To be able to use this functionality, you must first enable it via Settings > Hours > Review. There are 3 possibilities for Hours Control:
Submitting hours by employee
Hours approval per project
Hours review by supervisor (week review)
Submitting hours by employee
With this setting, employees can use the button ‘Submit week X’ to indicate that they are finished with hours registration for that week.
In this way you avoid having hours checked while the employee says afterwards “I’m not done at all”. Once the employee has clicked ‘Submit’, the status ‘Week X submitted’ appears and the supervisor and/or project manager knows that the hours can be checked.
Note: If this setting is turned off during a week, the hours already entered in that week will receive the status Submitted. If new hours are entered in the same week, the week must be submitted again.
Hours approval per project
Activate the setting Approve hours per project when you want all entered hours to be checked by the project manager of the project the relevant hours were written to.
Note: When you activate this setting, then all hours (based on cost price accounting) that are not yet invoiced must be approved.
Also hours entered on the invoice method ‘fixed price’ and ‘subscription’ must be approved. Registrations such as expenses and kilometers will also appear under the tab ‘Project approval’ to be approved.
Once you have turned on this setting, an extra tab will appear in the Hours module:
In the tab ‘Project approval’ you will see per project all entered hours, kilometers and costs up to and including today. Hours entered in the future are therefore not shown.
Note: The previously mentioned setting ‘Submit hours by employee’ influences whether hours can or cannot be checked by the project manager.
If ‘Submit hours by employee’ = Yes
All hours written and submitted by an employee will get the status ‘Approve project manager’. All hours that have not been submitted by the employee cannot be checked by the Project Manager.
If ‘Submit hours by employee’ = No
All hours written by an employee will get the status ‘Approve project leader’.
By opening Project approval you get an overview of registered hours. You also get an overview of the budgets on the related projects.
On the right‑side of the control you can filter by project leader. There is also the option “no project leader”. You can also click through per project for more insight into registrations. For each entered line you can transfer the hours, correct, write off or view more information.
After the check you can approve the hours collectively by selecting them and then via Actions click ‘Collectively approve’, or transfer them collectively to another project, service or hour type.
Adjusting hours
The hours remain adjustable as long as the hours are not yet on a draft invoice, or as long as the manager (if you have this setting active) has not yet checked the hours. If the hours are adjusted (even when the Project Leader has already given approval), the hours will again be offered for control to the Project Leader and the hours will therefore again be set under ‘Not yet ready for invoicing’. You should also take into account that any corrections made by the Project Leader are thereby also forfeited.
Hours control by manager (week review)
The next possible control is hours control by the manager. Activate this setting when you want submitted hours to be checked by the manager of the relevant employee who entered the hours.
The hours control by the manager takes place after the hours control by the project leader (if you have activated that, of course).
In the following video you can see how hours control by manager works.
This option is intended for managers, or a responsible employee, to review the weekly timesheets of employees. This is mainly used to check completeness of hours and ensure that no changes can be made by employees anymore.
By activating via Settings > Hours > Control the ‘Hours control by manager’ setting, the ‘Week review’ tab appears in the Hours module:
Under this tab you find all weekly timesheets divided into subtabs ‘To check’, ‘Waiting for’ and ‘Approved’. On the right side you have various filter options. In which tab a timesheet is shown depends on the status of the timesheet. Below you will see the statuses per subtab.
To check
If a timesheet appears here, it is ready to be approved.
If submitting hours is turned on, all submitted weekly timesheets will be in this list.
When submitting hours is turned off, only weekly timesheets for past weeks will be available here for approval. These weekly timesheets are automatically offered for control on the following Monday at 00:00.
As long as the timesheet is not yet approved, the hours, expenses and kilometres are also not found under Ready for invoicing (if ‘Hours to invoice as’ is set to ‘Approved by manager’).
As long as the hours are not yet checked, the hours can still be adjusted.
By clicking a line, a detail view of the weekly timesheet appears. In this overview adjustments can possibly still be made. In this detail view of the weekly timesheet it is also possible to assign the ‘time‑for‑time’ balance. You can optionally still adjust the number of overtime hours.
If you have checked the hours and want to approve them, click ‘approve’. You now see that the hours go to the status ‘approved’.
You can approve hours collectively by first checking the top checkbox of the column you want to approve, and then using the Shift+Click shortcut on the last one in the column you want to approve. This way you select the entire row.
Waiting for
If a weekly timesheet of an employee is shown here then the timesheet has not yet been submitted, there are still hours, costs or kilometres in the timesheet that must still be approved by a project leader, or the timesheet is rejected.
As long as hours have not yet been submitted (if this setting is on), the manager cannot approve them and they are also not available for invoicing.
If hours have not yet been approved in project‑control, a warning icon appears next to those hours to indicate what still must be approved in order to approve the week.
Approved
Once the hours of a particular week are approved, the cells in that week are locked.
Approved hours cannot be adjusted anymore. If the hours are not yet invoiced and you still need to adjust them, you must undo the approval. You do this by opening the week and clicking ‘reopen’.
The moment the week is in approved status the status ‘approved’ will be shown in the agenda.
If the hours were entered on a (billable) service with invoice method cost‑price accounting, you will now find the approved hours under Invoices > To invoice > ‘Ready for invoicing’.
By default the approved weekly timesheets of the last 3 months are shown. This can be adjusted via the date filter.
Hours to invoice as
Here you indicate when you want the hours to be invoiced. Is this after the project leader has given approval, or after the manager’s approval?
The choice you make here has the consequence that when one of the two has given approval, the hours at that moment appear under Invoices > To invoice > ‘Ready for invoicing’. Until then the hours remain under ‘Not yet ready for invoicing’ and cannot therefore be invoiced.
Start workflow when hours are rejected
With this setting you specify that when the hours are rejected, a workflow must be started.
Workflow for rejecting
Select here which workflow you want to start when rejecting hours. You can use a standard workflow or build your own.
Time‑for‑time addition via hours control
With this setting you indicate whether you want to use the automatic addition of leave (‘time‑for‑time’) when an employee has registered more hours than their roster, i.e., overtime.
After selecting ‘Approve’ a pop‑up appears with information about the employee, approved week and the number of hours of time‑for‑time that will be assigned.
Leave type Time‑for‑time balance
Select at this setting the leave‑type that you want to use when you assign an employee extra leave (time‑for‑time). This leave type receives the balance. The employee can use this balance to take leave.