The Time Approval feature in Productive allows managers to review time entries before they are recognized in reports or, in the case of budgets, made billable to the client.
Approvals ensure that only accurate, relevant time entries are included in reporting, invoicing, or profitability tracking.
Turning On Time Approval
Time approvals need to be enabled at the organization level and then applied to budgets or deals.
Go to Settings > Time Tracking, and enable the Time Approval toggle.
📌 Once enabled, you can manage approvals individually in budgets and deals.
Where Time Approval Applies
Time approval can be used in different contexts in Productive:
Budgets
Users assigned as approvers review time before it becomes recognized and billable.
Approved time is included in budget usage and profitability reports.
Learn more: Time Approval in Budgets.
Deals
Time tracked in deals is often related to presales or sales work.
Users assigned as approvers can review and approve these entries, but they remain non-billable.
Only after a deal is won and time entries are transferred to a budget do they become billable.
Learn more: Time Approval in Deals.
Assigning Approvers With Approval Policies
Instead of choosing approvers one by one per budget or a deal, you can create an approval policy once and reuse it across budgets or deals. A policy assigns approvers for both time and expenses.
👉 Setting Up Time and Expenses Approval Policies for Budgets
👉 Setting Up Time and Expenses Approval Policies for Deals
How Time Approvals Work
When time approvals are enabled, approvers can review new time entries. Only after approval do entries become recognized and used in reports. Here’s the general process:
1) Notification and Approval Screen
Approvers receive a notification when a time entry is added (or submitted using the Time Entry Submission feature).
Pending entries appear in your Approval Inbox.
2) Approval Timeline
Entries logged today will show up for approval the following day.
Entries logged on future dates will become available for approval on the day after they are logged.
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
Further Reading: Timesheet Submission (Ultimate plan)
Employees can formally submit daily or weekly timesheets for approval. Managers can track submission status, send reminders, and exclude certain employees if needed.
This adds an extra step to the approval process but does not replace budget or deal approval rules.
👉 Learn more in Setting Up Time Entry Submissions.
Good to Know
If time approval is enabled after entries have already been logged, those past entries are automatically marked as approved.
By default, admins (or users with the Approve time entries on behalf of any approver permission) can approve other people's time, ensuring continuity if the designated approver is unavailable. When bulk approving, they can choose Approve for all approvers to approve all pending statuses on selected entries at once, not just their own.
When an entry has more than one approver, one change request is enough to reject it. 👉 Learn how approval types and change requests work in How Approvals Work With Multiple Approvers.