Approving or Rejecting a Time Transaction

Time approval is restricted to the Employee Center and the user role. You can either have your users track and approve time in the Employee Center or you can edit the user role and set employee restrictions. If you do not set employee restrictions on the user role, users can approve all time entries rather than only those of their subordinates.

You can select either a time approver or supervisor.

The Time Approver field appears on the Time Tracking subtab of an employee record.
The Supervisor field shows under Primary Information on an employee record.

After you assign a time approver or supervisor to an employee record, that user has the authority to approve time for the employee. Time approvers cannot edit or delete existing time entries. If no time approver is selected, then the employee's supervisor approves time entries. If both a supervisor and a time approver are selected, then only the time approver can approve time entries using their Employee Center role. For more information, see Adding an Employee.

With Customize View you can specify details that you want to appear on timesheets. For example, Allocated Hours or Approval Status.

The employee’s supervisor or time approver receives an email notification when time is entered or edited.

If you also use Project Management, you have additional options for approving project time. For more information, see Approving Time and Expenses for Projects.

Advanced Approvals

The Advanced Approvals preference offers additional statuses, a color–coded display when viewing weekly time tracking and weekly timesheets, and the ability to reject time entries and add a rejection note. After you have enabled the preference, the Supervisor Approval field on time entries and weekly time tracking and timesheets is replaced by an Approval Status field.

This field is editable by administrators and any role without time and expense restrictions. This field enables you to set the status of time entries to Open, Pending Approval, Approved, or Rejected. When viewing weekly time tracking or timesheets, approved entries are displayed with a green background, open entries have a white background, rejected entries have a red background, and pending entries have a blue background.

Setting Approval Preferences

To set approval preferences:

Go to Setup > Accounting > Accounting Preferences.
Click the Time & Expenses subtab.
Check the Require Approvals on Time Records box.
If you’d like to use Advanced Approvals, check the Advanced Approvals on Time Records box.
Click Save.

Warning:

If you decide at a later date to disable the Advanced Approvals preference, you must first adjust any time transactions with an Open or Rejected status to a Pending Approval status. Making these adjustments will prevent any further complications when the preference is turned off.

If you choose to enable Advanced Approvals on Time Records, you can also use SuiteFlow and Approval Routing to create custom approval workflows for your time entries. When using custom approval workflows, the Approve Time page is only available for time entry records. The Approve Timesheets pages is not available for custom approval workflows. For more information, see SuiteFlow Overview and Approval Routing.

For more help setting up the time tracking feature and related preferences, see Setting Up Time Tracking Preferences.

With Time Tracking, you can approve individual time entries from the Approve Time page.

Approving or Rejecting Time with Time Tracking

To approve or reject time with Time Tracking:

Go to Transactions > Employees > Approve Time.

Note:
If you also use Weekly Timesheets, approving time defaults to the Approve Timesheets view. For more information see below. You can click Switch to Time Entry view to proceed with approving or rejecting time entries individually.
On the Approve Time page, select the name of the employee whose time you want to approve or reject.

You can also identify a specific pay period for that employee by selecting a date in the Week Of field.

For this employee, each time record displays the following information by default:
- Employee name
- Date of the time record
- Case/Task/Event
- Customer
- Service Item
- Payroll Item
- Number of hours entered
- Memo
- The Billable column indicates if the time entered can be billed back to the customer.
Optionally, click Customize to add filters or to select the columns to display on the Approve Time page. On the Customize page:
1. Click the Criteria, Results, or Available Filters subtabs.
2. Add or remove fields on the Criteria subtab to filter the results by other fields. Add or remove fields on the Results subtab to change the columns displayed. Add or remove fields on the Additional Filters to add filters to the page.
In the Select column, check the boxes next to the time records you want to approve or reject.

Important:
You cannot approve and reject entries together. All the entries you select will either be all approved or all rejected. If you have multiple entries to both approve and reject, you must repeat this process for approval and again for rejection.

Note:
You can approve or reject multiple time entries at one time, but each individual record must be selected. You cannot select time entries on a weekly basis from the Approve Time page..
Click Approve to approve the selected time entries.

Click Reject to reject the selected time entries without a rejection note.

Click Reject with Note to reject the selected time entries and add a rejection note to each selected entry. You can only add a single rejection note. The note you enter is copied to all the selected time entries.

Warning:
Employees with appropriate permissions can modify previously approved time.

If you use Weekly Timesheets, you can approve or reject multiple entries at once.

Approving or Rejecting Time with Weekly Timesheets

To approve or reject time with Weekly Timesheets:

Go to Transactions > Employees > Approve Time.
On the Approve Timesheets page, select the name of the employee whose time you want to approve.

You can also identify a specific pay period for that employee by selecting a date in the Week Of field.

For this employee, each time record displays the following information by default:
- Employee
- Period
- Approvable Hours
  
  You can click the link in the Approvable Hours column to open a popup that displays the individual time entries.
Optionally, you can click Switch to Time Entry view to display each individual time entry.
Optionally, click Customize to add filters or to select the columns to display on the Approve Timesheets page. On the Customize page:
1. Click the Criteria, Results, or Available Filters subtabs.
2. Add or remove fields on the Criteria subtab to filter the results by other fields. Add or remove fields on the Results subtab to change the columns displayed. Add or remove fields on the Additional Filters to add filters to the page.
In the Select column, check the boxes next to the timesheets you want to approve or reject.

Important:
You cannot approve and reject timesheets together. All the timesheets you select will either be all approved or all rejected. If you have multiple timesheets to both approve and reject, you must repeat this process for approval and again for rejection.

Note:
When approving or rejecting time entries from the timesheet view, checking the box next to a timesheet will approve or reject all entries listed on the timesheet. When approving or rejecting time entries from the time entry view, each box approves or rejects only the individual time entry.
Click Approve to approve the selected timesheets.

Click Reject to reject the selected timesheets without a rejection note.

Click Reject with Note to reject the selected timesheets and add a rejection note to each selected entry. You can only add a single rejection note. The note you enter is copied to all the selected time entries.

Warning:
Employees with appropriate permissions can modify previously approved time.

Approved time can be used to bill customers and process payroll.

If you bill time back to a customer or project, the time shows on the Billable Time subtab on the invoice.

If you track time for hourly wage payroll items, the time shows in the Hours column for each employee on the Payroll Run page.

Warning:

NetSuite CRM+ users cannot record billable time, invoice customers for billable time, or record time for payroll items.

Approving or Rejecting Time from the Time Transaction List

You can use inline editing and the time transactions list to approve or reject time. If you use the Require Approvals on Time Records preference, you can check the box in the Approved column to update the approval status of individual time transactions with inline editing. The Approval Status field is not available for inline editing with only the approvals preference. If you also use the Advanced Approvals on Time Records preference, you can update the Approval Status field using inline editing.

For more information on Advanced Approvals, see Advanced Approvals.