35. Approvals

TimeKeeper supports an approval process within the system. First this needs to be enabled in the settings panel.

TimeKeeper supports up to 3 levels of approvals. You can select who can approve each level of the timesheet based on their level of authority. So for example, if you wanted a manager to approve level one and an administrator to have secondary final approval.

Once approval settings are enabled, head to the Approvals report and select the dates you want to manage.

TimeKeeper will calculate all the relevant timesheets along with their current approval status. You will see Jack’s timesheet has already been approved.

To approve a timesheet, just click the Approve timesheet button. To view an employee timesheet, I can click on the row to expand the details.

As there are two levels of approval on this account, the first approval marks this timesheet as level one approved. As I am an administrator, I can approve that again to fully approved. A manager in this case, would only be able to approve this timesheet once.

On each approval, TimeKeeper will send emails to the employee to indicate the change in status for their timesheet.

Once approved, the timesheet is 'locked'. This means that the employee can’t make any changes to their leave or time entries for that period in question. To unlock a timesheet, an administrator or manager would have to 'Reject' the timesheet so that edits can be made again.

To enable and run approvals:

Go to the Account section


Scroll down to 'Approval Settings'
To turn on approvals, click 'Enable Timesheet Approvals'


A new dropdown will appear asking which user roles (e.g. Manager, Team Manager or Administrator) can approve timesheets. Select the role that can approve the timesheet.


That's all that is required for a one step approval process, however if you want a secondary approver, you can click 'Require Secondary Approver'. Again a dropdown will appear allowing you to select who can approve the secondary timesheet. This will mean that a timesheet must be approved twice to be considered approved.


Repeat the same steps above for 'Require Third Approver' if you want a timesheet to be approved three times.


Press 'Save Settings' to enable your new timesheet approval process

Approvals Report

To actually approve or reject a timesheet, you can go to the Approvals report via the report section or alternatively by viewing under 'Manage' on the left hand sidebar.



Select a date range to run the approval reports, this may take a bit of time depending on the number of employees you can view. You will then see a screen like below.



You can click the 'Approve' button on the right hand side to approve the timesheet if you have the relevant permissions to or click 'Reject' to reject the timesheet.

What happens on approval?

The employee will get an email to inform them their timesheet has been approved to the next level. In the event, another approver is required, that approver will receive an email informing them also.

Key point, once a timesheet has been approved that employee time entries or leave cannot be changed for the approved period. E.g. if you approve 'Joe Bloggs' timesheet from the 1st March to the 8th March, then 'Joe Bloggs' cannot have his leave or time entries adjusted for the period between the 1st and the 8th of March.__

What happens on rejection?

The employee will get an email to inform them their timesheet has been rejected. In the event that other approvers need to be notified, these approvers will receive an email informing them also.

Updated on: 22/07/2024