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Review and approve timesheets

Work through the Approvals tab on the Time page: approve or reject any logged entry, by week or one at a time, with a reason recorded for anything you send back.

What you'll achieve

Clear the Approvals queue: approve or reject logged time by week or by entry, with a reason recorded for anything rejected.

You'll end up with: A clear queue-clearing routine: approve what's right, reject what isn't with a reason, and a standing view of who's behind.

Before you start

There's no submitting in Monument's time review model: your team logs time, and it's already waiting for you. The Approvals tab on the Time page is where the decision gets made, a queue of what's logged, a week or entry at a time, and a standing view of who's kept up and who hasn't. We'll clear Sarah Chen's logged week on Riverside Apartments.

Who sees the Approvals tab

The tab only shows up once an admin has turned on Timesheet approvals for the organisation, and even then only for someone who can actually approve time: an admin, or someone with team access that gives them edit rights over the person's time, in practice usually that person's team lead. Nobody else sees it, since there'd be nothing they could do from it. See How permissions work for how that team-level access is granted.

Nothing to submit, it's just already there

Staff don't click anything to send their time your way. The moment Sarah logs an hour against Riverside Apartments, it's sitting in pending, the same status every entry starts in, and it stays there until you approve or reject it. Open the Approvals tab and it's already in the queue, grouped by person and week.

Clear the queue

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    Open Time from the navigation, then the Approvals tab.

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    Pending approvals lists logged time grouped by team member and week. If there's nothing waiting, it reads No pending approvals instead.

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    Approve a whole week at once with Approve week, when every entry in it looks right.

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    Or click the row's chevron to expand it, then work entry by entry: date, task, notes, tags and hours are all shown, with an Approve button on each row.

Clicking a week's date opens that person's own time calendar for that week in a read-only view, useful when a row's hours alone don't tell you enough and you want to see the whole week laid out the way they logged it.

Reject with a reason

Not everything holds up. Maybe an entry's on the wrong task, or the hours look off for the day. Rejecting is called Return in the dialog itself, and it always asks why.

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    Click Reject on the entry, or Reject... on the whole week.

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    The Return timesheet dialog opens, describing what needs fixing: "Explain what [name]'s entry needs to correct" (or "...week needs to correct" for a whole-week rejection).

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    Type the reason in the Reason field. Return time stays disabled until there's something in it.

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    Click Return time. The entry (or every entry in the week) goes back to pending.

There's no separate resubmit step on the other end. The owner sees why under View return reasons on their own Time page, and the moment they edit the entry to fix whatever you flagged, it's pending again, right back in your queue, exactly the same as if it had never been touched.

What approving actually locks

Approving isn't a soft status label, it's the strongest lock a time entry can carry. An approved entry reads "Locked: this time entry is approved" for absolutely everyone who opens it, including the person who approved it and every admin, not just the person who logged it. Once an entry is approved it also drops out of Pending approvals for good. See Time entry locks and overrides for what every lock message means and the one lock reason (age) that can be waived at all.

See where everyone stands

Below the queue, Recent week status shows a grid of your people against recent weeks, so you can see at a glance who's approved, who's still open, and whose week is sitting mixed or returned. It's the view to check before a payroll or billing cutoff, rather than hunting through Pending approvals week by week. A week reads Rejected the moment even one of its entries has been sent back, even if the rest are already approved, so it's the state that needs your attention first.

Both lists share the same Review range control above them: Last 4, 8, or 12 weeks, 8 by default. Widen it and Pending approvals reaches further back too, useful if something old was logged late and never reviewed.

Troubleshooting

  • No Approvals tab at all. Either Timesheet approvals isn't turned on for the organisation (an admin sets that on the Application tab in Settings), or the signed-in person doesn't have approval rights over anyone. See How permissions work.
  • Return time stays greyed out. The Reason field is still empty. A rejection always needs an explanation, there's no way to send one back with nothing written.
  • Can't approve your own logged week. Expected, unless you're an admin. Ask someone else with approval rights over your team to review it instead.
  • An old entry isn't showing up in Pending approvals. Widen Review range to 12 weeks; the queue only looks as far back as that selector is set.
  • A message says approvals are disabled, or that you no longer have permission to review this time. Either an admin turned Timesheet approvals off, or your access changed since the page loaded. Refresh and check with an admin if it persists.

Where this fits next

For a full read on every lock message you'll run into while reviewing, see Time entry locks and overrides. For what your team actually sees while logging the hours you're reviewing, see Log time on the calendar.