Timesheets are a simple and time-tested way to track your employees’ work hours.
But getting timesheets approved on time is a challenge for most businesses.
Delayed approvals can disrupt payroll, cause billing errors, and even strain relationships with clients and employees. The frustration builds as deadlines approach, and you’re left chasing down approvals instead of focusing on more important tasks.
This chaotic process can lead to costly mistakes and lost trust.
But there’s a way to streamline timesheet approvals, ensuring they’re completed promptly and accurately.
In this post, we’ll show you how to simplify and speed up your timesheet approval process, making your workflow smoother and stress-free.
Let’s dive in.
What is a timesheet approval process?
A timesheet approval process is a business process workflow that involves timesheet submissions, work-hours review, verification, and approval before a timesheet is sent for payroll processing.
Generally speaking, employee timesheets are submitted to managers, team leads, project managers, or supervisors, who verify accuracy. The managers then either approve them and pass them on to the accounts team or reject them and send them back for corrections.
A manual timesheet approval process is tedious and time-consuming and takes up your managers’ time that they could spend on other critical tasks.
Why is a timesheet approval process critical for professional service businesses?
Timesheet approvals are vital for ensuring the forward movement of both internal and external processes. The process helps reduce errors early on in the payroll and billing process.
Several other reasons why a timesheet approval process is needed are:
- Better budgeting: When only accurate timesheets are approved and sent to payroll, the finance and accounting departments can create and manage budgets more easily. They also provide a basis for spending and beneficial cost-cutting analysis.
- Remote employee management: Time tracking software and timesheets are invaluable tools for remote employees to report their worked hours. Implementing a timesheet approval workflow helps ensure the submitted timesheets are accurate.
- Payroll accuracy: For payroll to be completed successfully, you need an accurate record of each employee’s work time so they are compensated correctly. When timesheets are approved, you know they accurately represent employee work hours.
- Billing accuracy: As above, approved timesheets reflect work hours precisely, contributing to accurate client billing.
A timesheet approval process can benefit employees and their employers. It allows employees to track work hours and overtime and ensures accurate compensation.
How do timesheet approvals work?
The timesheet approval process involves a few steps from submission to approval. It generally flows from submission to review, then either approval or through the rejection cycle, where the timesheet is returned to the employee for corrections and then resubmitted.
Check out this timesheet approval workflow template as an example 👇
Using Toggl Track for time tracking and timesheet creation is ideal as it has a built-in timesheet approval process. Here’s how it works:
- Time entry creation. Employee time entries are logged in Toggl Track using the start/stop timer, manual time tracking, or automatic time tracking. Unsubmitted time entries are grouped as a timesheet.
- Submission reminder. From the Approvals tab, users with admin permissions can set timesheet reminders. Employees receive an email notifying them when timesheets are due for submission at the end of the pay period. This ensures timesheets are submitted on time.
- Timesheet submission. The employee submits the timesheet from the Approvals tab. Once submitted, they are no longer editable. The timesheet status will change to Submitted or Pending Review.
- The approver is notified. The timesheet approver will receive a notification when the timesheet is received. They can also review the submitted timesheets from the Approvals tab.
- Timesheet review. The approver must assess the time entries and look for any miscalculations or inconsistencies in the number of hours and time off. Toggl Track’s accurate time tracking makes it easy to spot discrepancies.
- Approval or rejection. Approved timesheets go to the human resources or financial department. Rejected timesheets are returned to the employee with an optional note detailing the issues. They’ll also get an email notification, and the timesheet will be marked with a Rejected status.
- Change and resubmit. The rejected timesheet can be edited to correct any mistakes flagged by the approver. Once everything is addressed, it is resubmitted, and the approver is renotified.
- Final approval. When the timesheet is approved, the approval status changes to Approved. It’s not possible to edit an approved timesheet.
- Export time entry data. You can export all time entries to PDF, CSV, or XLSX from the Detailed Report page.Â
How do you create a timesheet approval process?
The timesheet approval process is quite a simple workflow, as seen in the above section. However, implementing one can get complicated when you need to figure out who is involved and when.
We’ve compiled this quick step-by-step guide to walk you through the process configuration.
Check it out 👇
1. Decide which team members need to submit timesheets
In most companies, not all members need to submit timesheets. So, you should first establish who does.
Broadly speaking, upper management, department heads, and C-Suite staff do not need to submit timesheets. Salaried employees may not need to either, particularly if you only use employee timekeeping for productivity data.
Depending on your company’s timesheet policy, you can decide whether to implement approvals for all employees, non-salaried employees and freelancers, or individuals only.
There is an element of trust involved here, so your business may not deem it necessary to approve timesheets for full-time, long-term employees.
However, if trust is broken, say if you suspect employees of time theft, it is a beneficial tool to have in place.
2. Decide who will review and approve the timesheets
This step will largely depend on the size of your organization and its structure, and there likely won’t be one single timesheet approver for the entire organization.
For example, let’s take a content marketing coordinator at a midsize business who oversees all the freelance content submissions. The freelancers submit their timesheets to her as she has the insight to review and validate them properly.
Then, the content marketing coordinator and the rest of the content marketing team submit their timesheets to the content marketing team lead. Finally, all the marketing department team leads submit their timesheets to the head of marketing.
Figure out the best approval flow for your needs and ensure the approver understands the submitter’s work hours, role, and duties and can review and approve the timesheet accurately.
3. Decide how team members will submit timesheets
There are several methods of timesheet submission, and the one that works best for you will again depend on your business size and timesheet approval needs. It will also change depending on the method used to create the timesheet.
Some options include:
- Emailing the timesheet directly to the approver
- Adding the timesheet to a shared folder
- Submitting the timesheet through a software tool
- Creating an Excel spreadsheet for staff to add their timesheets to each month
With Toggl Track, employees can quickly review and submit their timesheets by heading to the Approvals page. Here, they’ll see a breakdown of submitted and unsubmitted timesheets. All unsubmitted time entries are grouped into one timesheet.
To submit the timesheet, click on the three dots on the right side to open the drop-down menu and click Submit Timesheet.
4. Decide how you will evaluate the timesheets
Lastly, you must establish a system for timesheet evaluation and validation.
This starts with the approvers knowing what to look for regarding the total hours, vacation or paid time off, and any inconsistencies or discrepancies.
To help keep employees in the loop, you can include timesheet statuses that indicate if a timesheet is awaiting review, was rejected, or is approved.
It’s helpful to ask approvers to leave comments or follow up with employees when their timesheets are rejected so they know what needs to be corrected for approval.
Toggl Track automates timesheet status updates to ensure every relevant party knows where the timesheet is in the workflow. It also allows approvers to leave comments on rejected timesheets explaining the reason for rejection and the required corrections.
What challenges do businesses face when approving timesheets?
There are a few issues that can arise when businesses implement timesheet approvals. The main ones include:
- Time-consuming, manual timesheet approvals
- Communication gaps
- Errors that impact payroll
But don’t worry—we’ve got some tips on avoiding these challenges below 👇
Automate timesheet approval
Automated systems like Toggl Track take much of the manual back-and-forth out of the timesheet approval process. They can:
- Send out timesheet reminders
- Update timesheet approval status
- Flag discrepancies
- Notify employees of rejected timesheets
- Send approved timesheets to payroll
…and more.
Ensure a clear communication system
Clear communication is vital in all business processes, and the timesheet approval workflow is no different.
Ensure clear communication between managers, employees, and timesheet approvers and document the process for everyone to refer to if they need clarification.
Provide training on how to evaluate timesheets and ensure every staff member knows who to submit their timesheet to so you can avoid confusion and delays. Create a backup policy for staff members out of the office at the end of a pay period.
Toggl Track helps increase transparency by clearly showing who approves an employee’s timesheet on the Approvals page, which is sent to them by default.
Avoid errors
When timesheets are created and approved manually, they are at risk of human errors that can impact payroll accuracy, leading to costly mistakes.
Avoid these errors by automating the timesheet creation and approval process.
Make timesheet approvals a breeze with Toggl Track
A timesheet approval process helps improve budgeting, billing, and payroll accuracy by ensuring that timesheets are an accurate reflection of employee work hours.
However, manual approval processes are unnecessarily time-consuming and tedious. A better method is using a time tracking tool like Toggl Track to automate the workflow and create more accurate timesheets from the start, saving time and money in the long run.Streamline your timesheet approval process with Toggl Track. Sign up for free today.
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