Productive provides enhanced control over time entry approvals with two new permissions: "Approve Time Entries Where User Is Approver" and "Approve Time Entries on Budgets Where User Is a Member."
These permissions, found in the Permission Builder, help you manage who can approve time entries, ensuring that only authorized users have access to this function.
Building custom permission sets is available on the Ultimate subscription plan.
Setting Up Custom Permission Sets
1) Creating a New Permission Set
To start, navigate to Settings > Permission sets and select + New permission set. This allows you to create a customized set of permissions to be assigned to your users.
2) Adjusting Permissions for Time Entry Approvals
In the Time entries section, you can customize the following permissions for approving time entries:
Approve Time Entries Where User Is Approver
This permission allows users to approve time entries within budgets where they are the designated approver. For now, this is the budget owner. Future updates will expand this permission to include other roles, such as project managers or people managers.
Key Notes:
Users with this permission enabled will only see time entries linked to their budgets when accessing the Approvals screen. The "Owner" filter will be disabled, preventing them from viewing time entries managed by other budget owners.
In the Project Time tab, these users can view all time entries within a project, but their ability to approve them will depend on whether they are assigned as the responsible approver within a certain budget.
If the user is responsible for a time entry, they can approve it. Otherwise, the approval buttons will be disabled, although the time entries will still be visible.
Approve Time Entries on Budgets Where User Is a Member
This permission gives users the ability to approve all time entries within any budget they are a member of, expanding their approval authority beyond just the entries they are directly responsible for.
Key Notes:
Enabling this permission will automatically activate two dependent permissions: "Approve Time Entries Where User Is Approver" and "View Time Entries on Budgets Where User Is a Member".
Users with this permission can view and approve time entries without restrictions on approval actions, as long as they are members of the relevant budgets.
Note: If the user has unrestricted permissions (Admins, Managers, Profitability Managers), they can approve time entries across all budgets by default. This offers broader approval authority compared to the more limited permissions mentioned previously.
The "Owner" filter remains enabled on the Approval screen, and approval actions are available for all time entries on the Project Time tab.
3) Default Permission Sets
Productive includes system default permission sets, providing a starting point (base permission set) when creating custom permission sets.
These default sets come with pre-included permissions to simplify the setup process.
Note: Contractor permission set cannot be adjusted with custom permissions.
For users with restricted variants of their permission set, such as Restricted Manager and Restricted Profitability Manager, they must be added to the relevant budgets to view and approve time entries.
4) Finalizing and Applying Permissions
Once you’ve configured the permissions, save your new permission set and assign it to the relevant users. This setup ensures that only authorized users have the ability to approve time entries according to their roles.
Use Case: Granular Control Over Time Entry Approvals
To refine control over approvals, you can enable "Approve Time Entries Where User Is Approver" while disabling "Approve Time Entries on Budgets Where User Is a Member".
This limits the approval function to only the specific entries where the user is set as the approver (for now, this is the budget owner).
