In Productive, you can track time on deals even before they are won. This can be useful, for example, when working on presales or sales-related activities.
Although tracked time in deals can be approved (or rejected), it is never billable at the deal level. Only after a deal is won and time entries are transferred to the related budget does the time become billable and visible in profitability calculations.
Before You Start: Turn on the Time Approval Functionality
1) Navigate to Settings > Time Tracking.
2) Enable the Time Approval toggle.
📌 This setting applies across Productive. Once enabled, time approval can be required not only in budgets but also in deals.
Time Approval for Individual Deals
Once Time Approval is enabled in Settings, navigate to the deal, open the deal sidebar and select the Settings tab (marked by the gear ⚙️ icon).
Under Time & Expense Approval, click Edit approval policy to assign approvers for time entries—and, if needed, for expenses logged against services in the same deal.
👉 Read more about expense approvals here.
You can then choose how approvers are assigned:
No Policy: Manually assign one or more approvers for this budget’s time entries. You can choose the budget owner, the manager of the person submitting the entry, the project manager (if the deal is part of a project), or a specific person.
Approval Type: Decide how the assigned approvers need to act:
Any of the listed approvers – only one approver from the list is required.
All of the listed approvers – every assigned approver must approve.
No approval needed – skip the approval process entirely.
Predefined Policy: Select an existing time and expense approval policy, which automatically assigns approvers for both time and expenses to this deal.
Good to Know: Tracking Options in Deals
Before you start approving time entries against services in deals, it’s important to understand when time tracking is actually allowed. This depends on two settings:
Service level – deal owners and managers can allow or restrict tracking for specific services.
Deal stage level – admins can configure whether time can be tracked at certain stages of the sales process (via Sales Settings). This setting overrides any tracking options defined at the service level within an individual deal.
Approving Time Entries
The designated approver must approve tracked time before it is recognized. Here’s how the approval flow works:
1) Notification and the Approval Inbox
After a time entry is added, the approver receives a notification.
The time entry will appear on the approver's approval inbox, showing entries that are awaiting review.
2) Approval Timeline
Entries logged today won’t appear in the approval inbox until the following day.
Entries logged on future dates become available for approval the day after they are logged.
This delay helps prevent notification overload and gives users time to complete their time entries before they reach approvers.
📌 Note: Even if entries don’t appear in the approval inbox immediately, approvers can still approve them directly from the deal in the Time tab or under Company Time.
3) Actions in the Approval Inbox
✅ Approve the entry
🔄 Request changes
⋮ Edit the entry (date, service, description, hours)
⏱ View timer logs (if the timer was used)
🗑 Delete the entry
4) Recognition and Billability
Approved entries in deals are marked as recognized, but remain non-billable.
After winning the deal, transferring those entries to a budget will make them billable and included in profitability reports.
Changing the Deal Owner, Manager, or the Project Manager for Approvals
The deal owner, the project manager (if the deal is part of a project), or the manager of a person submitting the entry are dynamic fields that can be used as approvers for time entries.
To change the manager of a person, go to the person’s profile: Resourcing > Employees > Info tab > Manager.
To change the deal owner, open the deal sidebar and select the General deal info tab (🏠). Click Edit general deal info, select a new deal owner from the dropdown, and then click Update deal to save your changes.
To change the project manager, open the project sidebar and select the General tab (🏠). Click Edit project, select a new project manager from the dropdown, and then click Update project to save your changes.
Related Reading
👉 Time tracked in budgets can also require approval. Learn how budget time approvals work.
👉 Employees can formally submit their timesheets for approval before entries are reviewed and recognized. See setting up time entry submissions.