Approval

Introduction

Under Employees -> Approval, you get an overview of the employees’ time and absence, which you should approve.

Below you will receive help for approval both as a manager and if you have enabled the project manager approval in the System administration -> Approval processes.

Description

Filter

In the filter at the top, you have several selections based on your TimeLog setup and how much of the approval flow you enabled.

Timesheets and absence

The filters in this section affect the list of employees shown for your approval under timesheets and absence requests.

• Legal entity: Here you select which legal entity’s employees you would like to approve. As default, all legal entities are selected when it says Select legal entity
• Department, employees: Here you select which department’s employees you would like to approve. As default, all departments are selected when it says Select department
• Manager: Here you select which leader you would like to approve on behalf of. The default selection is yourself. This filter is only visible, if you can approve on behalf of other managers
• Employee type: Here you select which employee type you would like to approve. As default, all employee types are selected when it says Select employee type
• Employee: Here you select which employee you would like to approve. As default, all employees are selected when it says Select employee
• Standard period: Here you select which period you would like to approve
• Period: Here you can select dates for the period

Projects

The filters in this section affect the list of projects shown for your approval.

• Legal entity: Here you select which legal entity’s projects you would like to approve. As default, all legal entities are selected when it says Select legal entity
• Department, projects: Here you select which department’s projects you would like to approve. As default, all departments are selected when it says Select department
• Customer: Here you select a specific customer which you would like to approve projects for. As default, all customers are selected when it says Select customer
• Project manager: Here you select which project manager you would like to approve on behalf of. The default selection is yourself. This filter is only visible, if you can approve on behalf of other project managers
• Project: Here you select a specific project you would like to approve. As default, all projects are selected when it says Select project
• Project type: Here you select which project type you would like to approve. As default, all project types are selected when it says Select project type
• Standard period: Here you select which period you would like to approve
• Period: Here you can select dates for the period

View options

Here you can limit your search and only get relevant data shown.

• Show projects with no hours in period: Mark this field, if you only want to see projects, where no time was tracked within the selected period
• Show approved registrations: If you mark this field, you will see approved registrations. If you remove the checkmark, you will only see registrations which you have not yet approved

When you have made your selections in the filter, you click Show to the right.

Save filters

It is possible to save your filters, so you do not need to set your filter manually each time you need to perform a search.

Click the small arrow next to the Show button and select Save this filter. Hereafter, you will always be able to find your saved filter, if you click the small arrow.

If you have a filter, which you wish to use as default, you can set it under Page settings (click the gears icon in the top right corner), where you can select from your saved filters. If you mark Load data automatically, then the data will show in the results list right away, when you access the page.

Date range for approval

At the top, you see the date range for which you are approving hours. Here you can change the dates to e.g. approve for an entire month instead of the default one week view. You can change the default view under Personal settings (the gears icon).

Approving hours

When you as a manager approve hours and absence, you both have a simple and a detailed overview of the employee’s hours.

Simple overview

You get the simple overview in the left side, where you can see a list of the employees you need to approve. You see the number of hours registered in totaler per employee in the selected period.

Next to each employee you see a colour code indicating the approval status.

• Grey = The hours are not approved
• Green = All hours are approved
• Red = There are rejected hours in the selected period
• Yellow = The hours are partially approved. Some hours are missing approval, e.g. hours that were re-submitted after being rejected previously

Furthermore, you will be able to see if an employee has not submitted the timesheet. Here you will see the text: Has not submitted time.

You have the opportunity to approve or reject one or more employees with one action. You do this by marking the employees you want to approve. If you cannot mark the checkbox next to the employee, it means that the hours have not been submitted for approval yet. To solve this, you click the employees name, and then you can either submit the hours yourself from the detailed view by clicking Close timesheet for employee, or ask the employee to do it by sending an e-mail notification when clicking Request submission of timesheet.

Approval of absence requests

Under absence requests you will see if an employee has requested absence in a period of time. This overview does not take its point of departure in your selected date range, as they usually are somewhere in the future. The absence request appear as soon as the employees request it, as it is important for both the employee’s personal planning and your resource overview. Please note that absence only appears for approval, if it is checked on the salary code that it requires approval. This could e.g. be vacation.

If the employee afterwards change or delete his/her absence, you will see it in your absence request overview, so you are always notified about the changes.

Detailed overview

When you have selected an employee in your list, you get a total overview of the time consumption in the overview next to the employee list.

At the top, you get a summation of the hours categorised in:

• Project time – Here you see a sum per project with the number of hours registered in the selected period
• Absence – Here you see a sum per absence and salary code with the number of hours registered in the selected period
• Total – Here you see how many hours that are tracked in total within the selected period
• Flex – Here you see the flex calculation for the selected period. If you have disabled flex in the system, it will not be visible for the employee, only the manager in the approval

You can click the different column headers to collapse the overviews to get an overall overview instead. You can also define it as default view under your Personal settings (the gears icon).

In the overview, you have the opportunity to approve or reject the closed period. If the period is not closed by the employee, you may either submit the period yourself or ask the employee to submit the timesheet.

If you click Approve, all hours are approved, and you are automatically directed to the next employee on the list until all are approved or rejected.

If you click Reject, you get the opportunity to write a comment to the employee about the reason for rejecting the period. The employee will see your rejection in the timesheet.

You can use the big arrows in the detailed view to navigate through your employee list and approve them one by one.

Approve and reject single registrations

If you wish an even more detailed review of the employee’s registrations, you can further down see how the registrations are divided per day in the selected period. Here you also have the opportunity to approve and reject single registrations, and if it is enabled, you can also change the billable status of each registration from billable to non-billable and vice versa.

Project manager approval

If you use the project manager approval in TimeLog, you will see a list of projects with registrations you should approve in the simple list to the left. As default, you see your active projects, also if they do not have any time registrations, and you will see registrations on inactive projects within the selected period.

If you as project manager cannot approve the hours the employee has registered on the project, you can reject them and write a comment about why you do it. The employee will see your rejection in the timesheet. You can approve the employee’s registrations on one project and at the same time reject registrations on a different project. When the employee has corrected the rejected registrations and re-submitted the timesheet for approval, you will see the registrations in your overview, so you are able to approve them.

You activate the project manager approval in the System administration -> Approval processes.

Get an overview of the approval process

You can use the Timesheet status report to get an overview of how far your employees are with their time tracking and their timesheets’ status.

Re-opening timesheets

If you need to re-open a timesheet for an employee, you need to select the period you wish to re-open in the data range, and then click the employee in the list to the left. Your period does not need to match the same interval as the employee has submitted time for.

The employee will be marked with green, if the period is closed. Hereafter, you will see the Re-open button in the detailed overview, where you can re-open the period, which is registered under Comments and actions. If the marking is yellow, it means that not all registrations are approved. Here you will be able to reject the period, which also re-opens the timesheets.

Comments and actions

Here you see an overview of the different actions performed in the selected period. If you click the clock next to an action, you will see the date of when the action was done.

You can e.g. see who has done the following actions and when:

• Which period the employee has closed
• If the detailed timesheet or parts of it were rejected
• When the detailed timesheet has been re-submitted after the rejection
• When the detailed timesheet was approved
• If the detailed timesheet has been re-opened at some point and then re-approved

Special remarks

You can only use the approval, if you have activated it in the system administration.

Change approver

You select who should approve the different employees’ time on their employee card.

During vacation period there might be a need to approve on behalf of somebody else. We therefore recommend that you create a new role in the system administration which provides access to approve for others. You do this in the system administration under Employees -> Roles and rights management. When you have created the role, remember to assign it to the employees who should act as substitute managers.

If the hours are approved by a different manager, it will be shown in the comments section.

Personal settings for the page

If you click the gears icon, you have the opportunity to select your personal settings for the page. Here you can e.g. select your default period. As a point of departure you see data for this week, and you can select between:

• Last week
• This week
• This month
• Last month

Besides this, you may select if the summary and the details for each employee should be collapsed or expanded when you enter the page. As default it is expanded, so you immediately see all data.

You may also select, if you want a specific shortcut key to get to Approval page.