Timesheets App Overview

Timesheets

1. What it is

Timesheets collects worked hours into pay-period sheets that employees submit and managers approve before the data reaches payroll. It pulls clock-in/clock-out records from Time & Attendance and scheduled shifts from Shifts & Scheduling automatically, calculates regular, overtime and double-time hours, and supports single-level or two-tier approval workflows.

• Enablement: Timesheets is a licensed app. An admin enables it from Admin → Apps → All Apps → Timesheets.
• What it is not: Timesheets does not run the time clock — clock-ins and clock-outs happen in Time & Attendance. It does not process payroll — approved timesheets are exported to Payroll Connect or downloaded as CSV for an external payroll system.

2. Standing it up

1. Enable the app. Go to Admin → Apps → All Apps, find Timesheets and enable it.
2. Configure pay periods. Timesheets generates one sheet per employee per pay period, so a pay-period schedule must exist before any sheet appears. Go to Admin → General Settings → Payroll Settings and set the period type (weekly, biweekly, semi-monthly or monthly) and start date. (The page’s own card is headed “About Pay Period Settings” — it is filed under Payroll Settings, not under a top-level “Pay Period Settings” nav item.)
3. Set the approval workflow. Go to Timesheets → Settings (in the app sidebar). Choose the Primary Timesheet Approver — their direct manager, the managers at their location, or everyone who can approve them — and decide whether to require a second-level regional approval.
4. Set deadlines. On the same settings page, set the Submission Deadline (days after the pay period ends) and the Approval Deadline (days after submission). These drive due-date badges and automated reminders.
5. Grant approval permissions. Ensure the managers who will approve timesheets hold the Approve capability for the Timesheets feature in their role definition. Admins always have this capability; managers hold it by default.
6. Verify. Ask an employee to open Timesheets in the sidebar. They should see a sheet for the current pay period, pre-populated with any shifts or attendance already recorded.

What silently does nothing until paired: enabling Timesheets without a pay-period schedule means no sheets are generated — employees see an empty page and no reminders fire. Configure pay periods first.

3. How it fits together

Timesheets, entries and pay periods. A timesheet is a single employee’s record for one pay period. It contains one entry per day the employee was scheduled or clocked in. Entries are created automatically from attendance records and scheduled shifts; employees can also add or edit entries manually (with a required reason for the change). The pay period is defined centrally — Timesheets reads it; it does not own it.

Statuses and what moves them. A timesheet follows this path:

Status	Who acts	What happens next
Pending	Employee edits entries	Employee submits → Submitted
Submitted	Approver reviews	Approver approves → Approved (or → Awaiting Regional Approval if two-tier is on); approver rejects → Rejected, with a reason
Awaiting Regional Approval	Regional approver reviews	Regional approver approves → Approved
Rejected	Employee corrects	Employee resubmits → Submitted
Approved	—	Locked; exported to payroll

An employee can recall a submitted (not yet approved) timesheet to make corrections without waiting for a rejection round-trip. After approval, the employee can request a correction — the person who approved the sheet (and the regional approver, if any) is notified with the employee’s reason. The approved timesheet itself stays locked: nobody can edit it in Timesheets, so the correction is handled outside the timesheet workflow.

Overtime calculation. Hours are split into regular, overtime and double-time per workweek (not per period). The split honours the business-wide overtime threshold, the double-time threshold, and any location-specific daily overtime or daily double-time rule set under labor law configuration. A biweekly period of 45 hours one week and 30 hours the next correctly shows 5 hours of overtime, not zero.

Approved leave and holidays. Days spent on approved leave or holidays appear alongside worked entries on the timesheet as read-only lines. Leave hours are shown separately and are not included in the payable total — that total is purely worked time.

Relationship to Time & Attendance. When an employee clocks in and out, the attendance record syncs to the matching timesheet entry automatically. Unsynced clock-ins (such as ad-hoc or unscheduled shifts) are reported to the approver, who can add them to the timesheet with one click. Time & Attendance owns the clock; Timesheets owns the payable record.

Auto-approval scoring (optional). When enabled, each submitted timesheet is scored out of 100. Points are deducted for anomalies — missing punches, edited entries, schedule deviations, overtime and unreviewed attendance. A sheet at or above the threshold (default 95) is approved automatically; anything below is flagged for the manager triage queue. Certain anomalies (suspicious IP, punch outside the allowed window, unreviewed attendance) always go to a human regardless of score. Admins can tune the per-factor weights from the settings page.

Edit trail. Every change to a timesheet entry — whether by the employee or a manager — requires a reason and is recorded in the edit trail. The trail shows who changed what, the original and new value, and when. Both the employee and the approver see the same trail.

4. Running it

Reviewing and approving timesheets

1. Go to Team in the app sidebar. Its count is the number of timesheets waiting for your decision. It opens Team Timesheets on Waiting for me.
2. Use the status filter to switch lists: Waiting for me, Waiting for regional (shown when regional approval is on or regional sign-offs are outstanding), Not submitted, Approved, Rejected or All. Each shows its count. Narrow any list by location, employee name or pay period (All periods, Current or Previous).
3. Open a timesheet to see the day-by-day breakdown, overtime split, edit history and any manager instructions.
4. Approve, reject (with a required reason) or edit entries before approving. Every manager edit is recorded with a reason in the audit trail.

If two-tier approval is on, the first-level approval sends the sheet to Waiting for regional. You can approve those sheets one at a time, or tick several and choose Approve selected. A different manager must give the regional approval unless Allow Manager Override is turned on in settings.

Monitoring submission progress

On Team Timesheets, choose Not submitted. It lists everyone in your team with no submitted timesheet for the previous pay period, with what is recorded for them so far. Choose All with the Current pay period to see who already has a timesheet this period.

Exporting timesheets

Managers export from the Export button on Team Timesheets. Admins can also use the Export tab of Admin → Import / Export in the app sidebar. Download a CSV filtered by status, date range, location and department. A manager’s export covers their own people, and an admin’s covers the whole company. The export includes employee ID, period dates, total hours, approval status, approver name and submission date. Employees can also export their own timesheet as CSV from the timesheet detail page.

Importing timesheets

Admins can bulk-import timesheet data from the Import tab of Admin → Import / Export (app sidebar) using a CSV file. Already-approved timesheets are protected — the importer does not overwrite their hours.

Scheduled SFTP transfers

Admins can set up scheduled imports and exports via SFTP from the Scheduled transfers tab of Admin → Import / Export (app sidebar). Schedules can run daily, weekly or monthly at a chosen time, and connect through an integration provider configured in the Integrations settings.

Sending reminders for missing timesheets

On Team Timesheets → Not submitted, a manager can send a reminder to one employee (Remind on their row) or to everyone listed (Remind all). Each reminder is an in-app notification and an email. Bulk reminders run in the background to avoid delays and include a cooldown to prevent duplicate sends.

5. Settings

All settings are at Timesheets → Settings (app sidebar).

Approval Workflow

Setting	Default	What it changes
Primary Timesheet Approver	Their direct manager	Controls who is told when a timesheet is submitted and reminded until it is approved. Their direct manager tells the manager the employee reports to (the managers at their location if none is set, then admins); Managers at their location tells every manager assigned to the employee’s location; Everyone who can approve them tells every manager above the employee and at their location. Companies set up before the direct manager became the default keep Everyone who can approve them until an admin changes it. Approval authorization always follows role-based permissions regardless of this choice.
Require Regional Manager Approval	Off	Adds a second approval step. First-level approval moves the sheet to Awaiting Regional Approval instead of Approved.
Allow Manager Override	Off	When regional approval is on, allows the same manager who gave first-level approval to also complete regional approval. When off, a different manager must complete it.
Retroactive Correction Window (Days)	7	How far back employees may file a missing-punch request. Set to 0 to allow any date. This does not control whether a timesheet can be edited — that is decided by its approval status.
Require Employee Certification at Submit	Off	Employees must tick an accuracy statement before submitting. The statement text, timestamp, IP address and device are recorded for wage-hour records.
Instructions for Approvers	(blank)	Free-text instructions shown to approvers on the review page while a timesheet is awaiting approval.

Deadline & Notification Settings

Setting	Default	What it changes
Submission Deadline (Days)	1	Days after the pay period ends when employees must submit. Drives due-date badges and reminders.
Approval Deadline (Days)	2	Days after submission when managers must approve.
Escalation Threshold (Hours)	48	Hours a submitted timesheet may wait for its first approver before everyone else who can approve it is reminded too (admins when there is nobody else), by notification and email.
Enable Escalation Notifications	On	Reminds everyone else who can approve the employee (admins when there is nobody else) once an approval is overdue past the escalation threshold.

Auto-Approval Scoring System

Setting	Default	What it changes
Enable Auto-Approval Scoring	Off	When on, submitted timesheets are scored out of 100 and sheets at or above the threshold are approved automatically without manager review. Sheets below the threshold are flagged for the manager triage queue.
Auto-Approval Threshold (%)	95	Minimum accuracy score for automatic approval.
Ignore Missing Punches	Off	Missing punches do not count against the accuracy score. Only effective when auto-approval scoring is on.
Ignore Missing Punches on Approved Leave Days	On	A missing punch on a day the employee is on approved leave does not count against the score. Only effective when auto-approval scoring is on.

Auto-approval scoring is disabled while Require Regional Manager Approval is on. Two-tier approval keeps every timesheet on the manual path.

Accuracy Score Weighting — below the auto-approval card, admins can customize the points deducted per anomaly type for three tunable factors: missing punches, edited entries and schedule deviation. Each can be adjusted or restored to the platform default. The remaining factors (suspicious IP, punch outside the allowed window, overtime hours, unreviewed attendance) are fixed. Suspicious IP, out-of-window punches and unreviewed attendance always route to a human regardless of the numeric score.

6. More help

• Timesheets FAQ — specific setup and operating questions.
• Time & Attendance Overview — how clock-ins reach the timesheet.
• Shifts & Scheduling Overview — how scheduled shifts populate entries.
• Ask AI — the assistant answers questions about Timesheets from these articles.