Approving Time Reports

The Approval section (Fig. 1) contains:

toolbar buttons (fig. 1-1);
search box (fig. 1-2);
time report items (fig. 1-3);
summary table (fig. 1-4).

Fig. 1. "Approval" section

The approver receives a respective notification in the messages section with links to the pages of all the submitted time reports (Figure 2).

Fig. 2. Messages. Notification on new time reports that are pending approval

The Time report – Approval section displays the time reports submitted to the current user for approval.

By default, the author of the task or any other activity is specified as the approver.

Toolbar buttons

	Approve the selected time report.
	Reject the selected time report.
	Allows you to group all the data on the page by date. For each set of report items there is a separate summary table. When active, the button is highlighted dark-yellow.
	Allows you to group all the data on the page by employee. For each set of report items there is a separate summary table. When active, the button is highlighted dark-yellow.
	Allows selecting another approver for several time report items.

Time report items table

This table shows all the time reports that are pending approval of the current user. Each table row provides an overview of the submitted hours.

The data in the table can be grouped by date or by employee. To group the data, click either By Date or By Employee in the toolbar of the Approval section.

The data in the table can be sorted by clicking on the name of the required column. The approver can change the number of work hours in the Approved column. The number of submitted hours may differ from the approved hours.

Clicking on the name of a time report will open the page of this report. For more information about managing a time report, see the respective Help section.

If the activity has already been reported, you will see the

button next to the activity name. If you click this button, you will see a summary table with the time report on this activity and the table with the time reports (approved, rejected and pending approval) submitted on this activity (fig. 3).

Fig. 3. List of time reports submitted on the activity

You can add a question to the report that is pending approval. To do this, click on the

button, that is to the right of the required work hour entry.

If the actual time spent on the activity exceeded the planned value, then this activity will have a pink background.

Time reports can be approved in the Approval section and/or on the time report page.

Working hours summary

Fig. 1 illustrates the summary table with the data grouped by date. This table shows the total amount of time and total number of hours selected for approval.

There may be several tables displayed in the Time report – Approval section, if the By Employees button (in the toolbar) is active.

Approving a time report

To approve a time report:

1. In the Time report – Approval section, check the boxes of the items you would like to approve (Fig. 4).

Fig. 4. Time report approval

2. If necessary, you can change the number of hours in the Approved column. The summary table will show the hours submitted by the executor and the hours selected by the approver.

3. Click Approve in the toolbar of the current page. If the number of submitted hours is different from the number selected for approval, the system will show a confirmation dialog box (fig. 5).

Fig. 5. Approval dialog box

This dialog box (fig. 5) shows the selected time report objects with details as well as the number of submitted hours and the number of hours to approve and/or reject.

There are several types of approval.

Approve while ignoring a part of the time report

You can use this approval type if you do not need the time report to display information on rejected hours. For example, if some hours were sent for approval by mistake and it is already impossible to make changes to them.

To approve a time report partially (while ignoring some hours), click Approve at the bottom of the window (fig. 6). In this case, you do not need to fill in the Comment field.

After that, the user, who submitted the time report, will receive a notification with the number of approved hours.

Fig. 6. Time report approval notification

Note, that all the ignored hours will not be added to the time report and to the My Time Report portlet (will not be displayed in the Rejected column of the table).

Approve while rejecting a part of the time report

You can use this approval type if you need to reject some of the submitted hours and display this information in the time report.

To partially approve a time report (while rejecting some hours), click Approve and Reject (fig. 5). In this case, you must fill in the Comment field.

After that, the page will display a notification with the number of rejected hours (fig. 7).

Fig. 7. Approval section. Notification

When you click Approve and Reject, the user, who sent the time report for approval will receive a notification about partial time report approval (fig. 8) with the approver's comments on rejecting hours.

Fig. 8. Messages section. Notification on the approval result

Note that if you choose this option, there will be two different rows for the rejected and approved time reports (fig. 9). For example a user reported 14 h 30 min on the task of the Equipment installation. 13 hours were approved and 1 h 30 min were rejected. The time report table will look as follows:

Fig. 9. Time reports section

Rejecting a time report

To reject a time report item:

1. In the Time report – Approval section check the boxes associated with the entries you want to reject.

2. Click Reject in the toolbar of the current page. Enter a comment and click Reject (fig. 10).

Fig. 10. Rejecting time reports. The confirmation window.