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Approvals

Review, validate, and manage time entries, time off requests, and timecards to ensure accurate and controlled timesheet data.

Written by Julia Chulman

Overview

The Approvals feature helps Managers and Administrators review time entries, time off requests, and timecards, approve or reject submissions, and request missing hours when needed.

Once time has been approved, it can optionally be locked to prevent further edits, ensuring that finalized records remain consistent and reliable.
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The Approvals feature allows to review, approve, or reject:

  • Time entries

  • Time off requests

  • Timecards

💡This ensures timesheet data is accurate and validated before reporting, payroll, or billing.

Enable Approvals

Roles: Administrators | Pro and Business Feature

How to enable the Approvals feature:

  1. Go to Settings>Tracking Policies.

  2. Locate the Approvals section.

  3. Enable Time Approval States (allows Approved/Rejected statuses)

  4. Click on Save.

Time Approval States

When States are enabled, the approval statuses (Approved / Rejected) are, by default, visible to everyone in the workspace, regardless of role. This means all users will be able to see the approval status of time entries.
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You can restrict who can view and manage approval states by adjusting the permission settings.

How to change the States' visibility:

  1. Go to Settings>Tracking Policies.

  2. In the Approvals section, locate Time approval states.

  3. Click the permissions icon next to the approval states.
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  4. Choose one of the following options:

  • Administrators

  • Manager or higher

  • Project Manager or higher

  • Anyone (default)

⚠️ Only users with the selected role (or higher) will be able to view and manage approval states.


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Approval States in Reports

When approval states are enabled, the Timesheets report includes a State column showing the status of each time entry.

Possible states include:

  • Pending – awaiting manager review

  • Approved – validated and finalized

  • Rejected – requires correction

💡 Managers can filter or update the state of multiple entries directly from the report view.


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Block Hours

The Block Hours option allows you to lock time entries once they are approved, preventing further edits.

When enabled, approved time entries can no longer be modified by users (based on the selected role permissions). This helps ensure timesheet data remains accurate and final for payroll, billing, or reporting purposes.

⚠️ Once activated, only users with the appropriate permissions (Admins, Managers, or Supervisors) will be able to manage blocked entries.​

Important

When Block Hours is enabled, some time tracking settings become unavailable, including:

  • Prevent users from adding or editing time entries in the past

  • Temporal edit access exceptions

This is because approved entries are automatically locked and cannot be edited, making additional edit restrictions unnecessary. If needed, you can disable Block Hours at any time to restore full editing flexibility.

Review Time Entries

Roles: Administrators and Managers | Pro and Business Feature
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Once Approvals are enabled, Managers and Admins can review users’ work hours directly from the Approvals and Hours pages.

How to review an employee's time entries from Approvals:

  1. Go to Approvals in the left sidebar.

  2. Locate the Hours section.

  3. Find the user whose time you want to review.

  4. Click on Review.

💡 This opens the user’s timesheet for the selected month, where you can inspect each time entry before approving it.

Managers can see a summary including:

  • Worked / Expected hours

  • Approval State

  • Hours pending approval

This overview helps managers quickly identify incomplete or inconsistent timesheets.

How to review an employee's time entries from Hours:

  1. Go to Hours.

  2. Select the user from the User Dropdown, on the top left.

  3. Click on "Review Hours", at the top right corner of the page.

  4. Review the user's time entries for the selected period.

  5. Click on "Approve All" to approve all entries for the selected month.

Approve or Reject Time Entries

Roles: Administrators and Managers | Pro and Business Feature

When reviewing a timesheet, admins and managers can approve or reject specific time entries.

How to approve or reject time entries:

  1. Open the user’s Timesheet report by clicking Review.

  2. Once in the Timesheet report, select the entries you want to validate.

  3. Click on the States button on the blue bar.

  4. Mark entries as:

  • Approved

  • Rejected

⚠️ Approved entries indicate the time has been validated and is ready for payroll, billing, or reporting. Rejected entries signal that the user must review or correct their submitted time.

Request missing Hours

Managers can remind users to submit missing work hours.

To request missing time entries:

  1. Go to Approvals.

  2. In the Hours section, click Request missing hours.

  3. Select the users who have incomplete timesheets.

  4. Send the request.

Users will receive a notification asking them to complete their missing time entries.

Time Off Approvals

Roles: Administrators and Managers | Pro and Business Feature

Managers can review and approve time off requests directly from the Approvals page.

The Time Off section displays:

  • Submission date

  • Employee name

  • Time off policy

  • Amount requested

  • Time off period

  • Approval status

Managers can approve or reject requests to ensure leave policies are followed and team schedules remain organized.

Timecards Approvals

Roles: Administrators and Managers | Pro and Business Feature

Timecards provide a summary of a user’s tracked time for a specific period. Managers can review submitted timecards from the Timecards section.

How to review timecards:

  1. Go to Approvals.

  2. Choose the desired month from the Date Selector, on the top left corner.

  3. Locate the Timecards section.

  4. Select a user.

  5. Review the timecard for the selected period.

  6. Approve or Reject as desired.

This helps ensure that monthly or weekly time submissions are complete and ready for processing.

Request Pending Timecards

Admins and Managers can request users to submit their pending timecards.

How to send a reminder:

  1. Go to Approvals.

  2. Choose the desired month from the Date Selector, on the top left corner.

  3. Scroll to the Timecards section.

  4. Click on Request pending Timecards.

  5. Select the users who have not submitted their timecards.

  6. Add an optional message.

  7. Click Request.

Users will receive a notification reminding them to submit their timecards.

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