Approval workflows are part of Beebole’s paid plans. If no workflow is configured, timesheets are approved automatically the moment they are submitted.
How approval works
- A person completes their timesheet and clicks Submit at the top of the page. The timesheet locks and enters the first approval stage.
- The stage’s approvers are notified. Depending on the stage’s quorum, either any one of them or all of them must approve.
- Once the stage is complete, the timesheet advances to the next stage. When the last stage approves, the timesheet is Approved.
- If any approver rejects — a comment is always required — the timesheet becomes Rejected and returns to its owner, who can correct it and click Resubmit.
Click the status badge to open the stage breakdown: each stage shows its approver type, who has already approved and when, and who is still pending on the current stage. A stage with no eligible approver — for example, People managers when the person has no manager — shows No manager found and is skipped.
Configuring the approval workflow
The workflow is a list of sequential stages. It lives in the Approval workflow panel, which exists at three levels: your organization’s Account Settings, every tag, and every person’s profile. Like other cascading settings, the most specific level wins — a workflow set on a person overrides one set on their tags, which overrides the account default. An icon next to the panel shows where the current workflow is inherited from.1
Open the Settings menu
Click the button with your initials at the bottom of the left sidebar.
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Go to Account Settings
Click Account Settings to open your organization’s settings. To define a workflow for one team or one person instead, open the same panel on a tag or on a person’s profile.
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Open the Approval workflow panel
If no workflow exists yet, the panel explains that timesheets are automatically approved when submitted.
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Add a stage
Click Add. A new stage appears with Project managers as its type and Any as its quorum.
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Choose the stage's type and quorum
Pick who approves at this stage (see the table below) and whether All approvers or Any single approver completes it. For Specific people, pick each approver with Select person; for Tagged people, pick one or more tags with Select tag.
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Add and order more stages (optional)
Repeat Add for each additional stage. Stages run in the order listed — use Move up and Move down to reorder them, or Remove stage to delete one.
Approver types
Beebole resolves approvers when the timesheet is submitted, based on its content. If a period contains entries on three projects, a Project managers stage includes the managers of all three.
Reviewing and approving your team’s timesheets
Approvers can act from four places: the Timesheet page, the Journal, directly from email, or from a phone.From the Timesheet page
Managers and administrators see an approval button (Approval) in the cluster at the top-left corner of the timesheet grid, with a red badge counting submissions waiting for them. It opens the Pending pane:- The pane lists each timesheet waiting for your approval, with Late submissions grouped at the top. Turn on Show all to include every pending submission you are allowed to see, not just those waiting for you.
- Click a person to open their timesheet for the submitted period. Approve and Reject buttons appear at the top of the timesheet whenever you are a pending approver — or an administrator.
- Select several submissions with the checkboxes to act in bulk with Approve and Reject.
- Approve and Reject act on the selected timesheets submitted for the period on screen and waiting for you — as an administrator, on any submitted one.
- Remind goes to the selected people who haven’t submitted — their period is a draft, rejected, or empty. People whose timesheet is approved, or submitted and waiting for someone else, are never reminded. Once the reminders are sent, those people are deselected and the submitted ones stay selected for approval.
From the Journal
Click Journal in the left sidebar. Approvers see a banner at the top of the feed — 1 timesheet to approve, or the total count — or All caught up when nothing is waiting. Expand the banner to review without leaving the page:- Each pending submission shows its total Hours and Billing amount — plus Cost, if your role can see costs.
- Click a person’s name to split their total by project, task, and absence type, or click View records for the day-by-day entries with their comments.
- Approve or reject one row, or select several and act in bulk.
Totals reflect timesheet entries you can see. Approve and reject act on the whole timesheet.
From your email
Approval notification emails include a summary of the submitted timesheet and Approve and Reject links that work straight from your inbox, without signing in. Approve applies the approval and opens the timesheet it acted on; Reject opens the same timesheet with the rejection dialog ready, since a reason is always required. Timesheet reminder emails likewise include a Submit now link when the period already holds entries, so your team can submit a completed period directly from the reminder. You can also decide by replying to the email — the approval email and the approval reminder both end with a note about it:- Reply with approve alone on the first line to approve.
- Reply with reject followed by your reason — on the same line or the lines below — to reject. A reject with no reason changes nothing.
From a phone
On a phone, the approval panes become a bottom sheet. Managers and administrators see a team icon in the header with a badge counting pending approvals; tapping it opens the same Pending and Team tabs, and Approve and Reject sit in the header of the timesheet you open, with bulk actions for several at once. The team icon only appears for people who can approve or review timesheets — if all you see are your own tracking controls, your role has no one to review. See Approving team timesheets on mobile.Rejecting a timesheet
Rejecting always requires an explanation. When you click Reject, a dialog opens with a comment box (Enter a reason for rejection…) — the Reject button stays disabled until you write one. The reason is delivered to the person and recorded in their Journal. A rejected timesheet unlocks for its owner. After correcting the entries, they click Resubmit and the workflow starts again from the first stage. Beebole records which entries were added, modified, or deleted since the previous submission, and uses that to spare approvers unnecessary work: a project or task manager who had already approved is only asked again if entries on their own projects or tasks changed.Time off approval
Time off goes through the same workflow as work time. When someone records an absence on their timesheet and submits the period, the configured approval stages review it along with the rest of the timesheet. The absence counts against the person’s allowance as soon as it is recorded — approval reviews and locks the entry but does not gate the balance. See Time off for absence types and allowances.Editing a submitted or approved timesheet
Submitting locks a timesheet for its owner, but it doesn’t have to be rejected to be corrected:
To edit on someone’s behalf, open the Pending or Team pane and click the edit button (Edit timesheet) on the person’s row. Their grid unlocks for you; the override switches off when you move to another person. Administrator edits never restart the workflow.
While you are editing, the timesheet makes it impossible to forget whose entries you are touching: the grid or calendar and every row picker are washed in the same highlight tint, the edit button on the person’s row fills with that color (Stop editing this timesheet), and an Editing badge appears next to the person’s name at the top of the page. Click the badge or the edit button again to stop editing. The override is tied to that one person — opening another person’s timesheet drops the tint and the badge along with it.
The edit button is not limited to administrators — managers and approvers see it too, on the rows they are allowed to correct. Beebole decides row by row, following the table above: a timesheet that is already Approved stays locked for everyone but an administrator, a Submitted one opens only for an approver of the current stage, and the two restrictions below can take the button away entirely.
Two settings in Timesheet and Planning Settings narrow this further. Only the owner or an admin can edit entries removes the approver column above, so only the owner and administrators can change entries. Only an admin can edit someone else’s timesheet leaves the owner’s own editing untouched but reserves every edit on another person’s timesheet for administrators.
Force approve and reject Admin only
Administrators can unblock the pipeline without reconfiguring it: they can Approve or Reject any submitted timesheet, even when they are not approvers for the current stage. An already-approved timesheet can also be rejected — by an administrator, or by someone who was an approver on its last stage — which sends it back to its owner. To reach an approved timesheet, open it from the Team pane, not the Pending pane: Pending only lists submissions still waiting for a decision, so an approved period is never there. Pick the person in Team, navigate to the approved period, and Reject appears at the top of their timesheet. Rejecting unlocks the period for its owner, who corrects the entries and clicks Resubmit. To fix an entry without sending the whole period back, use the edit button (Edit timesheet) described above instead.Reminders and notifications
- Remind approvers after a number of days if not yet approved — found in the Reminders tab of the Timesheet and Planning Settings panel — automatically follows up on submissions still waiting for review. Set it account-wide in Account Settings, or override it on a tag or a person, just like the approval workflow itself.
- The Remind button in the Team pane sends a one-off reminder to anyone who hasn’t submitted.
- Each person controls how they receive Approval updates — instantly or as a digest — in their notification settings. See Notifications.
Approval history
Every approval action is logged in the person’s Journal feed: Submitted for approval, Approved by and Rejected by entries with the approver’s name and the rejection reason, plus Auto-submitted and Auto-approved events, each tagged with its stage. For who approved what on the current submission, click the timesheet’s status badge to open the stage breakdown.Related content
Timesheets
Track time, submit your period, and review your team from the timesheet grid.
Timesheet and Planning Settings
Configure the timesheet period, auto-submit, entry restrictions, and reminders.
Time off
Set up absence types and allowances, and record time off on the timesheet.
Journal
Follow your team’s activity feed, messages, and approval events.
Frequently asked questions
Who approves my timesheet in Beebole?
Who approves my timesheet in Beebole?
It depends on the approval workflow your administrator configured. Each stage names an approver type — admins, project managers, people managers, task managers, tagged people, or specific people — and Beebole resolves the actual approvers from your timesheet’s content when you submit. Click the status badge on your timesheet to see each stage and who is pending.
What happens when my timesheet is rejected?
What happens when my timesheet is rejected?
The approver must enter a reason, which Beebole sends to you and records in your Journal. Your timesheet unlocks so you can correct the entries, then click Resubmit. The workflow runs again from the first stage, but approvers unaffected by your changes are not asked to re-approve.
Can different teams have different approval workflows in Beebole?
Can different teams have different approval workflows in Beebole?
Yes. The Approval workflow panel exists on the organization’s Account Settings, on every tag, and on every person’s profile. A workflow defined on a tag applies to everyone under that tag, and a workflow on a person overrides everything else — so each team can follow its own sign-off process.
What happens if no approval workflow is configured?
What happens if no approval workflow is configured?
Beebole approves timesheets automatically the moment they are submitted. Add at least one approval stage in the Approval workflow panel to require a review before timesheets are locked.
Does time off go through the same approval as work time?
Does time off go through the same approval as work time?
Yes. Absences recorded on the timesheet are submitted and approved together with the rest of the period, through the same approval stages. The time off counts against the person’s allowance as soon as it is recorded, even before it is approved.
How do I reopen an approved timesheet so its owner can edit it?
How do I reopen an approved timesheet so its owner can edit it?
Reject it. In Beebole an administrator — or an approver of the timesheet’s last stage — can reject an already-approved period, which unlocks it for its owner. Open the person from the Team pane of the timesheet (the Pending pane only shows submissions still awaiting approval), go to the approved period, click Reject, and enter the reason. If you only need to correct an entry yourself, click the edit button (Edit timesheet) on the person’s row instead — administrator edits don’t reopen the workflow.
Can I approve timesheets from my phone?
Can I approve timesheets from my phone?
Yes. On a phone, Beebole shows approvers a team icon in the header with the number of pending submissions. It opens a sheet with the Pending and Team tabs, and Approve and Reject appear in the header of the timesheet you open. The icon is absent for people who have nobody to review. See Mobile and tablet.
Can I reject a single time entry instead of the whole timesheet?
Can I reject a single time entry instead of the whole timesheet?
No. Beebole’s approval acts on the timesheet period as a whole: Reject sends the entire submitted period back to its owner with your reason, and they resubmit once corrected. To change one entry without rejecting, approvers of the current stage and administrators can edit the entry directly with the edit button (Edit timesheet) on the person’s row — see Editing a submitted or approved timesheet.