How timesheets work
A timesheet is one employee's hours for one week. It fills itself from the time they log on jobs and from their approved leave, they add anything else, then a manager signs it off. This page explains how those pieces fit together.
Applies to: the Professional plan. Keeping your own timesheet needs erp:hr:timesheets:view-own and erp:hr:timesheets:create. Signing other people's off needs erp:hr:timesheets:approve. The full list is in Timesheet statuses, permissions and messages.
One sheet per person per week
Each timesheet covers seven days, starting on the day your business chooses — Monday unless someone changes it. A person can only have one sheet for any given day, so two sheets never overlap.
Weeks follow your business's timezone, not the phone or computer someone happens to use. Time logged at 1:00 AM on a Monday in Sydney lands on Monday's line, wherever the viewer is.
Where the lines come from
A timesheet has three kinds of line, and only one of them is typed in on the sheet.
- Job time — every clock-on and clock-off, and every entry typed on a job's Time Tracking card, appears on the sheet for that day. The job stays the record: to change the hours, change them on the job, and the sheet follows.
- Leave — approved leave appears as a leave line on each working day it covers. A working day counts as the employee's weekly hours divided by five, and a half day as half of that. It is the same sum used to work out the leave request.
- Hand-entered time — anything with no job behind it: travel between sites, admin, training, or other work. This is the only kind of line you add, edit or remove on the timesheet itself.
Some job time stays off the sheet until it is sorted out. An entry still running because someone is clocked in is left off, and so is an entry longer than 24 hours, which is usually a forgotten clock-off. Both appear as warnings on the sheet and block it from being submitted.
The life of a sheet
A sheet starts as a Draft, which the employee fills in and submits. Submitted sheets read Awaiting approval until an approver either approves them or sends them back.
A sheet sent back reads Changes requested, with the approver's reason at the top. The employee fixes it and submits again. An approved sheet can be reopened by an approver, with a reason, and returns to Draft.
Nobody approves their own timesheet. The one exception is an administrator, so a sole trader can still close off their own weeks.
Approved time is locked
Once a sheet is submitted, the job time on it is frozen. Nobody can edit or delete that time on the job, and nobody can type new job time onto a day it covers. AxiomBlue says which sheet is in the way and what has to happen first.
That is what makes approval mean something: the hours a manager signed off are the hours that stay. Clocking on is never blocked, though. Time clocked on a locked week shows on the sheet as logged after it was locked, so the approver knows it exists.
Who hears about it
- On submit — the employee's manager is notified, if their manager can approve timesheets. Otherwise every approver in the business is.
- On approve, send back or reopen — the employee is notified, with the reason where there is one.
Notifications arrive in the portal and as a push notification in the mobile app. Four automation triggers also fire — Timesheet Submitted, Timesheet Approved, Timesheet Sent Back and Timesheet Reopened — so you can add emails or tasks of your own. See Triggers, Actions & Logic.