Timesheet and planning settings: configuring time entry

Timesheet settings control how everyone in your Beebole account records time: the period they fill and submit, the unit and format for entries, what they can track time on, which restrictions apply, and when Beebole sends reminders. While people use the timesheet itself from the sidebar (see Timesheets), you configure it from the Timesheet and Planning Settings panel.

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Opening Timesheet and Planning Settings

Settings made here apply account-wide. The same panel also exists on every tag and on each person’s profile, so you can override any setting for one team or one person — see Different settings for different teams.

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Period & submission

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Timesheet period

The Timesheet period defines the stretch of time a timesheet covers — the period people fill in, submit, and have approved as one unit. It is not just a display preference: each period is one timesheet.

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Auto-submit

Auto-submit timesheets after X days submits unsubmitted timesheets automatically once the configured number of days has passed since the period ended. The auto-submitted timesheet enters the approval workflow like a manual submission. Leave the value at 0 to disable auto-submit. At the deadline, suggested time entries still pending on the period are converted into real entries before the submission, so a timesheet assembled from suggestions submits itself. Every entry still respects the entry rules — a suggestion a restriction refuses is trimmed to fit the day’s remaining scheduled time, or skipped if it still doesn’t fit. Timesheet reminders announce the deadline in advance, so nobody is surprised by an automatic submission. Auto-submit only ever acts on one period per person: the most recent one whose deadline has passed. Older periods are never revisited, so switching the setting on doesn’t submit months of history at once. A period that already has a status — submitted, approved, or rejected — is left alone, and an empty period is never submitted: if it holds no time entries and no suggestion could be converted, nothing is sent to approvers. If a period can’t be processed, it stays a draft and is badged Auto-submit failed in the approval view — administrators are notified so they can review it by hand.

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Lock date

The Lock date freezes every time record on or before the chosen day. Time records on or before that day can no longer be created, edited, moved, or deleted — by anyone, administrators included. Attempts are refused with the message Timesheet and Planning Settings prevent any change to the locked date. Use it to close accounting periods: once payroll or invoicing for a month is done, set the lock date to the end of that month and the underlying data can’t drift. The freeze applies everywhere time records change hands, including the BambooHR time-off sync. The lock also closes the period to submission. A period whose last day is on or before the lock date can no longer be submitted for approval — Beebole answers This period is locked and cannot be submitted for approval. A period that straddles the lock date stays submittable by hand, since its unlocked days are still the person’s to account for, but auto-submit leaves it alone: it skips any period that starts on or before the lock date. When several entries are deleted at once — clearing a section, or deleting a selection in the calendar — Beebole checks every entry before removing any of them. If one of them falls on or before the lock date, nothing is deleted.

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Restrictions

The Restrictions list controls what time entries the timesheet accepts. New accounts start with two restrictions active: An absence can’t be longer than a day and Require filling the whole schedule to submit (period). When none is active, the panel shows No restrictions configured. Pick a rule from the Add restriction menu to activate it; click the × on a restriction’s chip to remove it. Restrictions with daily and period variants show each active variant as a tag on the chip, and you can activate one or both. The warning and block variants are exclusive — activating one replaces the other. Hide the non-billable option also protects the data behind the form. Any attempt to mark an entry as non-billable — from the timesheet or through the API — is refused with Your timesheet settings do not offer the non-billable option. Entries marked before you activated the restriction keep their flag, and clearing it stays allowed. When entries are copied to another period, the copies arrive without the non-billable flag, even if the originals carried it. The setting follows the timesheet owner: like every restriction, it is resolved through the account, the person’s tags, and the person, so a rule set on a tag applies to everyone under it. Independently of any restriction, a submitted or approved period is locked for its owner while it waits in the approval workflow, and records on or before the Lock date can’t change at all.

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Rules set elsewhere

Two more rules apply to every time entry without appearing in the Restrictions list, because they are configured on the items they protect:

• Valid period for time entry — This panel, available on a project, a person, and a tag, sets a From and To date between which time can be logged. An entry outside the window is refused with This time record falls outside the validity period of: followed by the project or person it comes from. When several windows could apply, the most specific one wins: the entry’s project first (its deepest level first), then the person, and a person or project inherits a window set on its tags.
• Time off allowances — A time off entry can’t push the person past the balance of the allowance that covers that day. Beebole refuses it with This booking exceeds the available quota for: followed by the absence type. An allowance with Allow negative balance checked lifts the limit for the days it covers, and an absence type with no allowance is never limited.

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Time entry

The Time entry tab defines what people type into a timesheet cell.

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Unit for time entry

Unit for time entry sets the unit for every timesheet cell:

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Duration format

When the unit is Hours, two more options appear:

• Duration format — how hour values are displayed and typed: 3:15 (hours and minutes), 3.25 (decimal hours), or 3h15 (compact hours-and-minutes notation).
• Minimum time interval accepted — the smallest increment the timesheet accepts. Durations are rounded up to the nearest multiple of this interval; new accounts start at 15 minutes.

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Timer, start and end times, and comments

• Enable timer adds a timer button to each timesheet row so people can time their work as it happens — see Using the timer. Check Mandatory next to it to require the timer: durations can then only be recorded by running it.
• Record start and end times adds Start time and End time fields to each entry’s details, and Beebole calculates the duration. Check Mandatory next to it to require start and end times on every entry.
• Require comments for submission requires a note on time entries before the timesheet can be submitted.

Checking Mandatory switches its parent option on automatically, and disabling a parent option clears its Mandatory checkbox.

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Categories

The Categories tab decides what people can track time on. Each choice becomes a section of rows in everyone’s timesheet.

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Project categories

Record time on these project categories lists the project categories available in the timesheet. Each row of the list is one timesheet section:

• A row with a single category — for example Client — lets people pick one project from that category per timesheet row.
• A row with chained categories — First Client, then Activity — makes people pick one entry for each level: first a client project, then an activity.
• Click Add a row to offer an alternative section, and pick its categories with Pick a category.

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Plannings

Record time on these plannings does the same for tasks: people can add timesheet rows for tasks in the selected plannings (task categories). Add one with Pick a planning.

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Time off

Allow recording time off controls whether a Time Off section appears in the timesheet, where people add rows for absence types. See Time off.

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Reminders

The Reminders tab configures two kinds of follow-up.

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Reminding people to submit

Remind to submit sends a reminder by email, following each person’s notification settings, to anyone who hasn’t submitted their timesheet. Choose when it goes out:

• Start of next period — on the first day of the new period, about the period that just ended.
• End of current period — on the last day of the period being filled.

Then pick the hour. The reminder is sent at that hour in each person’s time zone, includes a summary of their timesheet, and lets them submit directly from the email. People who already submitted are skipped, and reminders don’t apply when the timesheet period is Daily.

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Reminding approvers

Remind approvers after a number of days if not yet approved follows up on submitted timesheets that are still waiting for review. The first reminder goes out the configured number of days after the approver’s initial notification; while the timesheet stays pending, Beebole follows up a few more times at increasing intervals. Leave the value at 0 to disable approver reminders.

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Warning about unassigned tasks

Notify everyone involved a number of days before an unassigned task starts warns about planned work nobody has picked up. The task manager and the people assigned to the task are notified — the admins when the task has no manager. This setting exists account-wide only, and 0 disables it.

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Auto Timesheet from Planning

The Auto Timesheet from Planning tab turns work planned on tasks into timesheet entries, so people who did what was planned don’t have to fill their timesheet by hand. When several tasks finish the same day, the day is split between them. Entries the person logged manually are never touched — automatic entries rebalance around them, and each accepted entry records which source it came from.

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Different settings for different teams

Timesheet settings cascade. Values set on Account Settings apply to everyone, but the same Timesheet and Planning Settings panel also appears on every tag and on every person’s profile:

• Set a value on a tag to override the account default for everyone under that tag — for example, a monthly Timesheet period for one department.
• Set a value on a person to override both the tag and the account default for that one person.

Next to each setting, an icon shows where its current value is inherited from. After overriding a value, you can reset it to fall back to the inherited one.

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Related content

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Frequently asked questions