Internal Approval for Time Entries

The Internal Approval for time entries feature allows you to submit your logged time entries to a project manager or another user for their approval. This ensures that the manager is aware of the hours being logged and the tasks done by each of their subordinates. The approved time entries can be invoiced, or sent for the customer’s approval later.

In this page…

Scenario: Patricia works on a project and gets paid on an hourly basis. Each day, she logs the time spent working and then, once in a week, she sends the time entries to her project manager for internal approval. This way, the manager is always in the loop about the work done by each of his employees. The manager then cross-checks the approvals, approves it and later invoices them to the customer. This ensures a smooth internal approval workflow for both, the employee and the manager.

Enable Approvals

To enable internal approval for your time entries:

Enable Approval

Internal approvals are available only for the projects that have it enabled. To enable internal approvals for a project:

Insight: Only users of your organization who can access time entries can be assigned as a Project Manager.

Enable Approval

Create Approvals

Once you enable internal approval, a tab named Approvals will appear in the Time Tracking module. You can create a set of approval workflows for different time entries, submit approvals, accept and reject the approval created in this module. To create an approval:

Create Approval

Insight: Only the projects that have internal approval enabled will be listed here. You can edit an existing project to enable approvals for it.

Insight: An internal approval can be submitted only to one approver. So, ensure to select time entries which has the same approver.

Create Approval

Approval Process

All the internal approvals created will be listed under the Approvals tab in the Time Tracking module. Once an approval is submitted, it can either be approved or rejected by the project manager.

Submit an Approval

You can either submit an approval as soon as you create it, or save it and send it later. If you have only saved the approval, here’s how you can send it:

Submit Approval

Approve an Approval

Here’s how you can approve a pending approval:

Insight: An internal approval can be approved only by the project manager or approver you had assigned it to.

Approve Approval

Insight: Once approved, it can be invoiced, or sent to your client for their approval.

Reject an Approval

You can both reject a pending approval or reject an approval that has already been approved. Here’s how:

Note: An approval can be rejected only by the project manager.

Reject Approval Reject Approval

Pro Tip: You can use the comments section to share important details about the time entry with your manager.

Comments and History of Approval

Other Actions

The following are the other actions that can be carried out in an approval.

Edit an Approval

To edit an internal approval:

Insight: You cannot edit an approval that has already been approved.

Delete an Approval

To delete an internal approval:

Approval Filters

There are a set of filters using which you can view the list of approvals based on their status and nature. To filter and view:

Filter Approval

Disable Approvals

To disable the approval feature for time entries, you have to first disable it in the projects in which it is enabled. Here’s how you can disable approvals for a project:

Pro Tip: To disable approvals in one go, you can select the projects from Time Tracking > Projects > click Bulk update and choose the Uncheck this option.

bulk disable Approval

Once you have disabled this feature in all the projects,

Uncheck the Enable Approvals for time entries option

Now, the approvals option will be disabled for your entire organization.


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