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    How to Assign Excess Hours in Advance

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    OrangeHRM Administrator
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    Use this when you already know employees will need to work extra time, for example to cover a busy period. Supervisors, Heads of Department and HR Admins can assign excess hours.

    When an employee is terminated, the system cancels any Pending Approval or Approved requests dated after the termination’s effective date. Requests on or before that date are kept and can still be approved, so time worked before the employee left can still be paid. If the employee is reactivated later, the cancelled requests are not restored.

    Step 1 - On Employee Excess Hours, click Assign Excess Hours. The Assign Excess Hours window opens.

    Note: You can also open this window from the Assign Excess Hours corrective action on an attendance exception record. The employee and date are then filled in for you. Refer to How to Configure Attendance Exception Rules.

    Step 2 - Select the Date.

    Step 3 - Select the Start Time. Times are in 24-hour format, in 15-minute steps.

    Step 4 - Select the End Time. An end time on the following day is marked - Next Day. The Duration is calculated for you.

    Step 5 - In Employees, select one or more employees. Supervisors can pick their direct subordinates, and HR Admins can pick any employee. Employees who cannot be assigned are greyed out with the reason, for example "Shift overlaps with selected time" or "Attendance sheet is already approved".

    Step 6 - Optionally, enter Comments.

    Step 7 - Optionally, add up to 5 Attachments.

    Note: After you pick an employee, the date and times are locked. To change them, remove the selected employees first.

    Step 8 - Click Assign. The system shows "Successfully Saved". A request with the status Approved is created for each selected employee, and each employee is notified.

    How to Export the Employee Excess Hours List

    Step 1 - On Employee Excess Hours, apply the search and filters you need.

    Step 2 - Click CSV or XLSX. The file downloads.

    The file includes every page of the requests that match your current filters and search, limited to the employees you can see. Selected checkboxes do not affect the export. The file contains Employee ID, Employee Name, Associated Shift Date, Shift Duration, Applied Duration, Status and Comments.

    How to Prevent Attendance Sheet Approval While Requests Are Pending

    On the Attendance Sheets screen, a submitted sheet that has an excess hours request in Pending Approval shows the approval status Unapproved Excess Hours Request(s) instead of Ready to Approve.

    • By default, this status appears in orange as a warning only. You can still approve the sheet, but once it is approved, any excess hours approved later for those dates are not paid.
    • To block approval, a System Admin turns on Restrict Attendance Sheet Approval for Unapproved Excess Hours Requests in the pay policy's Additional Rules section. The status then appears in red, and the sheet cannot be approved or included in Approve Eligible until every request on its dates is approved, rejected or cancelled. Hovering over the disabled action shows "This attendance sheet has excess hours requests waiting for approval."

    Note: This setting is off by default and applies to one pay policy at a time.

    Notifications

    Email notifications for Excess Hours are listed below.

    When this happens

    Who is notified
    An employee applies The supervisor
    A request is approved or rejected The employee
    A supervisor or HR Admin cancels a request The employee and the supervisor
    Excess hours are assigned Each assigned employee and their supervisor
    An employee cancels their own Approved request The supervisor
    An employee cancels their own Pending Approval request No one
    The system cancels a request because a shift now overlaps it The employee
    The system cancels requests on termination The supervisor, one email per cancelled request
    Pending Excess Hours Requests Reminder - Summary Each recipient who has pending requests to act on, weekly on Mondays by default


    The person who performed an action is never notified about it. Heads of Department are not notified by default. Each email includes a View Excess Hours Request link that opens the Excess Hours screen filtered to that request.

    To turn notifications on or off, add subscribers (for example Heads of Department, or the Admin role for employees who have no supervisor) or edit templates, go to HR Administration → Configurations → Email Notifications.

    Note: People who receive these emails also receive matching push notifications in the OrangeHRM mobile app. Tapping a push notification opens the same Excess Hours screen as the email link, filtered to that request.

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