Timesheet Approvals help Please!!!

[MelanieMe]

Hi all - I need a hand if someones got the time :-) We log all time by all users across our 3 companies. As the requirements on certain teams grow, our senior managers are looking to be able to 'approve' timesheets that contain overtime or weekend work. However, we at SysAdmin do not want to surrender our abilites as the people that can Close and therefor 'lock' timesheets. For month end reasons its very important that we maintain that. So we need some type of interim approval step for the managers. Any workflow ideas out there that may help???

[DavidCo3]

Hi Melanie, What is the underlying business requirement behind their request? Do they want to approve once the time has been logged, or perhaps when the task has been scheduled. Assuming you are not going to provide them timesheet administrative permissions, perhaps the main approach would be to use Task Approvals - either at the point of scheduling the Task (i.e. status change from New to a custom 'Scheduled' status) - or at the point of the task status being set to complete. This will likely best support a workflow without using timesheet admin functionality specifically. As another option, you could do things with custom fields for flagging overtime work and then getting approval, but this is not as controllable. Curious if there are any other ideas out there Regards, David

[MelanieMe]

Hi David, thanks so much for taking the time to reply. The business requirement is really around approvals of overtime worked (where not agreed in advance) or the accumulation of Time off in Lieu for additional hours worked. I'm not sure that a task level option would fit as there are so many possible projects and hundreds of possible tasks that may or may not need the additional overtime hours. Having said that, an 'Overtime' task which had its own approval could solve a few of the issues, thanks. The overall request is to provide a solution to the managers which looks something like them having the option to click a button as having seen, reviewed/approved the timesheet and users not be able to recall from there. This is of course the step that we in Admin maintain as the final gate and to surrender it could cause major bottlenecks and errors at month end. Some other step or process is required. So Im open to suggestions and keen to hear from anyone else too :-) Thanks

[Doug_Den_Hoed__AtAppStore]

Hi Melanie,

If the Task approach David outlined seems like a bridge too far, but you'd be willing to concede some control to the Managers who are reviewing time, perhaps you could leverage our Auto-Bill solution.

Along the lines of the screenshot I'm attaching, you could grant the Auto-Bill dashboard to each Manager and train them to use just-for-each-of-them Project Filters to automatically create the Billing Records once they've reviewed and confirmed the associated time -- perhaps using some type of naming convention for the Billing Record to indicate "who dunnit".

Assuming you can twist the Project Filters the way you need, in the best case scenario, it would be faster than doing it manually, saving you time, too.

Regards,

Doug

[MelanieMe]

Hi Doug, I remember you from last years Leap. Thanks for coming back to me on this. I have to admit I have not seen this Auto-Bill solution. It could provide a solution, as you say, if it does what I think it does which is lock down the time on the project, not on the Timesheet? Do I have it right? Where can I see AutoBill in action? Cheers and thanks again Melanie Metcalfe Project Support Manager Foster Moore The Registry People P +64 (9) 950 2309 Mobile: +64 (21) 376 677 E melanie.metcalfe@fostermoore.com Auckland fostermoore.com

[Doug_Den_Hoed__AtAppStore]

Hi Melanie, It’s a pleasure to reconnect with you! Yes, precisely: what it does is lock down the time (and expenses) on the Project, which is what I was thinking might meet the crux of your requirement. I’d be happy to set up a trial version of UberCalc for you -- I'll drop you an email with a few more details momentarily. Regards, Doug

[AdinaPi1]

Auto-bill is my favorite plug in. It saves me hours of work.Before auto-bill, my team had to manually create billing records on 100+ projects every other week.

[Doug_Den_Hoed__AtAppStore]

Thanks for confirming that Auto-Bill is your favorite, Adina. All the other AtApps you use are now sulking . Regards, Doug