Overtime Approval Form Template – Free Excel Download

What Should an Overtime Approval Form Include?

An overtime request needs enough information for a manager to understand the additional work before deciding. A practical form should cover:

• Employee details – Name, ID, department, and manager
• Request information – Request date and scheduled overtime date
• Work details – Project, client, task, or work type
• Hours – Expected start time, end time, regular hours, and overtime hours
• Reason – Why the additional work is required
• Pay details – Applicable overtime rate and estimated pay, when needed
• Approval – Status, comments, and approval date

Why Use an Overtime Approval Form?

A standardized overtime approval process makes additional work hours easier to manage and document. It helps you:

• Keep overtime requests organized – Store employee, project, date, and hour information together.
• Give managers better context – Review the reason and expected workload before approving overtime.
• Create an approval record – Document whether a request was approved, rejected, or placed on hold.
• Reduce communication gaps – Replace scattered emails, messages, or verbal requests with a consistent form.
• Support payroll preparation – Keep approved overtime information available for payroll review.
• Improve project visibility – Connect additional hours with the project or task that required them.

For teams processing a large number of overtime requests, however, manually collecting and reviewing hours becomes repetitive. In that case, time tracking software can reduce manual recordkeeping by providing centralized time data and reports.

Manage Overtime and Work Hours With Apploye

Once overtime is approved, managers still need an accurate way to review the hours actually worked.

Apploye provides daily, weekly, monthly, and custom timesheets, along with timesheet approval and reporting. Its reports can also show manually added time entries and tracked hours by employees, projects, and dates.