Manager Approve Time

Privilege Needed: Manager (or Alternate Approver for a Manager)

When a Timesheet User submits their time for approval, the timesheet goes through a pre-defined approval group for each user. What approval group a person belongs to is defined in the person section under the Administrator menu. This approval group can have any number of managers defined in the group. Each Submit of a timesheet passes control of that timesheet to the first person in the Approval Group. As each manager Approves a timesheet, control is then passed on to the next manager in the Approval Group until the last manager has approved the timesheet. At that point, pending the completion of any outstanding Project Manager Approvals, the timesheet is set to Completed.

See the note below about Automatic Approvals (e.g. submitters do not have to approve entries they just submitted).

Click here for more information about the different statuses in the approval process.

Below is an example of a Manager that has several timesheets that have been submitted for Approval.

The manager can see:

The owner of the timesheet
The time period of the timesheet
The current status of the timesheet.

The display is divided into sections showing approvals where the manager is the primary approver and approvals where the manager is an alternate approver for someone else. The alternate approval section if further divided into sections for each manager for which the manager is an alternate approver.

The manager can do 1 of 5 actions.

Approve the timesheet without even looking at it by pressing the () icon.
Disapprove it without looking at it by pressing the () icon. (This feature can also be disabled, forcing the approver to view the timesheet before approving or disapproving.)
Approve all of the timesheets in a section by pressing the () icon.
Disapprove all the timesheets in a section by pressing the or the () icon.
In most cases, the manager will want to view the timesheet by pressing the () icon.

Below is an example of a window that will pop up when the manager approves or disapproves a timesheet. These comments are captured and stored in the Approval History of that timesheet. The Approval History can always be displayed when viewing any timesheet, located at the bottom of the document. These comments are also sent in the E-mail message if you are running Unanet with the E-mail option enabled.

Below is an example of how the timesheet is displayed to the manager after the () icon is pressed from the Approve Timesheets window shown at the top. Here, the manager can see the owner of the timesheet, the time period, the hours worked each day for each project, and a table listing the comments entered for each cell (if any were entered). The next table is the approval history section followed by the current controller and status of the timesheet.

From this screen, the manager can Approve or Disapprove the timesheet; which will pop up the approval window shown above. Another option the manager has, rather than to just disapprove it, is to Edit the timesheet. (Note: the Edit button can be disabled by setting the property unatime.manager.edit=false). This will allow the manager to make the changes to the timesheet and submit it for the owner. E-mail messages are sent to notify the owner that changes are being made to the timesheet and it is being sent through the approval process again. Also, a record is put in the Approval History, showing that the manager changed the timesheet and not the owner.

The Appr/Nxt button approves the current timesheet without any comments and displays the next timesheet in the Manager approval queue. The Skip button allows you to ignore the current timesheet and move on to the next in the approval queue.

Automatic Approvals (No Self Approval Required)

Note: User's are no longer required to approval their own entries -- at least, that's the basic premise. Actually, to be more specific, the individual that submits a timesheet who also happens to be responsible for the primary approval -- will no longer have to approve the entry they just submitted (it will be automatically approved -- with a corresponding Approval History entry supplied by the system).

Example: when a user is also a manager, project manager or customer, and they submit their own time, these items will not appear on their own corresponding approval queue. If a delegate, however, submits time for another user, and that other user is their own primary approver -- well that other user will still have to approve their own timesheet (since they weren't the one that submitted it).

See Approval History example below:

One exception to this policy is the time import. Automatic approvals are disabled when it comes to time entered into the system via the time import.

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