the moment logging time feels like a hassle, people quietly stop doing it accurately. Deputy adds more scheduling structure on top, useful if the brokerage wants to proactively schedule extra coverage during renewal weeks rather than just capture hours after the fact. For an agency mainly trying to get honest, easy time capture during a known busy season, that simplicity is usually the deciding factor.

Staff who have absorbed unpaid evening work as part of the job for years won't necessarily start logging it just because a new clock exists, especially if they worry it signals they're not keeping up. Address this directly: tell staff plainly that recording every hour worked, including evenings during renewal season, protects both them and the agency, and that it is expected, not something to feel awkward about. A policy that exists in writing but isn't reinforced verbally by managers tends to get ignored during exactly the weeks it matters most.

To get staff logging the extra hours instead of just working them, do the following:

• Tell staff plainly that recording evening hours protects them and the agency, and is not a sign they are falling behind.
• Configure time tracking for nonexempt account assistants and service staff, and treat exempt producers separately based on duties and compensation.
• After reviewing renewal season records for one person, review them for everyone on the team, not just the loudest complainer.
• Use a full renewal cycle of accurate data to tell genuine evening workload apart from understaffing.
• Where carriers and clients allow, space renewal dates or bring in temporary support before asking the same staff to stretch further.

No. Producers and brokers are typically classified differently from account assistants and service staff, and exempt status depends on actual job duties and compensation structure, not job title alone. Configure time tracking specifically for your nonexempt account and service staff, and confirm with an employment attorney which roles in your agency are actually exempt, since misclassifying a role that should be nonexempt carries its own separate exposure beyond the unrecorded-hours issue.

Once accurate data exists for a full renewal cycle, the agency can finally see how much of the season's workload genuinely requires evening hours versus how much reflects understaffing that better renewal-date spacing or temporary support could fix. Median tenure with a single employer keeps trending shorter across the workforce generally¹, which is one more reason an agency shouldn't assume the account staff absorbing this workload today will still be there for next year's renewal season without a sustainable way to handle the crunch.

It's easy for an agency to notice and address unpaid evening work only after one account assistant raises it directly, while the same pattern continues quietly for everyone else on the team. Once you review renewal-season records for one person, review them for the whole nonexempt staff, since a fix applied to one employee and not their peers doing the same job creates its own fairness problem, on top of not actually closing the underlying exposure.

If a large share of the agency's book renews in the same few weeks every year, no amount of accurate time tracking changes the fact that the workload genuinely exceeds normal business hours during that window. Where carriers and clients allow it, look at whether renewal dates can be spread more evenly across the year for at least some of the book, since that structural change reduces how often evening work is actually necessary in the first place, rather than just tracking it more honestly once it happens.

An agency that keeps solving renewal-season crunch entirely by asking existing account staff to work more evenings will eventually lose the staff who are absorbing it, especially once other agencies nearby are willing to offer a more sustainable workload. Before assuming the answer is always more hours from the same people, price out temporary submission support or a short-term contractor for the busiest weeks, and compare that cost honestly against what the season's overtime, tracked accurately, has actually been running.