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How do I review and approve timesheets?

Use Approve Timesheets to review pay-period hours, catch overtime and errors, approve one employee or everyone at once, and get timesheets ready for payroll.

Approve Timesheets is the pay-period view for closing out hours before payroll. Use it when you need overtime totals, employee-by-employee review, bulk approval, and a final scan for open punches or overlaps—not when you’re hunting a single punch across the whole account.

Applies to: Supervisors and payroll staff with Timetracking (Edit) or Timetracking (Approve). You only see users and locations your role can access. Creating or editing check-ins requires Timetracking (Edit).

How Approve Timesheets Works

Approval is a manager/payroll step that marks check-ins as ready for payroll workflows. It does not change the clock-in or clock-out times themselves, and it does not automatically run payroll or download an export.

Think of three separate actions:

  • Employee confirm — On mobile, Confirm my hours marks entries as User Reviewed. A green thumbs-up on the Users list means the employee finished that review. It is not payroll approval.
  • Manager approve — Approve, Approve All, or Approve hours (mobile) marks the check-ins in the selected range as approved.
  • Lock — When hours are locked, approved rows show a lock and you cannot unapprove or change them until someone with Lock Time Entries unlocks the period.

After you approve:

  • The row button changes from Approve to Approved. Click Approved again if you need to Unapprove (unless the period is locked).
  • Hours stay available in Time Tracking reports. Approval is a status your payroll process can rely on—not a separate timesheet file.
  • Export, print, or payroll sync are separate next steps from the same page when your company uses them. Approving alone does not export hours to ADP, Paychex, or another payroll system.

Use Approve Timesheets to close a pay period. Use Time Detail when you need a flat list of individual check-ins across many people.

Before You Start

  • Open the right report. Approve Timesheets is under Time Tracking in the left navigation. The page description is Review and approve employee timesheets.
  • Set the date range first. The list only includes workdays that begin inside the selected range (including pay-period shortcuts). Overnight shifts follow your company’s workday start from Company Settings—entries that cross the boundary can split across periods.
  • Fix problems before you approve everyone. Clear open punches and overlaps first, then use row Approve or Approve All.

Open and Filter the List

  1. In the left navigation, open Time Tracking and choose Approve Timesheets.
  2. Set the date range (or pick a pay period) for the days you want to close.
  3. Optionally filter by location (or location group). Choose All when you want the full period.
  4. Choose how rows are grouped: - Users — one row per employee (best for payroll review). - Locations — one row per site. - Both — one row per employee at each location.
  5. Use Search to find someone in the current results.
  6. Use Columns to show or hide fields such as Assigned, Actual, Difference, Reg, OT, 2xOT, PTO, Geo, Daily Breakdown, Week Ending, or Day Ending.

Your date range, location filter, row grouping, and column choices are remembered for this report.

Keep Approve buttons visible. Turning on Week Ending or Day Ending switches the table into a week or day breakdown and hides the row Approve actions. Turn those columns off when you’re ready to approve.

Spot Overtime and Problems on the List

Before you approve:

  • Check OT and 2xOT (and Fed OT* when it appears) for unexpected overtime. Fed OT* is already included in OT—it highlights the portion that qualifies under US federal (FLSA) rules. High OT is often a missed clock-out that ran into the next day.
  • Use Daily Breakdown for a day-by-day bar chart. Regular hours form the base of each bar; overtime appears as an orange tip, and double overtime as a red tip above that.
  • Watch Difference (Actual minus Assigned). Positive values in red mean more hours worked than scheduled; negative values in amber mean less.
  • Check Geo when GPS matters for your sites. Out-of-bounds punches deserve a closer look before payroll.
  • On the Users view, a green thumbs-up means the employee has reviewed every entry in the range (no unreviewed check-ins left).

After the list loads, Clean Smarts scans the period automatically. Look for:

  • No issues found — no unapproved rows, open punches, overlaps, or days over your daily hour limit in the current data.
  • Found {n} Issues — open the status to jump to Unapproved Entries, Open Entries, Overlapping Entries, or Days Exceeding Hour Limit.

Fix open punches and overlaps before you approve. Clicking an issue can filter the list or open that person’s timesheet details.

Approve from the Summary List

Stay on the main list when the totals look right and you don’t need to open every check-in.

  1. Confirm you’re in the aggregate view (Week Ending and Day Ending columns off) so Approve buttons appear.
  2. On a row with hours, click Approve to approve every unapproved check-in for that employee (or location) in the selected date range.
  3. When the row is fully approved, the button changes to Approved. Click it again if you need to Unapprove (unless the period is locked—see Troubleshooting).
  4. To approve everyone still waiting in the current filters, click Approve All in the footer and confirm Approve All Hours.
  5. When every approvable row is done, the footer shows All Approved. Click it only if you need to Unapprove All for the filtered period.

Approving from the list covers the selected date range and filters. People with zero actual hours are skipped by Approve All.

Review One Timesheet in Detail

Open a row when you need to check individual punches, fix missing time, or approve after corrections.

  1. Click the employee (or location) row to open timesheet details.
  2. Keep the same date range, and optionally narrow by location.
  3. Choose a detail layout: - Table — check-in rows with approval actions, similar to Time Detail. When you’re on a user timesheet, a coverage panel can offer Add missing check-in for scheduled shifts with no punch. - Hierarchy or Grid — day- and week-oriented layouts of the same hours.
  4. Open a check-in to edit times, pay code, notes, or approval on that entry alone.
  5. Click Add New Check-in when hours are missing and your role includes Timetracking (Edit).
  6. When the timesheet looks correct, click Approve All in the header to approve every unapproved entry in the current detail range.
  7. Use the previous/next controls in the header to move through the filtered list without returning to the summary.

For step-by-step manual entry fields, see How Do I Add a Time Entry in Clean Smarts?.

What to Do After You Approve

When your review is done:

  • Use the export control to download the summary table or a timesheet detail export for the selected range and location.
  • If your account has a payroll file export (for example Paychex), use the payroll export option from the same export menu after approvals are complete. You’ll be asked whether to include only approved hours.
  • Use print when you need paper or PDF timesheets for the period.
  • If your account uses manual payroll upload, use the cloud upload control to Sync only newly approved hours or Re-sync all approved hours after you’ve finished approving.

You do not have to approve in Clean Smarts for every integration, but most payroll exports and syncs work best when hours are approved first. Follow your company’s payroll checklist—approval prepares the hours; export or sync is the handoff.

Tips

  • Scan before you approve everyone. Clear open punches and overlaps first, then use Approve All.
  • Review high OT rows first. Sort or scan for unexpected OT / 2xOT, then open those timesheets.
  • Approve when the row is correct. Unapproved hours still appear in reports; teams that approve before payroll should finish approvals before locking or exporting the period.
  • Use admin notes on corrections. A short note like “Corrected missed clock-out 3/12” helps the next reviewer.
  • For field approvals only, managers can approve one employee’s displayed range from mobile with Approve hours. Use the web portal for bulk review, exports, and locked-period work. See How do managers add or correct a time entry from mobile?.

Troubleshooting

I don’t see Approve Timesheets in the menu. Your role needs Time Tracking access—typically Timetracking (Edit). Timetracking (Approve) lets you approve hours when you can open the page (and supports Approve hours on mobile). Ask an account administrator to check your modules. See What does each of the user modules do?.

I don’t see Approve buttons on the rows. Turn off the Week Ending and Day Ending columns. Those views hide approval actions. Also confirm the row has Actual hours greater than zero.

Someone is missing from the list. Widen the date range, clear the location filter, and confirm they have worked or assigned hours (or prior-period hours when that column is on) in the range. Search only filters the rows already loaded.

Found issues keeps showing open or overlapping entries. Open the issue, fix or end the punch, then refresh. Overlaps are often a missed clock-out plus a duplicate manager entry. Approve only after the overlap is gone.

The Approved button shows a lock and I can’t unapprove. Those hours are locked. Someone with the Lock Time Entries module must unlock the period before you can change or unapprove them.

I need to add or change an entry, but I only have approve access. Timetracking (Approve) lets you approve. Creating, editing, or deleting check-ins needs Timetracking (Edit) (or a manager with that access on mobile).

Employee confirmed their hours, but they’re still unapproved. Employee Confirm my hours only marks User Reviewed. Payroll approval is still your Approve / Approve All step.

I approved—am I done with payroll? Not by itself. Approval marks the hours ready. Next, export or sync from Approve Timesheets (or follow your company’s payroll export process) if you send hours to an outside payroll system.

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