Excess Hours lets your organisation pay for time worked beyond the scheduled shift only after it has been approved. Employees apply for the extra time they worked, or plan to work. Supervisors, Heads of Department and HR Admins approve, reject or cancel those requests, or assign excess hours to employees in advance. This gives you control over overtime costs while making sure approved extra work is still paid correctly.

Excess Hours affects pay only when a pay policy setting is turned on. A System Admin turns on Restrict Pay Code Generation Outside the Shift Duration in the pay policy's Additional Rules section. When this setting is on, pay codes are generated only up to the employee's scheduled hours. Any extra time shows as Unapproved and is not paid until excess hours are approved. Refer to How to Configure Additional Rules under Pay Policies.

Access to the Excess Hours screens and actions is controlled by the Excess Hours data group permissions in user roles. The default ESS, Supervisor and Admin roles are set up for you.

Note: Excess Hours is available from 8.2.2 onwards. It is turned on by default for the whole organisation and works for every employee, including employees who are not assigned to a pay policy. For those employees, and for anyone whose pay is not restricted to the shift, excess hours are tracked but do not change pay (see Notes & Important Behaviour below).

Go to Attendance → Excess Hours. 

There are two screens:

• My Excess Hours – where employees apply for excess hours and see their own requests.
• Employee Excess Hours – where supervisors, Heads of Department and HR Admins see their employees' requests, act on them, assign excess hours and export the list.

Note: The Associated Shift Date is the date whose shift the excess hours belong to. It can differ from the date picked in the request. For example, if an employee's overnight shift runs Monday 20:00 to Tuesday 03:00 and they apply for Tuesday 03:00 – 05:00, the request belongs to Monday.

Employee Excess Hours shows a selection checkbox, the employee's picture, Employee Id, Employee, Associated Shift Date, Shift Duration, Applied Duration, Status, Comments, Attachments and Actions. The Search Employee field, the filter button, the CSV and XLSX buttons and the Assign Excess Hours button are at the top right.

The screen opens showing requests from 1 January of the current year to 31 December of the following year. You can change this range in the filter.

Approve, Reject or Cancel a Request

Excess hours can be applied for or assigned on most dates, with a few exceptions. They can’t be used on a date whose attendance sheet was approved within the last two years. For a terminated employee, they can’t be used on any date after the termination date.

Each request must fit around the employee’s schedule. The shift and the excess hours together can’t be more than 24 hours. A request also can’t overlap another Pending Approval or Approved excess hours request for the same employee.

If a shift is later added or changed so that it overlaps a request, even partly, the whole request is cancelled automatically. The employee can then apply again for any time they still need. Deleting or shortening a shift never cancels a request.

On a day with no scheduled hours, the employee is paid only for approved excess hours. Examples are a non-working day, a holiday, or a day with no published roster shift.

Excess hours affect pay only when the pay policy setting Restrict Pay Code Generation Outside the Shift Duration is turned on. In these cases, requests are recorded for tracking but don’t change pay:

• The setting is turned off. Employees are then paid for all the hours they work.
• The employee isn’t assigned to a pay policy.
• The employee is on a Flexible Weekly work schedule.

Step 1 - Go to Attendance → Excess Hours → Employee Excess Hours. You see requests from the employees you are responsible for.

Note All excess hours actions are recorded in the Audit Trail under the Excess Hours section. This includes automatic cancellations, which are recorded with the action owner System.

Step 2 - To find one employee, type their name in Search Employee. The list shows only that employee's requests.

Step 3 - To narrow the list further, click the filter button. The Filter Employee Excess Hours window opens.

Step 4 - Select the filters you need. The filters are listed in the table below.

Step 5 - Click Search. The list shows the matching requests.

Step 6 - Compare the Shift Duration with the Applied Duration of the request.

Step 7 - Click the comment or attachment icon to see the employee's notes and files.

Approved excess hours appear on the employee's attendance sheet day row and in Employee Records as an Excess Hours line. They are not shown on roster screens. Approved excess hours are a limit, not extra pay. If an employee is approved for 3 extra hours but works only 2, they are paid for the 2 hours worked. The extra time does not have to be worked at the exact times in the request.

Step 8 - In the Actions column, click Approve, Reject or Cancel. The action takes effect straight away and the employee is notified.

Once a request is approved, the day's pay codes are recalculated. The approved time is paid through the pay policy's normal rules, for example as Regular Time or Overtime, and no longer shows as Unapproved.

Important: Approved (frozen) attendance sheets are never recalculated. If you approve or cancel excess hours for a date whose attendance sheet is already approved, the request's status still changes, but the sheet keeps its values and the approved time is not paid. Review pending excess hours requests before approving attendance sheets (see Prevent Attendance Sheet Approval While Requests Are Pending below).

Note: If you want higher-level supervisors to also see and act on requests from employees further down their reporting line, contact OrangeHRM Gold Support

How to bulk Approve, Reject or Cancel Several Employee Excess Requests at Once

Step 1 - On Employee Excess Hours, select the checkbox of each request. Only Pending Approval and Approved requests can be selected. The header checkbox selects all selectable requests on the current page.

Step 2 - Click Actions. The options shown depend on the requests you selected (see the table below).

Step 3 - Select Approve, Reject or Cancel. The Are you sure? window opens.

Step 4 - Click Yes, Approve, Yes, Reject or Yes, Cancel. The status of every selected request changes.

A bulk action works exactly like acting on each request one by one, with the same recalculation and notifications.

Note: While any request is selected, the Assign Excess Hours button is disabled.

Related Articles

• How to Configure Additional Rules under Pay Policies
• How to Configure Attendance Exception Rules (including the Excess Work Duration rule)
• How to View and Manage Employee Attendance Sheets (where Unapproved time is shown)
• How to Apply for Excess Hours (Employee Handbook > Attendance, new article in this document)