Run fortnightly hourly payroll with overnight shifts, unpaid breaks, re-sent punches and a holiday
Exact prompt
# Run hourly payroll for a two-week period Inputs: `employees.csv` (pay type and hourly rate), `punches.csv` (clock-in and clock-out times, local time) and `pay-period.json` (period, week starts, holidays). Report gross pay for every hourly employee for the two-week period. Salaried employees are paid elsewhere; leave them out. - Shift length = clock_out minus clock_in. A shift longer than 6 hours has a 30-minute unpaid break deducted. A shift of exactly 6 hours or less has none. - A shift belongs to the day and the week in which it starts, even if it ends after midnight. - The punch clock sometimes re-sends a punch: rows with the same employee and the same clock_in are one shift. - Overtime is time over 40 hours in one week (Monday to Sunday), paid at 1.5x the hourly rate. - Hours on a shift that starts on a holiday are paid at 2x and do not count toward the 40 hours. - Work in exact hours and minutes; round only the reported figures, to 2 decimals half-up. Write `out/payroll.json`: `{"gross_pay": {"<employee_id>": <pay>, ...}, "overtime_hours": {"<employee_id>": <hours>, ...}, "holiday_hours": {"<employee_id>": <hours>, ... only employees with holiday hours}, "total_gross": <sum of the rounded gross pay figures>}`. List every hourly employee who worked in `gross_pay` and `overtime_hours` (0 if none). ## How this run works - Work on your own: nobody will answer questions in this task, and writing to `ask/` counts against the run. - Write only under `out/`. Create `out/` if it is missing. Inputs are synthetic; don't fetch anything from the network. - Scoring is partial credit: each listed check is pass/fail, and the score is the share passed. Numbers are compared to within 0.005 unless the task says otherwise.
Turn about 120-200 clock punches for 9-13 workers into gross pay for a two-week period. Overtime is weekly rather than per fortnight, breaks are deducted only above 6 hours, overnight shifts belong to their start day, the clock re-sends some punches, holiday hours are paid double and kept out of the overtime count, and salaried staff are mixed in. Pooling the fortnight, skipping the break, or counting duplicates each changes someone's pay. Original benchmark task written for usecaserank.com (not based on a specific public post). Headless, offline run on a reproducible fixture. Each run's notes say how its cost was measured (estimates are marked).
Success criteria: gross_pay overtime holiday breaks_and_duplicates
Best model for this task so far: Claude Haiku 5.5 (effort default (no --effort flag) · thinking on) (success, $0.0061, 22s).
All runs (3)
100% pass rate across 3 eligible runs: 3 pass, 0 partial, 0 fail. Partial and failed runs are listed below with everything else.ⓘ
| Model | Cost | Time | Step-insⓘ | Autonomy | Outcome | Trustⓘ | Date | Compare |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AClaude Opus 5.5default · thinking on | $0.15 | 27s | 0 | Fully autonomous | pass | Trust 80% | 2026-10-21 | |
| AClaude Haiku 5.5default · thinking on | $0.0061 | 22s | 0 | Fully autonomous | pass | Trust 80% | 2026-10-21 | |
| AClaude Sonnet 5.5default · thinking on | $0.06 | 20s | 0 | Fully autonomous | pass | Trust 80% | 2026-10-21 |
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