A timesheet approval workflow is the fixed route a timesheet takes from the person who worked the hours to the point where those hours can be billed or paid. Someone submits, someone who knows the work confirms it happened, and only then do the hours count. The workflow decides who that someone is, what they check, and what happens when they say no.
That is the whole idea. The rest of this guide is the detail that makes it work in a consultancy, where the approver is often the client and the output is an invoice.
What is a timesheet approval workflow?
A timesheet approval workflow is a set of rules for moving recorded hours through review before anyone relies on them. It names who may approve each timesheet, what state a timesheet is in at each moment, and what locks once it is approved. Without one, hours go straight from a spreadsheet into an invoice and nobody has confirmed them.
Most definitions describe it in payroll terms. Homebase's glossary, for example, calls timesheet approval "the process managers or supervisors use to review and verify employee work hours before they're submitted for payroll" (Homebase, read 13 September 2026).
In a consultancy the stakes sit on the other side of the ledger. Approved hours become a client invoice, so the approval is the last check before money is asked for. A mistake that slips through gets queried by the client's finance team rather than your own.
What are the steps in a timesheet approval process?
The steps are the same almost everywhere: record, submit, review, decide, and then either lock the hours or send them back. What varies is how many people review and whether a second sign-off follows the first. A good workflow makes each state visible, so nobody has to ask where a week has got to.
- The consultant records hours against projects and days, then submits the timesheet.
- Submitting locks it. The version under review cannot change while somebody is reading it.
- Each approver for the projects on that timesheet reviews it and approves or rejects.
- Where the firm requires it, a second person with authority over billing confirms the approval.
- Approved hours become available to invoice. Rejected ones go back to the consultant with a reason.
Tools differ mostly on the period and the lock. Tempo's documentation describes an approval period set by an administrator, at the end of which finance closes the period "so that no more changes can be made to the timesheet data" (Tempo, read 13 September 2026). Teamwork.com describes approved timesheets as locked for the submitter until a reviewer reopens them (Teamwork.com, read 13 September 2026).
In TimeSubmit the chain is three steps. The consultant submits. Every active approver on the projects that timesheet covers approves their own part. A consultancy admin then approves, and only at that point does the timesheet become Approved. If a project has two approvers, both must approve before the admin can: the system refuses the final approval while any approval is still pending.
Who should approve a consultant's timesheet?
The right approver is the person who can say, from first-hand knowledge, that the work happened as described. In a consultancy that is usually a project lead, or a manager at the client who asked for the work. Seniority matters less than proximity. A director who never saw the work can only rubber-stamp it.
Set approvers per project, not per consultant. A consultant working on two engagements for two clients should have each week reviewed by the people on each engagement, not by a single line manager who knows neither. Per-project approval also means a new project can bring its own approver without anyone reorganising the firm.
Client-side approvers are common, and they raise a question worth settling in your timesheet approval policy: what can they see? A client's manager needs the hours, dates, projects and descriptions. They do not need your rates, your margins or the invoice total, and in most firms they should not see them.
In TimeSubmit, approvers are records on each project and can be people inside the consultancy or at the client. The approver's review screen shows hours, dates, project names and descriptions, and carries no rates or amounts. Approvers who sign in count as members on your plan, the same as consultants.
When more than one person approves, decide whether order matters. In TimeSubmit, every approver on a project must approve. By default they act independently, in any order. On Margin and Enterprise, an admin can turn on sequential approval for a project, so approvers act in a set order and each one is notified when it is their turn.
What does an approver actually check?
An approver checks four things: that the work happened, that the amount is plausible, that it sits on the right project, and that the description would survive a client reading it. Anything they cannot place, or any week whose shape looks odd without an explanation, should be questioned before it is approved.
Did it happen? The approver compares the rows against what they saw: meetings they attended, deliverables they received, tickets they assigned. A row they cannot place is a question, not necessarily a problem.
Is the amount plausible? Twelve hours on a Sunday with no note, or 40 hours on a task scoped at 20, deserves a sentence of explanation. Both might be right. Neither should be approved blind.
Is it on the right project? When one client runs two engagements, hours drift between codes. Time on the wrong project bills the wrong budget, and that is harder to unpick after invoicing than before.
Would the client accept the wording? The approver is often the last reader before a description appears on an invoice. "Development work" is not a line anyone wants to defend in a dispute.
The consultant's side of this, what to write so a week sails through, is covered in our guide to getting a timesheet approved first time. From the approver's seat the rule is simpler: approve what you can vouch for, and reject with a reason anything you cannot.
What happens when a timesheet is rejected?
A rejected timesheet goes back to the person who submitted it, with the approver's reason attached, so they can correct it and submit again. Nothing is deleted. The hours stay in place, and only the rows the reason names should need changing. A rejection without a reason just produces the same timesheet a second time.
Make the reason specific. "Wednesday's four hours on Project A look like they belong to Project B" gets fixed in a minute. "Please review" gets a cosmetic change and a second rejection.
In TimeSubmit, rejection needs a reason, and the reject control stays disabled until one is typed. A rejection by an approver moves the whole timesheet to Rejected straight away, without waiting for anyone else. The consultant reopens it as a draft, edits it and resubmits. Only a draft can be edited; a submitted timesheet is read-only to everyone, including its author.
That asymmetry is deliberate. A wrong week should stop moving the moment someone spots it. A right week can wait for its second signature.
An admin also has an override for the cases the normal route cannot handle, such as an approver who has left. It can force-approve or force-reject a timesheet, but only with a written reason, which is stored on the timesheet along with who made the decision and when. On plans that include the audit log, the override is recorded there too.
How long should approval take?
Approval should take no longer than the gap between your submission deadline and your invoicing run. If consultants submit on Friday and invoices go out on the first of the month, approvers need a firm window inside that, typically a couple of working days, or late approvals start pushing billable hours into the following month.
ClickTime, which sells approval software, states that "it takes 1 to 2 days for a timesheet to move through the timesheet approval workflow" (ClickTime, read 13 September 2026). Treat that as a vendor's figure rather than a benchmark, but it is a sensible target.
Three habits keep approval fast. Write an approval deadline into the policy alongside the submission deadline. Tell approvers the moment something is waiting, rather than relying on them to check a queue. And make approving a routine week take seconds, so nobody saves them up.
On plans that include notifications (Core, Margin and Enterprise), TimeSubmit tells every active approver on the relevant projects when a timesheet is submitted, and tells the consultant when a consultancy admin approves, rejects or overrides it. Each notice arrives in-app and by email. Approvers can also approve from the queue row itself, without opening each timesheet.
Why should only approved hours reach an invoice?
Because an invoice is a claim that the work happened, and an unapproved hour is a claim nobody has checked. Billing approved hours only means every line on the invoice has been confirmed by someone who saw the work. Disputes then become questions about a record that already exists, not arguments from memory.
Teamwork.com frames approvals the same way, as a structured way to review submitted timesheets "before logged time is used for billing, reporting, and project performance" (Teamwork.com, read 13 September 2026).
Approval before invoicing also protects the consultant. Once the client's own manager has approved the week, the client's finance team is querying a figure its own organisation signed off.
In TimeSubmit, invoices are generated from approved timesheets and nothing else. A timesheet that is still Submitted, even one every approver has approved, cannot be pulled into an invoice until the consultancy admin's approval makes it Approved. Each timesheet can be invoiced once, so the same week cannot be billed twice.
What should timesheet approval software do?
Timesheet approval software should make the workflow above the only route hours can take, rather than a convention people follow when they remember. That means named approvers, visible states, a lock on submission, a reason on every rejection, and a hard link between approval and billing. The checklist below is what to test during a trial.
- Approvers are set per project, not only per person or per team.
- External approvers at the client can be added without seeing rates or invoice totals.
- A submitted timesheet is locked, and only a draft can be edited.
- Every rejection requires a reason the consultant can read.
- Where several people approve, the rule for how their decisions combine is explicit.
- Approvers are told when something is waiting.
- Only approved hours can be invoiced, and a week cannot be invoiced twice.
- An admin override exists, needs a reason, and records who used it.
TimeSubmit does each of these, and the detail is on the approval workflows page. It is fair to say what it does not do as well: there is no bulk approve, so approvers act on each timesheet individually. Approval in a set order is available, but only on Margin and Enterprise.
Common questions about timesheet approval workflows
What systems offer approval workflows for time entries?
Most timesheet tools aimed at businesses billing for time offer some form of approval, including Tempo, Teamwork.com, ClickTime and TimeSubmit. They differ in who can approve, whether approvers are set per project, whether external client approvers can take part without seeing rates, and whether only approved hours can be invoiced. Test those four points during a trial.
What happens if a timesheet is not approved?
An unapproved timesheet stays in its submitted state and its hours cannot be relied on for billing or payroll. In most tools it sits in the approver's queue until someone acts. If it is rejected, it goes back to the consultant with a reason to correct and resubmit. Hours still waiting at invoicing time usually move to the next billing run.
How long does it take for a timesheet to be approved?
It depends on the firm's policy rather than the software. A working target is a couple of working days from submission, which leaves room before a monthly invoicing run. ClickTime, a vendor, cites 1 to 2 days as typical. Delays usually come from approvers not knowing something is waiting, so notifications and a written deadline matter most.
How do I approve timesheets?
Open the timesheet from your approval queue, check the hours against what you know of the work, and confirm the project codes and descriptions are right. If everything holds, approve it. If something does not, reject it and write a reason that names the row and what needs changing. In TimeSubmit a routine week can be approved straight from the queue.
What is timesheet approval software?
Timesheet approval software routes submitted timesheets to named approvers, records each decision, and locks approved hours so they can be billed or paid with confidence. Better tools set approvers per project, let client-side approvers review without seeing rates, require a reason for every rejection, and allow only approved hours onto an invoice.
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