Approve time or expenses

Activate the approvals workflow

Resourcing Admins can set up approvals for time and expense entries for their organization. In Account Settings, navigate to the Approvals Workflow section.

• If you're working in Resource Management in Smartsheet, select the kebab menu in the top right corner, then select Account Settings.
• If you're working in standalone Resource Management, select Settings > Account Settings.

Here you can:

• Enable the approval workflow for time and expenses

• Lock entries upon approval

  You need to enable this setting to ensure users can't add any additional time or expenses after approving entries. Without enabling this setting, users can't edit any approved time or expenses, but they can add additional time or expenses to approved entries.

• Allow project owners to approve time and expenses for projects they own
• Set up email notifications for time and expense approvals
• Allow the approver to unlock any submitted time and expense entries

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Approver view

Set who approves time and expenses in the person's profile settings.

To go to the approver view:

1. Select My Work (your profile page).
2. Select the Approvals tab.
3. In the left panel, select Approver View.

If you're an approver, this is your default view. Project editors see this view by default when project owners are approvers. 

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Approvals as a project owner

You can configure Resource Management so that project owners can review and approve time and expenses for projects they own. If you are a project owner, you see timesheets for time related to your projects, but you don't see time entered for projects owned by others.

You can filter the timesheets you see by the following categories:

• Time frame: View timesheets by this year, this quarter, this month, this week, last year, etc. 
• Approval status: View timesheets by their current approval status
  • Rejected: Timesheets you didn't approve
  • Approved: Timesheets you approved
  • Pending approval: Timesheets users have submitted for your approval
  • Unsubmitted: Timesheets users have accessed but haven't edited the value or accepted the schedule
  • [none]: Timesheets of users who haven't yet taken action on the schedule you assigned them
• Approver: View timesheets assigned to you or other approvers
• Project owner: Filter timesheets by their project owners
• People: View timesheets of specific users
• Project: View timesheets associated with a specific project
• Client: View timesheets of users assigned to a specific client
• Discipline: View timesheets by the nature of users' work (For example: HR, IT)
• Role: Filter timesheets by the users' role (For example: Manager, copywriter)
• People tags: Filter timesheets by the users' People Tags
• Phase name: View timesheets associated with a specific project phase 
• Project tags: Filter timesheets by their project category
• Leave type: Filter timesheets by the users' leave types
• Skills: Filter timesheets by people's skills

The approver's view groups time entries into weekly timesheets. Each timesheet shows hours tracked for each project, per person, per week.

You can see the total confirmed and scheduled hours for each project, along with a computed difference (positive for more than scheduled, negative for less than scheduled).

Resources that submit time against a project aren't visible to the Project Owner unless added to the project as a team member with time submitted against the project. 

Ensure you've added that resource as a team member to your project in order to approve time.

Project Owners can't view time submitted by resources assigned to other projects unless: 

• They have Portfolio Editor permissions or higher
• The project owner is a resources approver
• The resources are part of the project as team members and have submitted time against the project. 

Ensure you've added that resource as a team member to your project to approve time.

View time and expense details

You can view more details in the timesheets you see in your approver view. 

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Filter time or expense sheets 

You can approve time for specific projects rather than the entire time or expense sheet. To display time entries for a specific project or set of projects and approve them:

1. In the left panel, use the project or project tags filters.
   • After setting up those filters, you see only timesheets for projects or project categories you selected. 
2. In the timesheet, select Approve & Lock.

This doesn't affect entries for projects you didn't select in the filter.

To approve time or expenses

Use notifications to alert people when their time or expense entries get rejected or approved.

At the bottom of the timesheet, select Approve & Lock to approve the time or expense entry. 

To ensure users can't add any time or expenses to approved entries, enable the setting that automatically locks time and expense entries upon approval. You can do this in the Approvals Workflow section of Account Settings. 

To reject time or expense sheet

1. In the lower-left area of the time or expense sheet, enter a note in the text box. 
   • If you reject the time entry without leaving a note, the system prompts you to leave a note. 
2. Select Reject. 

After rejecting the time or expense sheet, it resets to Unsubmitted. The submitter needs to adjust their time or expense entry and resubmit it for approval. 

Use my views

Create a saved view or multiple saved views for different scenarios. 

When you create a saved view, you can access them easily by going to My View.

To create a saved view 

1. Go to the Approvals tab. 
2. In the left panel, select Approver View. 
3. In the left panel, adjust the desired timeframe, approval status, and other filters. 
4. Scroll up to My Views. 
5. Select + Save Current View.