Overtime Approval Process: Keep the Decision and the Payroll Record Separate

An overtime request answers one question: should this extra work go ahead? A timesheet answers another: what work actually happened? Payroll needs the second answer even when the first answer was no, late, or missing. Treating one approval button as the answer to all three questions creates the wrong kind of certainty.

For a distributed service team, the useful overtime approval process has three decisions with different owners: authorize the work, confirm the hours, and release the pay record. Here is a workflow an operations lead and payroll reviewer can put in place without turning every extra hour into an email search.

Before the shift: decide whether to authorize extra work

Ask for the proposed date, estimated extra hours, client or project, reason, and the manager who can approve the change. The manager should record a decision and tell the employee whether to proceed, reduce the scope, move the deadline, or hand work to someone else. Keep the approved estimate beside the schedule so another supervisor does not mistake it for hours already worked.

This is a spending and workload decision. It is also a chance to spot a recurring coverage problem. If the same queue needs extra time every week, approving another request may keep today's service promise while leaving the staffing decision unresolved. The manager should name who will review that pattern, not make payroll infer it from a larger total.

A useful request record is short:

The request is an operating control. It is not a substitute for recording time. In the United States, the Department of Labor says work that an employer suffers or permits can be compensable even when it was not requested, and that a rule denying pay for overtime unless it was approved in advance does not remove the right to compensation for compensable overtime worked. These are federal FLSA principles for covered employees, with the advance-authorization point stated explicitly. Employment status, local law, contracts, and pay rules still need review for the people and places in your team.

After the work: establish actual hours

Have the employee submit the hours worked, including any time beyond the approved estimate. The manager compares the entry with the schedule and request, then records an explanation for a mismatch. They can address a policy breach separately. They should never turn a rejected request into an instruction to erase time that was actually worked.

Keep these states distinct in the record:

• Requested: extra work proposed; no decision yet.
• Authorized: manager approved a scope or limit; actual hours remain unknown.
• Worked: employee entered the time that occurred, whether or not it matched the request.
• Reviewed: manager checked exceptions and corrections against the work record.
• Ready for payroll: payroll has the hours and the pay treatment it needs, with unresolved items named.

That distinction matters when a request is approved for one amount and the shift runs longer. The manager investigates why. Payroll receives the actual time and the relevant exception, rather than a tidy number copied from the authorization. For covered US nonexempt workers, the Department of Labor's recordkeeping guidance calls for hours worked each day and total hours each workweek; it also says a schedule exception must record the hours actually worked.

At cutoff: hand payroll a version it can trust

Set a submission cutoff, a manager review cutoff, and a payroll release owner. The manager reviews missing entries, over-limit time, changed shifts, and corrections. Payroll checks that each person and workweek has the right record and determines the applicable earning treatment. An approval label alone does not decide overtime eligibility or calculate the rate. Under the US federal rule, overtime generally depends on hours in the defined workweek, and workweeks cannot be averaged together.

At handoff, keep the source hours, the authorization decision, the reviewed correction, the approver, and the export version linked by employee and period. If an entry changes after review, mark the earlier version as superseded and ask the responsible manager and payroll reviewer to check the new one. A separate payroll integration test should confirm that employee identity, earning code, and corrected hours survive the export. The night-shift timesheet guide covers the extra boundary when a shift crosses midnight.

A clean close is not a promise that every request was approved. It means payroll can see what was requested, what happened, what changed, and which pay decision remains open. Keep time and approval records visible only to people who need them for scheduling, review, and pay. If client work is involved, share a client-safe time report rather than the internal approval trail.

What KordanoTime contributes

KordanoTime plans customer access for December 1, 2026. Its owner-confirmed first-release commitments include daily timelines, online and offline tracking, schedules, attendance, approvals, and payroll-ready integrations or exports. Working-product and deployment QA are still pending. After release, test whether your team can carry an overtime request, actual hours, corrections, and the approved export version through the full handoff. Your team sets authorization policy, the applicable pay rules, and the point at which a period is ready to close.

The Founding 25 companies form the initial Early Access testing cohort. If overtime exceptions are currently scattered across messages and spreadsheets, explore Early Access with one test in mind: can your team explain the difference between approved extra work and actual hours when payroll closes?