Timesheet approval routine
Approval backlogs are the normal state of a timesheet system, and they are also what makes it worthless. Hours approved three weeks late are hours nobody remembers well enough to question, and a queue that never empties turns every downstream report into a guess.
Weekly, on a fixed morning, before the utilisation report goes out. Twenty minutes per manager for a team of eight. Never let it slip a second week.
The checklist
- 01Send the submission reminder before the deadline, not after itOwner: HR
- 02List who has not submitted and chase them by nameOwner: Manager
- 03Open the needs-attention view first, before the full queueOwner: Manager
- 04Question any week that is exactly forty hours across round numbersOwner: Manager
- 05Check hours against the projects the person was actually allocated toOwner: Manager
- 06Approve or return every entry, with a reason where returnedOwner: Manager
- 07Clear the queue to zero, or name what is left and whyOwner: Manager
- 08Check nobody logged outside the window and silently lost hoursOwner: HR
- 09Confirm the week is complete before the utilisation figure is quotedOwner: Delivery lead
- 10Review the reminder schedule monthly if submissions keep slippingOwner: HR lead
What goes wrong
- Approving in bulk without reading. The status changes, the data does not improve, and everyone learns approval means nothing.
- A backlog carried a second week, at which point nobody can remember the week well enough to question anything.
- Round-number weeks going through untouched. Eight, eight, eight, eight, eight is memory, not a record.
- Quoting utilisation from a week where half the timesheets are unapproved, then defending the number later.
- A returned entry with no reason, which the person resubmits unchanged because they do not know what was wrong.
Questions people ask
What belongs in the needs-attention view?
The weeks that do not look right: missing days, unusual totals, entries that need a second look. Starting there finds most problems in the first five minutes.
How large a backlog is a problem?
Any backlog that survives a second week. Beyond that the person cannot reconstruct the week, so approval stops being a check.
Should managers approve their own timesheets?
Someone else should. Self-approval is the point at which the queue becomes a formality, and it is usually the first exception a busy team makes.