Resource Management approvals

Activate the approvals workflow

Resourcing Admins can set up approvals for time and expense entries for their organization. 

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

2. Open Account Settings, then navigate to the Approvals Workflow section.

Here you can:

• Enable the approval workflow for time and expenses

• Lock entries upon approval

  You need to have this setting activated to ensure users can't add any additional time or expenses for approved entries. Without this setting enabled, 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.
  • Automatically includes project owners as approvers for people assigned to their projects
  • Project owners can only see and approve time or expenses on their projects
• Set up email notifications for time and expense approvals
  • Sends an email notification to the approvers when time or expenses are submitted
  • Sends a notification and notes to the submitter when time or expenses are approved or rejected

This setting is separate from activity notifications.

• Allow the approver to unlock any submitted time and expense entries
  • When deactivated, only Resourcing Admins can unlock time

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Project-based approvals

When the project owners Can approve for their projects setting is enabled, project owners can only approve time and expense entries logged for 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 remain in place when Project owners can approve time for their projects is activated.

How approvals audit 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

1. Open Account Settings.
   1. If you're working in Resource Management in Smartsheet, select the kebab menu in the top right corner, then select Account Settings.
   2. If you're working in standalone Resource Management, select Settings > Account Settings.
2. Scroll down to the Approval Workflow section and select Bulk Approve.
3. Select Save and Continue.
4. 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. You can also set to lock all approved time or expense entries, which prevents users from adding any additional expenses or time entries. 
5. Select Approve all.

Double-check your selections. You can't undo bulk approve.

Any active licensed user in your Resource Management account can submit time for approval. Resourcing Admins can also submit time on behalf of others, but only if they are a licensed user (time cannot be tracked or submitted for managed resources).

1. On your My Work page, select the Time & Expenses tab.
2. In time tracking, enter changes as needed, and then select Confirm. 
3. At the bottom of the timesheet, select Submit for Approval.

People can submit hours at any time, but it’s good to follow a schedule that works for your organization (daily, weekly, biweekly, etc.).

Add a resource as a Team Member to your project before you need to approve time. A resource who is not a Team Member can submit time against a project, but the Project Owner cannot see it

Approvals tab for Team Members

All users have a My Time & Expenses view under the Approvals tab. You can review all of your approved, pending approval, and rejected time or expense entries from the Approvals tab on your personal profile.

Review submitted time

• On the Approvals tab, select My Time & Expenses. 

The left sidebar has filters that you can apply to your time and/or expenses: 

• Time Frame: Use a preset or custom date range. 
• Type: Switch between time and expenses (if your organization approves both). 
• Approval Status: Show approved, rejected, or pending approval status.

Re-submit time

You can re-submit a timesheet any time before it's approved. 

• Edit the time entry that you’d like to adjust, and then select Re-Submit for Approval.

1. On your My Work page, select Time & Expenses, and then select Expenses.

2. Select Add an Expense. 
3. Enter details for each expense and select Add.
4. When you've added all your expenses, select Submit for Approval.

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Review submitted expenses

1. Select Approvals. 
2. On the left sidebar, select My Time & Expenses. 
3. Use filters to find expenses:
   • Time Frame: Use a preset or custom date range. 
   • Type: Switch between time and expenses (if your organization tracks both). 
   • Approval status: Show approved, rejected, or pending approval status.

Resubmit expenses

You can edit and resubmit an expense report before it's approved. After you edit the time entry, select Submit for Approval.

Approval filters in reports

Use approval-based filters to view time entries based on their associated approver or approval status. For example, use a time and fees report grouped by team member and filtered by approval status to see any unsubmitted hours for each team member across the organization.

• Approved by: You can filter the time that specific people have approved.
• Approval status: You can filter the time entries that appear in your report by selecting approved, pending approval, or unsubmitted time.

You can also group report data by approval status and by approver.

If you have a Business or Enterprise Smartsheet plan and use Smartsheet authentication, you can analyze and share the data from your reports in Smartsheet. See Advanced reports for details.

You can't undo bulk approval. 

1. Open Account Settings.
   1. In Resource Management in Smartsheet, select the kebab menu in the top-right corner, then select Settings.
   2. In standalone Resource Management, select Settings > Account Settings.
2. On the Account Settings page, scroll to Approval Workflow and select Bulk Approve. and then 
3. Select Save and Continue. 
4. On the Bulk Approve and Lock page, select the items you want to approve: time entries, expenses, or both. 
5. Select the date when you want to lock and bulk approve all hours or expenses. 
6. Double-check your entries. When you’re sure you have the settings right, select Bulk Approve. This locks all entries, so your team can't make any more changes.

Unlock submitted time or expenses

Make sure you’ve enabled approvals for time entries. If you don’t enable time-entry approvals, you won’t see the Approvals tab in your profile page.

1. Open your My Work page.
2. Go to Approvals > Approver View. 
3. In the Approval Status list, select Approved. 
4. Optional: In the time frame list, select the timeline of the time report you want to unlock:
   • this year
   • this quarter
   • this month
   • this week
   • last quarter
   • last month
   • last week
   • last 30 days
   • custom date range: Choose the start and end dates to look at a specific timeline
5. In the People list, select a person or people. After selecting a person, you can see their time in the Approver view.
6. Go to the time report you want to unlock and select Unlock.

Now, the entry you unlocked is tagged as Pending Approval. Once you’re done editing the entry, it shows the Resubmit for approval button.

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Allow an approver to unlock submitted time and expenses

If you’re an Admin and you want to allow an approver to unlock time and expense reports, follow these steps:

1. Open Account Settings.
   1. If you're working in Resource Management in Smartsheet, select the kebab menu in the top right corner, then select Account Settings.
   2. If you're working in standalone Resource Management, select Settings > Account Settings.
2. In the Approval Workflow section, select Allow approver to unlock time and 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.