Describe your overtime rules and approval path. Makeform creates an overtime authorization form for proposed hours, business reasons, cost references, and manager decisions before extra work begins.
Send requests to Slack, Google Sheets, and Zapier.
Sample prompts for the builder
Choose a prompt, tailor it to your policy, or send it to the builder. The structure is an example, not a live AI result.
Audience
Hourly employees requesting planned overtime
Format
Pre-approval form with manager decision fields
Prompt size
280 chars
Example form structure
Pre-approval form with manager decision fields
Employee, department, and manager
Requested work date and time range
Estimated overtime hours
Business reason and tasks
Manager decision and approved hours
Suggested routing tags
Awaiting manager
Approved
Changes requested
Ask for the work date, start and end times, and break duration. A total alone can hide scheduling conflicts.
Step 1
Request
employee, schedule, hours, and reason
Step 2
Review
manager checks need, coverage, and budget
Step 3
Decide
approved hours and conditions are recorded
Step 4
Reconcile
actual time is matched after the shift
Why pre-approval matters
A structured form gives managers the schedule, reason, hours, and cost reference needed to decide while preserving the request and decision together.
Employees request a date, time window, breaks, and estimated total rather than asking vaguely for “a few extra hours.”
Route requests to the right manager and capture the status and authorized hour limit.
Project codes, reasons, estimates, and decisions arrive in consistent fields that HR, operations, and payroll can compare later.
Built for real overtime scenarios
Choose a scenario, then replace its departments, decision rules, and reason codes with your own.
Name, manager, requested schedule, reason, project code, and a clear decision for one employee.
Facility, line, shift, roster, hours per person, and one operations review for coordinated coverage.
Connect the request to a milestone, budget owner, deliverable, and deadline instead of a generic workload note.
Document operational impact, verbal authorization, and follow-up review when advance submission was not practical.
Authorization workflow
Turn your policy into online intake and connect each decision to operations records.
Specify who submits, who decides, what counts as urgent, and which cost references matter.
Add departments and reason codes, require exact hours, and reveal exception details conditionally.
Notify the manager through email or a connected workflow before the proposed shift.
Export requests, then match authorized hours with timesheets by employee, date, and project.
Form vs chat vs spreadsheet
A generated form standardizes the request without making employees interpret a complex tracker.
Field guide
The useful version does more than collect a total. It connects the employee, exact schedule, operational need, cost reference, manager decision, and later time record.
Requester identity
Employee ID, department, location, and manager support accurate routing and reconciliation.
Proposed schedule
The date, time range, break, and normal schedule explain what portion is proposed as overtime.
Business reason
Combine a reportable reason code with the tasks, timing, and impact an approver needs.
Cost attribution
Structured work and cost fields keep accounting context out of free-text explanations.
Decision record
Record the authorized date, time window, and hour limit, including adjusted requests.
Exception and reconciliation
For work already begun, capture urgency, verbal authorization, and follow-up review without editing the original request.
Related tools
Use dedicated forms for schedule changes, leave, weekly time, and timesheet review while keeping the overtime request focused on pre-approval.
Build a related intake for teams that call the process an overtime request rather than an authorization.
Open toolReview recorded time after the work and compare it with the hours authorized in advance.
Open toolCollect actual regular and extra hours by employee, date, and work reference.
Open toolHandle schedule swaps and changes that do not necessarily require extra hours.
Open toolUnderstand when employees can work before managers plan added coverage.
Open toolCollect planned absences through a separate workflow while preserving manager review details.
Open toolFAQ
Answers for HR, managers, supervisors, and employees.
An overtime authorization form records proposed extra work before it begins: employee, schedule, estimated hours, business reason, cost reference, and manager decision. Your policy determines when and how it is used.
Include employee, department, manager, work date, time range, breaks, estimated hours, reason, tasks, deadline, and cost center. Add status, authorized hours, approver, date, and comments. For exceptions, capture the justification and verbal authorizer.
Use the authorization form for proposed hours and the timesheet for actual hours. Connect them with employee ID, date, and project code so the original estimate and decision remain intact.
Yes. Ask for the facility or project, shift, employee roster, and hours per person. A repeatable section or roster upload keeps the crew together while allowing different authorized limits.
Show a conditional path when work has begun or advance review was impractical. Ask for the impact, ticket, start time, verbal authorizer, and follow-up approver. Match the path to your policy.
Collect department, location, project, and manager, then connect submissions to email, Slack, Google Sheets, Zapier, or an internal workflow. Configure routing and decision authority for your organization.
Yes. Makeform is unlimited free for generating, editing, publishing, and collecting responses. The paid tier removes the Makeform badge. Adjust the fields and wording to fit your process.
Require dates, times, estimated hours, reason, tasks, and cost reference. Use dropdowns for stable lists, number fields for hours, conditional exception questions, and concise help text.
Replace scattered messages with a complete request.
