Timesheet approval is the step where submitted hours become authoritative. Until a manager signs them off, they are a claim. After approval they are the basis for someone’s pay and a client’s invoice, which is why the step exists and why it is worth doing properly rather than quickly.
It is also the step most likely to jam. Managers approve in bulk because reviewing properly takes time they do not have, employees submit late because nothing forces them not to, and payroll absorbs the difference. In a survey of 500 US business owners run through Google Surveys and commissioned by QuickBooks Time in October 2017, employers said they had to correct errors on 80 percent of the timesheets their employees submitted. It is vendor commissioned and now some years old, so treat it as an indication of scale rather than a precise figure, but the direction matches what most managers report.
This guide covers what the timesheet approval process is, where it breaks, and what to change.
What Is Timesheet Approval?
Timesheet approval is the review and authorisation step in which a manager checks submitted hours for accuracy and completeness, then approves or rejects them before the data is used for payroll, client billing or project costing.
Two things distinguish it from simply collecting timesheets. It is a control, meaning somebody other than the person who logged the hours confirms them. And it is a cut-off, meaning the period should stop being editable once it is approved. An approval step that leaves the data open for silent edits afterwards is a formality rather than a control.
It is worth separating from two neighbouring terms. Time tracking is the recording of hours. Timesheet management is the whole cycle from entry through to reporting. Approval is one stage inside it. If your organisation uses time cards rather than timesheets, the equivalent stage is covered in our guide to time card approval, which deals with the same problem in shift and hourly settings.
The Timesheet Approval Process, Step by Step
The timesheet approval process has four stages and four different people who can hold it up.
| Stage | Who does it | What stalls it here |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Entry and submission | The employee logs hours against tasks and submits by the deadline | Entry left until the deadline, so the timesheet is reconstructed from memory |
| 2. Review | The manager checks the hours are complete, plausible and correctly allocated | No time to review properly, so everything is approved in bulk |
| 3. Approve or reject | The manager signs off, or returns it with a reason | Rejection with no comment, so the employee resubmits the same thing |
| 4. Handover to payroll | Approved data goes to payroll and billing | Approved hours conflict with contract terms and the whole chain reopens |
Stage 3 is where most of the recoverable time sits. A rejection without a reason costs a full round trip: the employee has to ask what was wrong, wait for an answer, then resubmit. A rejection with one sentence attached usually ends the exchange.
Where the Approval Process Breaks Down
Four failures account for most of the delay, and each has a different remedy.
| Problem | What it costs | What actually fixes it |
|---|---|---|
| Inaccurate data arriving | Underpaid overtime, wrong client invoices, weak records in a dispute | Move entry closer to the work with reminders, rather than reviewing harder at the end |
| Waiting on one person | Approval stops whenever a manager is away, and payroll misses its cut-off | A named backup approver, configured in advance rather than arranged in the moment |
| Disputed entries | Tense conversations about overtime that damage trust either way | A written rule on what counts as working time, so the discussion is about the rule |
| No standard format | Payroll reconciles by hand and audit preparation becomes archaeology | One template and one set of task codes for everyone |
The pattern worth noticing: three of the four are fixed before the approval step, not during it. Approval is where problems surface, but it is rarely where they are created, and adding more scrutiny at that point mostly makes the queue longer.
Four Changes That Speed Approval Up
These are ordered by how much time they save relative to the effort of introducing them.
- Automate the reminder, not the approval. Chasing submissions by hand is the single largest recurring cost in the cycle, and it is entirely mechanical. Automatic reminders remove it. Automatic approval, by contrast, removes the control itself.
- Approve by exception. Reviewing every line of every timesheet is not realistic for a manager with a team of ten. Reviewing the entries that look unusual is. Sort by anomaly rather than by name, and bulk approve what is left after the outliers are handled.
- Always give a reason when rejecting. One sentence in a rejection comment replaces an entire exchange of messages. This costs nothing and is the fastest improvement available in most teams.
- Set a second approver before you need one. Most approval delays are one person being on leave. Configuring a backup takes a few minutes and prevents the problem repeating every holiday season.
Together these change the manager’s job from checking everything to checking what is worth checking, which is the only version of the task that survives contact with a real workload.
What to Look for in Timesheet Approval Software
Most time tracking tools can record hours. Fewer handle the approval stage properly. The features that matter are the ones that enforce the workflow rather than describe it:
- Bulk approval with per-entry rejection, so a manager can clear a week in one action but still send back a single day.
- Rejection comments, so the reason travels with the rejection.
- Multiple approvers per team, including a backup, so absence does not stop the cycle.
- Locking on approval, so an approved period cannot be edited without a visible reopen.
- Automatic reminders before the deadline rather than after it.
- Export to payroll and invoicing, so approved data does not get retyped.
The locking behaviour is the one to test during a trial, because it is the one most often missing. Ask what happens to an approved timesheet when someone edits it: if the answer is that it changes silently, the approval step is not giving you a record you can rely on later.
In actiTIME, the Approve Time-Track interface lists the timesheets waiting on you, lets you drill into any week to see which tasks the hours went to, approve or reject in bulk, and attach a comment to a rejection. Approved periods lock, several approvers can be assigned to one team, and the approved data feeds straight into cost and billing reports.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is timesheet approval?
It is the stage where a manager reviews submitted hours and either authorises them or sends them back. Approval matters because it is the point at which recorded time becomes the basis for pay and client billing, and because it puts a second person between the hours claimed and the hours paid.
How long does it take for a timesheet to be approved?
There is no standard, because it depends entirely on the deadline your organisation sets. A workable target is two working days from submission, which leaves room for a query without threatening the payroll cut-off. What matters more than the number is that the deadline is written down and that a backup approver exists, since most delays past two days are caused by one person being unavailable rather than by the review itself taking long.
How do you ask for timesheet approval?
Ideally you do not have to, because the system notifies the approver when a timesheet is submitted. Where you do need to chase it, make the request specific: name the period, say what it is holding up, and flag anything unusual in it before you are asked. A message saying that last week’s timesheet includes six hours of overtime approved verbally on Thursday saves the round trip that a bare reminder would trigger.
How do I approve a timecard?
The steps are the same as for a timesheet: open the pending items, check the hours against what you know of the period, confirm overtime and leave are recorded separately from regular hours, then approve or return it with a reason. Time cards more often involve clock in and clock out times and unpaid break deductions, which are the two places errors concentrate. Our guide to time card approval covers those specifics.
Should you reject a timesheet or edit it yourself?
Reject it, in almost every case. A manager editing an employee’s hours produces a record the employee never confirmed, which is exactly the weakness you want to avoid if the hours are ever questioned. Sending it back with a comment keeps the person who did the work as the person who states what they worked.
Getting the Approval Step Under Control
Timesheet approval only takes significant time when the data arriving is unreliable. Fix entry and the review becomes a scan; leave entry alone and no amount of process design at the approval stage will help.
The order that works is: make entry easy and frequent, remind automatically, review by exception, always give a reason when returning something, and lock the period once it is signed off.
actiTIME handles the approval stage with bulk approve and reject, rejection comments, multiple approvers per team, automatic reminders and locked periods after sign-off, and turns the approved data into cost and billing reports without re-entry. Pricing starts at $5 per user per month, with a free 30 day trial.
