Approvals

Time Approvals

How time entries reach the approvals queue, who can approve them, the approve/reject action, and what notifications and integrations fire on approval.

This page covers reviewing time entries — the queue, who can act, and what happens when you approve.

How entries reach the queue

When your organization's "require approval" time setting is on, a time entry gets an approvalStatus of PENDING on clock-out or when a manual entry is created.

Two roles auto-approve their own entries regardless of the setting:

EXECUTIVE — own entries auto-approved.
ADMINISTRATOR — own entries auto-approved.

See Overtime and lockdown for the time-tracking settings that govern this.

Who can approve

Only ADMINISTRATOR, EXECUTIVE, and DEPARTMENT_HEAD can approve time entries.

Department heads are department-scoped. A department head only sees entries from their own department — and one with no department assigned sees an empty list.

The queue and the action

Operation	Endpoint	Notes
List	`GET /api/time-tracking/approvals?status=PENDING\|APPROVED\|REJECTED`	Returns `{ entries, counts }`.
Decide	`PUT /api/time-tracking/approvals/:id`	Body `{ action: approve \| reject, reason }`.

Only completed entries can be approved. An entry must be clocked out before it can be approved — an in-progress entry isn't reviewable yet.

What happens on approval

When you approve an entry:

The employee is notified (in-app and email).
If QuickBooks is connected, the entry syncs to QuickBooks.

A note on "auto-approve after N days"

There is an "auto-approve after N days" setting, but it is not currently enforced by any background job. Don't rely on entries clearing themselves — review and action them in the queue.

Overtime and lockdown — time-tracking settings.
Approvals overview — scoping and notifications.

Expense Approvals

How expense reports are submitted, who approves them, the approve/reject/mark-paid actions, and how separation of duties scopes department heads.

Clocking In & Location

How employees clock in and out, the project/task/description and location requirements, breaks, offline capture, rounding, manual entry, and editing time entries.