| This article covers the New Timesheet experience. If what you're seeing does not match this experience, click here for help with the legacy timesheet experience. |
| Note: Some features or functions mentioned in this article may not yet be visible in your account. These updates are being gradually rolled out and will be available on relevant plans soon. |
This article explains the different ways you can approve your team's timesheets in Deputy, manage timesheets that shouldn't be approved, and keep track of timesheets that still need attention.
Before you read
- Target audience: This article is for users with System Administrator, Location Manager, and Supervisor access.
- Plan restrictions: This feature is available on all Deputy plans.
This article covers:
Before approving timesheets
Time and pay approval
Every timesheet contains two components:
- Time records when the team member worked, including breaks and other worked time details.
- Pay determines how that worked time is interpreted for payroll.
The actions available to you depend on your access level.
- Supervisors can review, edit, and approve the time component of timesheets for team members they manage. They can't view or approve the pay component.
- Location Managers and System Administrators can review, edit, and approve both the time and pay components for team members they manage.
You'll see this reflected in timesheet statuses. A timesheet with a Time approved status has had its time component approved. A timesheet with an Approved status has had both its time and pay components approved.
Prepare to approve timesheets
The Approve Timesheets page helps managers review and approve timesheets before they're processed for payroll.
Before you begin:
- You can use the location and date filters to display the timesheets you want to review.
- You cannot approve Timesheets for future dates.
- We find that most people approve timesheets in chronological order, from the oldest date to the most recent date for a simplified workflow.
If your organization has configured auto-approval settings for timesheets, then you may find that timesheets that fall within the criteria configured will be auto-approved. On the Approve timesheets page, these will be found under the Approved tab with a lightning bolt icon to indicate they were auto-approved.
When approving timesheets, we recommend heading to the Pending timesheets tab and reviewing timesheets that require approval.
To learn more about how to find information on the Approve Timesheets page, head to:
Approve timesheets
You can approve timesheets individually or in groups, depending on how you want to work through the timesheets that are ready for approval.
Approve an individual timesheet
You can approve an individual timesheet in two ways:
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You can approve any pending timesheet that has a start and end time from the timesheets overview page by clicking Approve on the right of the timesheet.
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If you need more information before approving a timesheet, or it does not have an end time, select it to open the detailed view. From there, you can review and make any edits before selecting Approve. Alternatively, select Approve and next to approve the timesheet and continue to the next unapproved timesheet.
Approve multiple timesheets
You can approve multiple timesheets at the same time by selecting the timesheets you want to approve or by approving all approvable timesheets in your current view. This includes both Pending and Absent timesheets.
Select and approve multiple timesheets
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Select the timesheets you want to approve using the checkboxes. Depending on your current view, you can select individual timesheets, a group of timesheets by team member or date, or all displayed timesheets.
Once you begin selecting timesheets, the bulk action bar appears at the bottom of the page.
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Use the bulk action bar to choose how you want to handle the selected timesheets:
- Approve (X) approves all selected timesheets, including timesheets with warnings.
- Approve with no issues (X) approves only the selected timesheets that don't have warnings.
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More provides additional bulk actions, including:
- Approve time (X) approves only the time component of the selected timesheets and leaves the pay component unapproved.
- Discard (X) moves the selected timesheets to the Discarded tab without approving them.
Approve all displayed timesheets
Select Approve all in the top-right corner of the page when you're ready to approve all approvable timesheets in your current view.
Note: The setting to approve all timesheets must be turned on by a System Administrator in Business Settings.
Approve all respects the timesheets currently in scope, including your selected team member, location, date range, filters, status, and permissions.
- If no timesheets are selected, or all timesheets have been selected, Deputy includes all approvable timesheets for the team members currently displayed.
- If only some timesheets have been selected, Deputy includes only the selected timesheets.
When you select timesheets from multiple team members, a confirmation appears before the timesheets are approved.
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If none of the timesheets has warnings, select Approve all (X).
- If some timesheets have warnings, you can select:
- Approve all (X) to approve all approvable timesheets, including those with warnings.
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Approve all with no issues (X) to approve only the timesheets without warnings.
If there aren't any approvable timesheets in your current view, Deputy lets you know there are no timesheets available to approve.
Discard or reinstate timesheets
Discard a timesheet when it shouldn't continue through the approval workflow, such as when the timesheet was created in error or no longer needs to be approved.
You can discard selected timesheets from More in the bulk action bar.
Discarding a timesheet moves it to the Discarded tab. The timesheet is not deleted or approved, and it remains available from the Discarded tab so you can review it later.
If a discarded timesheet needs to return to the approval workflow, you can open the Discarded tab, find and select the timesheet, and click Reinstate.
The timesheet can then be reviewed, modified, or approved as required.
Approve timesheets on mobile
You can also approve your team's timesheets from the Deputy mobile app.
Approve an individual timesheet on mobile
- Tap Timesheets.
- Select the Location and move to the Date containing the timesheets you need.
- Tap the team member's timesheet.
- Confirm the shift details and make any required changes.
- Tap Approve.
Note: You may see Update instead of Approve if you don't have permission to approve your own timesheet.
Approved timesheets move to the Approved tab.
Approve multiple timesheets on mobile
- Select the location and date containing the timesheets you want to approve.
- Tap Select all in the top right of the Timesheets tab.
- Tap Approve X.
Note: Absent timesheets where the team member didn't work the scheduled shift can't be bulk approved.
Review timesheet approval progress
As you approve timesheets, the Approve Timesheets page helps you keep track of what's complete and what still needs attention.
Timesheets move through the Pending, Approved, and Discarded tabs as they progress through the approval workflow.
- Pending contains timesheets that still require approval. The number next to the tab shows how many pending timesheets are currently displayed for your selected locations and date range.
- Approved contains timesheets that have been approved.
- Discarded contains timesheets that have been removed from the approval workflow and can be reinstated if needed.
The team member list also helps you track your progress. A green tick next to a team member indicates that all of their displayed timesheets for the selected locations and date range have been approved.
When the Pending tab shows 0 and the relevant team members have green ticks next to their names, you've approved all displayed timesheets for your current view.
If timesheets remain in the Pending tab, review any warnings or other details that may need attention before approving them.