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How to Ask to Be Paid for Unpaid Overtime

Every other ask here puts a proposalin front of somebody who hasn’t decided yet — a raise, a title, remote working, a leave of absence. This is the only one where the thing you’re asking for has already been given. The hours are worked. The delivery happened. Nothing is on the table to trade. Three things follow. The leverage was spent when the work went out, so there is no version of this that gets stronger by holding something back — and no version that gets anywhere by opening with an apology or accepting a warm thank-you as an answer. Saying the number isn’t free, because “I’m owed for these hours” is also “this role takes this many more hours than it was scoped for”, and your employer gets that second reading for nothing — which is a real price with a real reason to pay it, and not a reason to shave the number down. And whether it’s owedturns on a classification, a contract and a jurisdiction, which is why nothing here rules that you’re entitled to it and nothing here tells you a salary settles it either. You get the record and how to build it from traces rather than memory, the four places the entitlement question can actually be answered, the message at no more than 145 words, the five things to leave out, the three replies that come back, and the four questions this page won’t answer — each with the document, function or qualified person that holds it.

Sample unpaid overtime plan

Generated for: Operations Analyst, two years there, salaried, roughly four late evenings a week through the March cutover plus two Sunday callouts, none of it logged anywhere, mentioned it once in a one-to-one in April and nothing came back

Build the record first — It’s free, it’s the whole case, and it gets harder to reconstruct every week. Keep it somewhere that isn’t your employer’s systems, because access to a work account ends the day the job does. A record built from things made at the time and a record built from memory are different documents — anything you can’t reach from a trace goes in as a gap, not as a number. For each period: what it covers and what you were delivering. The independent trace it comes from — sent mail, saved-file timestamps, calendar, badge logs, the callout record. What, if anything, was already recorded in your employer’s own systems. Where the gaps are, named as gaps. And what you’ve already raised, with whom, on what date.

The real one is written against the periods you actually have, the traces you can point at, and what you’ve already said and to whom — and it never invents, estimates, rounds, totals or converts an hour, a date, a shift or a rate, and never rules that the hours are owed or that they aren’t. The first one is free — no card. See what a credit costs.

First one is free — no card needed.

Credits

— credits available

Your Job Title *

The Unpaid Hours, As Best You Know (optional)

This is the single input that most changes the advice, because a fortnight’s push and eighteen months of absorbed evenings are different documents needing different instruments. “I don’t know” is a real answer — it comes back as the first thing to go and reconstruct from your own calendar, messages and saved files, never as an hour count this page invented for you. Nothing here estimates, rounds, totals, averages or converts a figure. Not hours into money, not a weekly number into a total, not a total into a weekly number. Whatever you type comes back as you typed it, and everything you don’t comes back as a bracketed placeholder telling you where to look.

How Long You’ve Been There (optional)

How long you’ve been there changes what the record can reach back to and who the request goes through, so it’s worth stating — but it comes back as context for the routing, never as a reason this page has decided makes you more or less entitled to anything. It is never used to judge whether the hours are owed, whether you left it too long, or whether never having raised it before has waived anything.

Field or Industry (optional)

What Kind of Unpaid Hours These Are *

These aren’t the same conversation, and which one you’re in decides whether this is an administrative problem or a scopeproblem — a distinction that changes the document, the recipient and the ending. I logged the time and the pay never cameis the narrowest one: nothing needs proving, there’s a discrepancy between two of your employer’s own documents, and an opening that assumes refusal turns a fix into a dispute. The hours were never recorded is where the whole thing turns on rebuilding a record from traces made at the time rather than from memory. My manager told me not to log themis the branch where the more serious question is about the record and not the pay — and this page won’t tell you whether that instruction was improper, or that it was fine. I’m leavingis the one with a clock you can’t extend, because access to a work account ends the day the job does. Nothing here will tell you whether these hours are owed — and it won’t tell you a salary settles it, either.

What You Want Out of It *

This decides which section gets written, and it’s the field people skip — which is why so many of these end in being told you’re appreciated and nothing else. Get paid for the hours puts the whole weight on the record and on one bounded, checkable period. Get the time back insteadis usually the easier yes, because it sits inside a manager’s own authority where money almost never does — and it closes the matter, which is exactly what makes it attractive to both sides. Stop it happening again is a real choice and not a retreat, but it only works if you close the past out loud, or everything else you say gets heard as a preamble to a claim. Find out whether anything is owed is the only one whose deliverable is a map of questions rather than an answer, and the only one with its own risk: the question is routinely heard as the claim.

The Periods, And What’s Been Said Already (optional)

Give the periods — what each one covers, what you were delivering, and above all where the hours can be evidenced from something made at the time: sent mail, saved files, calendar entries, badge or access logs, rota changes, tickets, callout records. Plus anything you’ve already raised, with whom, and on what date. A record built from traces and a record built from memory are different documents, and gaps are named as gaps here rather than filled in. Please don’t paste timesheets, payslips, contracts or message threads— nothing here will read, interpret or calculate from them, so putting them in only leaves them here. No colleague’s name is needed and none goes into the draft: the message is written to be forwarded to somebody in payroll who was in none of the conversations. We never invent, estimate, round, total or convert an hour, a date, a shift or a rate, so anything you don’t supply comes back as a bracketed placeholder.

Also explore:

Asking to Work Remotely →Declining Extra Work →Raising a Pay Discrepancy →Asking for a Raise →Asking to Reduce Your Hours →