Set up approvals

You can enable approvals for time, expenses, or both. 

You must be an administrator to activate Approvals. To activate approvals, go to Account Settings > Approval Workflow. 

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

Approval settings:

• For time entries
  • Enables time approvals
• For expenses
  • Enables expense approvals
• Project owners can approve for their projects
  • Automatically includes project owners as approver for people assigned to their projects
  • Project owners can only see and approve time or expenses on their projects
• Send email notifications for time and expense approvals
  • Sends an email notification to the approver(s) when time or expenses are submitted
  • Sends a notification and notes to the submitter when time or expenses are approved or rejected
  • NOTE:  This setting is separate from activity notifications
• Allow approvers to unlock time and expenses
  • When disabled only Admins will be able to unlock time

Project-based approvals

When the Project owners can approve for their projects setting is enabled, project owners can approve any time and expense entries logged for their projects. Project owners can only approve for time and expenses related to their projects. 

Team, department, or other managers can still be approvers in a person’s profile to provide backup managers and to approve leave time. Existing approvers will remain in place when Project owners can approve time for their projects is enabled.

How approvals affect incurred hours and amounts

Activating approvals for time entries adds Approved hours only to Account Settings > Incurred Hours and Amounts. 

When you track Approved hours only, Resource Management limits incurred project hour calculations to approved time only and applies a default approval status filter to reports. Only approved hours appear as incurred by default. 

Changing the approval status filter allows you to filter reports on unapproved hours.

How approvals impact incurred expenses

Activating approvals for expenses adds Approved expenses only to Account Settings > Incurred Expenses. 

When you track Approved expenses only, Resource Management limits incurred project expenses to approved expenses only.

Bulk approve past time and expenses

To bulk approve past time and expense entries:

1. In Account Settings, scroll down to the Approval Workflow section and click Bulk Approve.
2. Select Save and Continue.
3. On the Bulk Approve page, select the options you want to use. You can approve all time entries, expense entries, or both up to and including a date you choose.
4. Select Approve all.

Double-check your selections; you cannot undo Bulk Approve.