This feature is in beta. Your workspace needs beta access and an Essentials, Plus, or legacy Business v1 plan. Free and Mini do not include overtime logging. Contact support@absentify.com for beta access, access for another workspace, setup help, or feedback. A supported plan alone does not enable the beta.
Create a separate hourly allowance
Use a new allowance such as TOIL or Overtime to keep earned credit separate from vacation entitlement. It counts toward your plan’s allowance limit.1
Create the allowance
Open Settings > Allowances > New allowance. Enter a name, select Hours under Allowance in days or hours, and leave Ignore limit off if users should only spend credit they have earned. The allowance unit cannot be changed later.
2
Enable overtime before saving
In Overtime, turn on People can log overtime before saving the new, empty allowance. Set the factors and optional expiry described below, then select Save.absentify automatically creates a rule that grants no base entitlement, carries unused credit without a time limit, and assigns accounts and the rule to eligible existing users. It also sets the rule as the allowance’s organization default for new users. You do not need to create a zero-value rule manually. With no expiry set, this new dedicated account keeps unused overtime credit across years.
3
Link a recovery leave type
Create a leave type such as Time off in lieu in Settings > Leave types. Under Allowance, enable Take from an allowance and select the new allowance in Which allowance?. Under Days or hours, choose Whole hours or a minute-based unit such as 15 minutes. Choose a small enough interval to spend the credit your factors produce.Set Needs approval for recovery requests according to your policy and enable Person is off work for recovery time. These settings control the time-off request, not the approval of logged overtime. See leave type settings.
4
Check users and approvers
Check the allowance and its visibility in user allowance settings, including a newly added user. Existing assignments and intentional exclusions are not overwritten automatically.Overtime uses the user’s approver configuration, including its linear or parallel process and one/all/first-response decision rule. There is no separate overtime approver selector. No approver allows automatic approval; a user who is their own only approver can also be approved automatically. Check this configuration before inviting users to log work.
Factors and expiry
Set Factor for a workday, Factor for a day off, and Factor for a public holiday independently. Each defaults to 1 and accepts 1 to 5, with up to two decimal places. absentify determines the day category from the user’s schedule and assigned public holiday calendar for the work date; a public holiday takes precedence over a day off. Credit equals the approved duration multiplied by the factor. For example, 2 hours on a day off at 1.5 earn 3 hours. If the approver recognizes only 1 hour, the credit is 1 hour 30 minutes. Hour-based credit is rounded to whole minutes. Overtime expires after (months) accepts a whole number from 1 to 120:- With a value: validity starts on the day worked, not the approval date. The credit keeps that validity across year boundaries, independently of the allowance’s carry rules. For example, work on March 10 with a three-month validity can be used through June 9. Waiting for approval does not extend this period.
- Left empty: overtime follows the allowance’s normal carry and expiry rules. Unused amounts that are not carried forward expire at year end. Only the new, empty account provisioned above is automatically set up for unlimited carry; do not assume an existing allowance has that policy.
Existing allowances and opening balances
You can enable People can log overtime on an existing allowance. Automatic zero-base setup applies only to an empty, unconfigured allowance without existing rules, balances or adjustments. Enabling logging on a used allowance keeps its entitlement, assignments and carry policies. Review them before using it for overtime; a separate new account is usually clearer. Existing day-based allowances can also accept overtime, in half-day or whole-day entries. They do not convert hours to days. Use an hourly allowance for precise extra-work durations. For historical credit or a balance correction, use user allowance adjustments. A manually entered overtime amount is a balance adjustment; it does not create a logged entry with an approval trail. Avoid adding the same work both manually and through overtime logging.Review balances and history
Users see approved credit in their allowance balance and the entry trail in My overtime. Pending entries do not add spendable credit. Approvers and admins review processed entries under History > Overtime in the approval area, according to their access. The history records logged and approved duration, credit, decisions, reasons and expiry. See the approver guide. An approved entry can later show Expired or Credit removed. The latter means an admin removed its credit; an approval record alone does not prove credit is still available. Use allowance balances for available credit and ordinary absence reporting for recovery time already booked.Disable logging
Turn off People can log overtime and save to stop new entries for that allowance. This does not delete existing entries, balances or the allowance rule. Pending entries can still be processed, and existing credit can still be used through the linked leave type, subject to its normal availability and expiry rules.Troubleshooting setup
- Overtime settings are missing: confirm beta access for this particular workspace with support.
- An upgrade prompt appears: beta access and plan eligibility are separate. Check the plan matrix.
- A user cannot see Log overtime: check that the allowance is active, logging is enabled, and the allowance is enabled and visible for that user. Also check their employment dates and whether any valid work date is available.
- Not everyone was added: retry or save the allowance again later, as the setup warning suggests. Check affected users’ allowances afterward. Contact support if setup remains incomplete; do not add duplicate credit to compensate.
- A date or approval fails: see logging restrictions and approval troubleshooting. Allowance updates in progress can temporarily block logging or crediting; retry after they finish.