Managing Time Approvals

Manage your Time Approval process and your Time Approvers. Set up an approval system at the Matter-level.

1. Enable Approval Process
2. Manage Approvers
3. Submit an Entry Requiring Approval
4. Approve a Time Entry

---

Enable Approval Process 

Click on Time>Settings.

Enable Time Approvals by Matter – if you have an approval system set up at the matter level, you can toggle the approval system on and off from here. An approval system means you can monitor and confirm time entries made for a specific matter. If you have both Énable Time Approvals by Matter and Enable Time Approvals by userboxes checked, the matter-level approval system will supersede the user-level approval system.

Enable Time Approvals by Professional, Automatically Submit Time Entries for Approval, Notify Approvers via Email

---

Manage Approvers 

1. Approvals Required for a Timekeeper’s Entries

To enable/view the ‘Manage Approvers’ button in user profiles, approvals must be enabled under Time>Settings (see above).

Click on Account>Professionals>[name]>Profile tab.

If the accessed user needs their entries approved, click on  Manage Approvers. 

 

 

Level – When the Level 1 approver approves the time entry, it will then be made available to the Level 2 approver, and so on. You may also have multiple approvers on the same level number. So, for example, you may have three approvers at Level 1. One will have to approve the time entry before it proceeds to the Level 2 approver.

Approver – the user to approve entries created by this timekeeper.

Approver Type – ensure the approver approves either Time, Expense, or Both Time & Expense.

Edit – edit or deactivate approver.

Delete – users cannot delete an approver if they still have time entries waiting to be approved.

 

2. Approvals required for entries against a specific matter

Click on Clients>Clients & Matters>[matter name]>General.

Select whether this Matter requires entries approved for time, expense, or both.

Click on Manage Approvers to manage the users that approve entries created against this matter.

 

Level – When the Level 1 approver approves the time entry, it will then be made available to the Level 2 approver, and so on. You may also have multiple approvers on the same level number. So, for example, you may have three approvers at Level 1. One will have to approve the time entry before it proceeds to the Level 2 approver.

Approver – the user to approve entries created by this timekeeper.

Approver Type – ensure the approver approves either Time, Expense, or Both Time & Expense.

Edit – edit or deactivate approver.

Delete – users cannot delete an approver if they still have time entries waiting to be approved.

 

---

Submit an Entry Requiring Approval

Under Time>Time Entry screen, if the user or the matter needs time entries approved, click on the Submit For Approval button after entering time details (exemption: if under Time>Settings>Automatically Submit Time Entries for Approvals is enabled, the user needs to save the entry, and it will automatically be submitted to the listed approvers).

Users can submit entries for approval in bulk by marking checkboxes.

 

---

Approve a Time Entry 

Click on Time>Approve Time. This link is visible only to those Timekeepers marked as the Time Approver in the Manage Approvers section. 

Public Comments will be visible to the user who submitted the entry. Private Comments will only be visible to the Approver and all Admin users.

To review the details of the Time Entry, click on the document icon. Changes can be made by clicking on the ‘Edit‘ link. 

If there are multiple-level approvals enabled, you can view which approval stage the entry is at under the ‘Approval Level’ column. When you hover over the number under this column, a list of the approval levels will appear, and the current approval level for the entry will be marked in GREEN. 

Admin users can bypass all approval levels by enabling the ‘Approve All Levels‘ under the search bar:

This is useful if your focus is on getting the entry approved quickly. For example, if you had eight approval levels set up on this entry and do not want to approve the entry eight times, this ‘Approval All Levels‘ button will bypass the pending approvers’ list.