Time Card Approvals allow you to confirm that your employees' time cards/timesheets are accurate from the perspective of the employee, their supervisor, and/or office administrator for a given pay period. To begin using time approvals, you must enable the feature, any supplemental options, and grant permission to approve time for non-administrators.

Table of Contents

• Enabling Time Card Approval
• Enabling Approval Permissions
  • For ExakTime Connect
  • For ExakTime Mobile
• How to Approve Time Cards

Enabling Time Card Approval

1. Go to Manage and click Company Settings.

   

2. Click the Time & Attendance tab.

   

3. Use the checkbox for Enable time card approval and specify the approval period.
   • If you are switching from 'By Pay Period' to 'Daily' and vice versa, it is recommended to switch on the first day of a pay period for the cleanest switchover. If the switch is made during a pay period, then the existing approvals for that pay period will be removed and time cards will need to be re-approved based on the new approval method.
   • Keep in mind that if a time card has been approved daily, it is possible that the time someone is approving may not necessarily be the final time that an employee is ultimately paid for. There could be instances where the application of policies has the potential to change the hours of approved days.

   

4. Save your changes.

Learn more about Company Settings from our dedicated article.

Granting Approval Permissions

After Time Approvals have been enabled for your ExakTime system, you will need to specify which security roles can approve time and at what level. ExakTime Connect Administrators will be able to approve their own time and can sign off on employees' time by default and this cannot be changed

For ExakTime Connect

To allow an employee,  supervisor, or office administrator to approve their own or other timecards/timesheets in ExakTime Connect, their security role must have the necessary permissions. 

1. Go to Manage and click Security Roles.

   

2. Click ExakTime Connect to view your security roles.

   

3. The left-hand side will be a list of available roles. By default, we offer Administrator and Employee. More roles can be created for other groups of employees if necessary. The Administrator role cannot be adjusted. The right-hand side will list available permissions.

   

4. You will need to enable the following permissions for any Non-Administrator role; "My Timecard" and "Time Approval".

   

   

   • "My Timecard/My Timesheet" has the following options:

     • No Access - No access to My Timecard/My Timesheet.
     • Access All - Access all options listed.
     • View – View their own time.
     • Edit – Edit their own time.
     • Delete – Delete a time record.
   • "Time Approval" has the following options:
     • No Access - No access to Time Approvals.
     • Employee – Approve their own time for the pay period.
     • Supervisor - Approve other employees as a Supervisor for the pay period. This can also allow Supervisors to receive email notifications when employees in their viewset approve their time and after all their employees approve their time. If a supervisor has their viewset set to "All Employees", they will not receive any notifications. 
     • Sign Off – Approve their own time and sign off other employees time at the Administrative level.

     Note: You cannot have both Supervisor and Sign Off approval.

5. "Approve Time Cards That Contain Exceptions" lets you allow time cards to be approved if they contain exceptions (incomplete and/or overlapping time records).

   

6. Save any changes. You can now assign the security role to your employees/supervisors. If you are unfamiliar with assigning a security role, you can follow the steps in the following article to assign security roles through the security roles page or through an employee profile.
7. Supervisors may also need to update their viewsets so they can view other employees in ExakTime. If you are unfamiliar with employee viewsets, you can refer to the following article.

For Employee/Supervisor Approval in ExakTime Mobile

For an employee to approve their own time in ExakTime Mobile, you will first need to enable the permission(s) for their ExakTime Mobile security role.

1. Go to Manage and click on Security Roles.

   

2. The left-hand side will be a list of available roles. By default, we offer Administrator, Supervisor, Employee, and No Access. Select the role that should be able to approve their own time or add a new security role. The Administrator role cannot be adjusted. The right-hand side will list available permissions.

   

3. Enable the appropriate approval permission for the employee and/or supervisor.

   

   • Enable "Employee: can approve own time" so the employee(s) can approve their own time.
     • "Can Approve Time Records That Have Exceptions" allows employees and supervisors to approve their time card even if the time card is incomplete or needs to be corrected e.g. the employee forgot to clock in or out on a day, overlapping time, etc.
   • Enable "Supervisor: can approve time cards for employees in their viewset" so supervisors can approve the time of other employees. For more information about setting up a supervisor's viewset, please refer to the following article.
     • "Can Approve Time Records That Have Exceptions" allows supervisors to approve the time card even if the time card is incomplete or needs to be corrected e.g. the employee forgot to clock in or out on a day, overlapping time, etc.
4. Save your changes. You can now assign the security role to your employees/supervisors. If you are unfamiliar with assigning a security role, you can follow the steps in the following article to assign security roles through the security roles page or through an employee profile.
5. Supervisors may also need to update their viewsets so they can view other employees in ExakTime. If you are unfamiliar with employee viewsets, you can refer to the following article.
6. After making the appropriate changes to an employee's security role and employee viewsets, they will need to sync their copies of ExakTime Mobile to receive the new changes. They may also need to log out and log back in to ExakTime Mobile to see any menu changes. 

How to Approve Time

After an employee or supervisor is granted permission to approve time, you can have them refer to the resources below on what to do:

• How to Approve an Employee's Time in ExakTime - All the available methods for an admin/supervisor to approve an employee's time.
• How to Approve Your Timecard on ExakTime Connect - Steps for an employee on approving their timecard.
• How to Approve Your Timesheet on ExakTime Connect - Steps for an employee on approving their timesheet.
• How to Approve Your Time on ExakTime Mobile - Steps for an employee to approve their time on ExakTime Mobile.
• How to Approve Other Employees' Time on ExakTime Mobile - Steps for a supervisor to approve their employee's time on ExakTime Mobile.

Some articles can also be accessed by employees/supervisors from the Help section of ExakTime Mobile.

We also offer a video training on what supervisors will do on Arcoro Learning.