Why are some timesheets with "submit" button and others with "Save and Close" button?

[NaushinWa]

I am trying to troubleshoot and figure out why some profiles have the submit button in their timesheets and others have a "Save and Close" button. The profiles with the save and close button appear to bypass the approval process and timesheet does not get submitted to their manager for approval... Tried trouble-shooting but I have very limited knowledge of timesheets and set-ups so I don't understand where the issue may be, can someone help? Support has been absolutely useless with helping us figure this out.

[CourtneyCh1]

Hey @Naushin Walji‚ ,

Try checking the timesheet profiles that have the "Save and Close" button to see if they have approvers assigned. Profiles with approvers assigned should have a "Submit for approval" button, and profiles without an approver assigned should have a "Save and close" button.

Hopefully this helps!

[NaushinWa]

Hi Courtney,

The users do have a manager assigned, and the timesheet profile routes timesheets to their managers, but lots of users have the Save and Close button instead of Submit...

[CourtneyCh1]

Hmm. I'm not sure what the problem could be there. It sounds like it should be giving you a submit button. I'd recommend reaching out to support again and investigate this as a possible issue in Workfront.

Sorry I couldn't be more help.

[EricMa · Accepted solution]

If the specific timesheet does not have an approver (regardless of how the TIMESHEET PROFILE is currently set up), then the user will see the "Save and Close" button. This could have happened in one of four ways: (1) the timesheet was created before the user's timesheet profile was set up with an approval process; (2) the timesheet was created before the user was assigned to a manager/supervisor; (3) the timesheet was created manually for some reason and an approver was not assigned at that time, or (4) the timesheet was edited later (probably inadvertently) to have the approver be removed.

You can verify that all the your users' timesheets have an approver by going to the "All Timesheets" subtab of "Timesheet", and searching for all timesheets with the status of "Open." The "Standard" view will include the Approver for every timesheet; if the field is blank, then you can add an approver using inline edit.

~Eric

[NaushinWa]

Thank you for the explanation Eric - the timesheets were indeed created before the user was assigned a supervisor, so we had to delete existing timesheets and regenerate them!