My employer will be paying a non-discretionary bonus in the first part of 2010 for work performed in 2009.  How do you calculate the bonus into the hourly rate for non-exempt employees and when should the new rate be paid (2009 hours worked or 2010 hours worked)?  Thanks for your input.

Where a non-discretionary bonus is paid for a period of time longer than a week, the employer may disregard, temporarily, the bonus and pay overtime pay at time and one-half the regular rate, exclusive of the bonus.  When the amount of the bonus can be ascertained, it must then be apportioned back over the workweeks of the period during which the bonus was earned by the employee.  You must examine every workweek in that period to calculate the additonal overtime pay owed to the employee.  This can be determined by dividing the bonus amount by the employee's hours of work during the particular time period the bonus was earned, and then multiplying this average hourly bonus amount by one-half times the employee's overtime hours of work during the time period.

 Hope this helps!