How to create your company’s Cancelling overtime policy
Leave Dates lets you control who can cancel overtime requests, when they can cancel them, and how much notice is required. These rules can be managed through your company's Cancelling overtime policy.
By default, the policy allows approvers to cancel overtime requests both in the past and in the future. You can change these settings to suit how your organisation manages overtime.
Feature availability: With our Plus and Essential plans, you have full policy editing rights, enabling you to create your own personalised cancelling overtime policy with different rules for approvers and employees; on the Starter plan, you cannot edit any of the policy settings (these are configured to the Leave Dates system default) but you can still view all the policies to understand what rules are being applied.
In this article
Open the cancelling overtime policy
Understanding the default cancellation settings
Reset the policy to the system default
Open the cancelling overtime policy
To view or change the cancellation policy:
- Go to Settings.
- Select Policies.
- Select Cancelling overtime from the list of policies.
Understanding the default cancellation settings
The Cancelling overtime policy window opens with three tabs: Details, Updates and Test.
Leave Dates automatically provides default cancellation rules for overtime. These determine who can cancel overtime requests and whether they can cancel requests in the past or future.
The default rules shown in the Cancelling overtime policy are:
|
Who is cancelling? |
Past overtime |
Future overtime |
Notice required for future overtime |
| Employee | Not allowed | Not allowed | N/A |
| Approver (on behalf of a direct report) | Allowed | Allowed | At least 0 days' notice |
This means that, under the system default policy, employees cannot cancel overtime requests themselves at all, while approvers can cancel overtime requests from their direct reports both in the past and in the future (with no prior notice needed).
Admins aren’t included in the policy settings as they already automatically have permission to cancel any overtime request.
How the default permission levels work
The default overtime cancellation policy is designed with a clear escalation path. Employees have the most restrictive permissions, approvers have more flexibility, and admins are not restricted by the policy at all.
Our aim is to allow this process to be self-service wherever possible, with issues being handled at the lowest appropriate level, reducing the need for HR or administrators to handle routine requests. So if an employee cannot cancel their overtime because of the policy, they can escalate the request to their approver. If the approver is also unable to make the required change, only then do they escalate it to an admin, who can cancel the overtime without restriction.
When an approver is cancelling leave for one of their direct reports, the approver-level rules apply. However, when an approver wants to cancel their own overtime, they are treated as an employee and the employee-level rules apply.
What does the notice period mean?
The notice period determines how far in advance an overtime request can be cancelled.
For example, if you set an employee's cancellation rule to require at least 2 days' notice, they will only be able to cancel a future overtime request when the request is more than 2 days away. If the notice requirement is 0 days, the cancellation can be made even today.
Once the overtime date has passed, cancellation must be permitted for past requests under the policy to be allowed.
Customise cancellation rules
If the Leave Dates system defaults do not suit your organisation, you can change them in the Details tab.
The policy allows you to configure cancellation permissions for:
- Employees
- Approvers
For each role, you can specify whether cancellations are permitted:
- in the past
- in the future
You can also specify the minimum number of days' notice required when cancelling future overtime.
How to allow employees to cancel overtime
By default, employees cannot cancel overtime requests. If you want employees to be able to cancel their own overtime, you can enable the relevant options in the Employee row.
You can choose whether employees can:
- cancel requests in the past;
- cancel requests in the future; and
- cancel future requests only when a specified amount of notice has been given.
Make your changes in the employee row and then click Save changes to immediately implement these new settings for all users.
How to control approver cancellations
Approvers can be given permission to cancel overtime requests in the past, in the future (with or without prior notice), or both.
Make any changes you wish to in the approver row and then click Save changes to instantly activate the new settings for all approvers.
We recommend giving employees the most restrictive permissions, with progressively greater permissions for approvers and admins. If you configure employees with higher permissions than approvers, you’ll get a warning message because the Leave Dates system will know this is likely to cause issues. There are no restrictions for admins so they will always have the highest permissions.
Review policy updates
The Updates tab provides a full audit trail of changes made to the Cancelling overtime policy. Every change is recorded as an event in the timeline, with no exceptions. Events are never deleted or modified, allowing you to see the history of how the policy has changed
Going backwards in time, with the most recent change shown at the top, you can see:
- when the change was made;
- who made the change; and
- what was changed.
The update history compares the Before and After settings, making it easy to see exactly how the cancellation rules have changed. If the user who made a change is later deleted from Leave Dates, their name may appear as “(Deleted)”, but the event itself remains in the audit trail.
Test your cancellation policy
Before saving the Cancelling overtime policy, it's a good idea to use the Test tab to check that your rules work as intended. This allows you to identify and correct any issues before the changes affect the employees.
The test tool lets you select a date and check whether overtime cancellation is permitted for employees and approvers under your current policy settings. It is a much faster way to verify your rules than manually creating and cancelling overtime requests through the Wallchart.
To run the test:
- Open Settings > Policies > Cancelling overtime.
- Select the Test tab.
- Select the date you want to test.
- Review the results to see how the policy applies to each role.
- Check the cancellation permissions for employees and approvers to confirm that the rules work as expected.
- If the results are not as intended, return to the relevant policy settings, make the necessary changes, and test again before saving.
The test results indicate whether cancellation is Allowed or Not allowed based on the current policy.
The test also shows the notice period that applies to the selected date. This allows you to check whether the policy is working as intended before saving or relying on the settings.
Reset the policy to the system default
If you no longer want to use your customised Cancelling overtime settings, you can return the policy to its system default.
The policy interface includes Reset to system default at the bottom of the policy window.
