Timesheets FAQ
Answers to common setup and operating questions about Timesheets.
For what the app is and how to set it up from scratch, see the
Timesheets Overview.
Setup
Do I need to configure pay periods before timesheets start working?
Yes. Timesheets generates one sheet per employee per pay period, so a pay-period schedule must exist first. Go to Admin → Pay Period Settings and set the period type and start date. Without a pay period, employees see an empty page and no reminders fire.
What are the three approval routing modes?
The Primary Timesheet Approver setting in Timesheets → Settings controls which managers receive submission notifications:
- Permission-Based (default) — every manager who holds the Approve capability for Timesheets is notified.
- Direct Manager — only the employee’s direct manager (the person in their reports-to chain) is notified.
- Location Manager — managers assigned to the employee’s location are notified.
This setting controls who is notified, not who is authorized. Any user whose role includes the Timesheets Approve capability can approve a timesheet they navigate to, regardless of which routing mode is active.
Permissions and access
Who can approve timesheets, and can someone approve their own?
Admins and super-admins can always approve. Managers can approve by default — the Timesheets Approve capability is included in the manager role. Custom org roles can also be granted the capability. Members (regular employees) cannot approve.
No one can approve their own timesheet. Self-approval is blocked at both the permission layer and the controller — the system checks that the approver is a different person from the timesheet owner.
Who can change Timesheet settings?
Only admins and super-admins. The entire Timesheets → Settings page requires admin-level access. Managers can approve timesheets but cannot change deadlines, approval routing, auto-approval thresholds, or any other setting.
Day-to-day
How are timesheets created — do employees have to start them?
Timesheets are created automatically. The first time an employee opens the Timesheets page for a pay period, a sheet is generated if one does not already exist. Clock-in, clock-out, and break data from Time & Attendance sync into the entries automatically, including ad-hoc (unscheduled) shifts. A nightly job also pre-creates timesheets for new pay periods so they are ready before anyone opens the page.
Can an employee take back a submitted timesheet before it’s approved?
Yes. An employee can recall a submitted timesheet as long as it has not yet been approved (or moved to regional approval). Recalling sets the sheet back to Pending so the employee can edit entries and resubmit. No manager action is needed.
What can an employee do after a timesheet is already approved?
The employee can submit a correction request. This sends a notification with the employee’s reason to the manager who approved the sheet (and the regional approver, if applicable). If the original approvers have left the business, the notification goes to all users with Timesheets Approve authority instead. The approved timesheet itself remains locked — the correction is handled outside the timesheet workflow.
How is overtime calculated when a pay period spans more than one week?
Overtime is calculated per 7-day workweek, not per pay period. Within each week, hours past the overtime threshold (default 40 hours) are counted as overtime at 1.5× and hours past the double-time threshold (default 60 hours) are counted as double time at 2.0×. Both thresholds are configurable per business. If a location has a labor-law rule with a lower threshold — including a daily overtime threshold — the lower of the business and the labor-law value is used.
A biweekly period where an employee works 45 hours one week and 30 hours the next correctly shows 5 hours of overtime, not zero.
What reminders does the system send, and when does it stop?
The system sends these automated reminders:
- Submission reminders — due tomorrow, due today, and overdue notifications to employees who have not submitted.
- End-of-period reminders — sent in the days before a pay period ends.
- Missing-punch reminders — sent to employees whose timesheet has entries without a clock-in or clock-out.
- Approval reminders — sent to managers when a submitted timesheet is waiting for review.
- Escalation — sent to admins when an approval is overdue past the escalation threshold (default 48 hours). Escalation is on by default and can be turned off.
- Manager nudge — a manager can manually send a reminder from the Team Timesheets dashboard to employees who have not submitted.
Overdue reminders are sent daily for the first 3 sends, then weekly, with a hard cap of 8 total reminders per timesheet. Reminders stop once the period’s pay date has passed.
How do pay premiums stack when more than one rule applies?
Premium rules resolve in priority order (lower priority number = higher priority). Once a rule marked Exclusive applies, no further rules stack on top of it except those explicitly marked Stackable. Each premium is calculated as a percentage, a flat rate, or a rate override, depending on the premium type’s configuration. Rules can have start and end dates, so a premium can be active for a specific window.
Five categories are available: Shift Differential, Acting Pay, Hazard, Call-Back, and Custom. Premiums are applied automatically when a timesheet is submitted.
Can managers approve or reject timesheets from the AI assistant?
Yes. The AI Timekeeping assistant lets employees ask about their hours, overtime, status, and due dates in plain language. An authorized approver can also approve or reject a submitted timesheet from chat. The assistant shows a confirmation preview before making any change, and the approval is gated by the same Timesheets Approve permission — a manager without that capability only sees read-only answers.
Auto-approval scoring
How does auto-approval scoring decide what to clear and what to flag?
When enabled, every submitted timesheet is scored on a 100-point scale. A flawless sheet scores 100; points are deducted per anomaly:
| Anomaly | Default deduction |
|---|---|
| Missing punch | 8 points each |
| Edited entry | 2 points each |
| Schedule deviation (more than 15 minutes from scheduled start) | 3 points each |
| Overtime hours | 1 point per hour |
| Suspicious IP address | 15 points each |
| Punch outside the allowed window | 15 points each |
| Unreviewed attendance record | 10 points each |
Sheets scoring at or above the threshold (default 95, configurable from 1 to 100) with no blocking anomaly are approved automatically. Everything below is flagged for the manager triage queue. The manager approval dashboard shows separate Flagged and Auto-Approved filters.
Admins can tune the per-anomaly weights for three factors — missing punches, edited entries, and schedule deviation — from Timesheets → Settings → Accuracy Score Weighting. The other four factors use the platform defaults and cannot be adjusted per business.
Auto-approval scoring is off by default and is disabled while two-level regional approval is on.
Which anomalies always block auto-approval regardless of score?
Three anomaly types always route the timesheet to a human, even if the numeric score is above the threshold:
- Suspicious IP address — a punch from an IP flagged as suspicious.
- Punch outside the allowed window — a punch recorded outside the geofence or time window.
- Unreviewed attendance record — an attendance record that still requires manual review.
If any of these has a count above zero, the timesheet is flagged for manager review.
When something looks wrong
“My employee’s timesheet shows zero hours even though they clocked in”
The most common cause is that the attendance records have not synced to the timesheet yet. Entries are created from Time & Attendance data — if the employee clocked in but their attendance record is incomplete (for example, they forgot to clock out), the entry may show as a missing punch with zero payable hours. Have the employee check their attendance record in Time & Attendance first, then re-open the timesheet.
If attendance records exist but the timesheet is empty, the employee may be looking at the wrong pay period. Timesheets are generated per period — use the date range at the top to confirm the period matches the days worked.
“An employee forgot to clock in — can they file a missing punch after the fact?”
Yes. The employee can file a missing-punch request from the Attendance page or from the timesheet view. The request asks for the clock-in time, clock-out time, an optional break, and a reason (5 to 1,000 characters). It is routed to the employee’s manager for review.
The request must fall within the Retroactive Correction Window, which is set in Timesheet settings (default 7 days). If the period is older than the window, the request cannot be submitted. Setting the window to 0 allows requests for any past date.
“A manager can’t complete regional approval on a timesheet they already approved at the first level”
This is by design. When two-level approval is on, the system enforces a segregation-of-duties rule: the manager who gave first-level approval cannot also give regional approval. A different manager must complete the second step.
If your business needs the same manager to handle both levels (for example, a small team with one manager), enable Allow Manager Override in Timesheets → Settings. When this is on, the first-level approver can also give regional approval.
Licensing and limits
What are the hard limits I should know about?
| Limit | Value |
|---|---|
| Maximum hours per timesheet entry | 24 hours |
| Maximum break duration per entry | 480 minutes (8 hours) |
| Clock-out time cannot be more than | 5 minutes in the future |
| Timesheet import file size | 2 MB |
| Accepted import formats | CSV, XLSX, XLS |
| Auto-approval threshold range | 1–100 (default 95) |
| Missing-punch reason length | 5–1,000 characters |
| Overdue reminders before the system stops | 8 (3 daily, then weekly) |
| SFTP schedule frequencies | Daily, Weekly, Monthly |
| Retroactive correction window | Configurable (default 7 days; 0 = unlimited) |
More help
- Timesheets Overview
- Time & Attendance Overview — how clock-ins reach the timesheet.
- Shifts & Scheduling Overview — how scheduled shifts populate entries.
- Ask AI — the assistant answers Timesheets questions from these articles.