Configuring Timesheet Periods for Approvals

The timesheet approval process starts with configuring the timesheet periods for your company. These are the periods in which employees log their time and then submit their timesheet and get it approved by team leads or managers. Each timesheet is tied to a specific period for tracking time, reporting, and planning.

On the Period Configuration page (see below), you can configure the monthly timesheet periods, the weekly periods, and the frequency of the timesheet approval periods (either monthly or weekly).

At the end of a timesheet period, it needs to be closed manually on the Period Management page. This is usually done by the accounting team because it is part of the month-end processes that deal with payroll and customer billing. However, anyone with Tempo administrator permissions can also do this.

You can also optionally configure the Scheduler to send email notifications to users that a period is ending soon. In addition, the Scheduler can also automatically close periods so that nobody can log their time in that period - the timesheets are locked. As a failsafe, the Scheduler allows team leads to grant grace periods to their team members to let them finish logging their time and submit their timesheets after a period has closed.

Set Up the Timesheet Period for Approvals

1. Select Settings   in the Tempo sidebar.

2. Under Periods, click Period Configuration.

3. Configure the default timesheet periods used for closing reporting periods, worklogs, and billing:

   • Monthly Periods - Select the Start month (either December of January) and Start day for the period. These periods are created for the whole year, even if you’re only going to start using them later in the year. What you set here is displayed in the Period Management where you can close or open timesheet periods.

     On the last day of the period, users must submit their timesheets for approval.

     It's recommended that the monthly period matches the dates of the financial period at your organization. Check with your accounting team to see which start day works best for their processes.

   • Weekly Periods - Tempo follows the ISO 8601 standard for weekly periods where Monday is the first day of the week. This applies even when you choose a different start date for the weekly period.

4. Select the Periods Used for Approvals as either Monthly or Weekly. This is the frequency at which the timesheet approval process is run - that is, how often users submit their timesheets for approval and team leads/managers review and approve or reject timesheets.

   Monthly is usually frequent enough for many organizations to run the approval process since there is some overhead involved in approving timesheets.

If you use Weekly approvals and change the start day for the week, all previously approved weeks appear as if they have not been submitted for approval. The previously approved worklogs will remain approved in the database even though the view shows them as unsubmitted after the date change.