Signing off timesheets
Record that a supervisor checked somebody's hours, one entry or a whole backlog at once.
Sign-off records that a human looked at somebody’s hours before they went to your accounting system: who checked them, and when. It is a review step, not a gate - signing off does not submit anything, and an entry that nobody signed off can still be submitted exactly as before.
What it is for
It answers one question, and only that one: did a supervisor check this?
Nothing in the submit path looks at it. Submit, Submit All, a team member submitting from their phone, auto-submit and the overnight submission all behave exactly as they always have, signed off or not. There is no setting that makes sign-off compulsory before submitting.
Turning it on
Two things have to be set.
Step by step: switch sign-off on
- Open Settings → Time Recordings Settings and tick Allow timesheets to be signed off. It is off unless you turn it on. With it off there is no Sign Off button, no tick on any row, and nothing can be signed off at all.
- Open Users and tick Can sign off timesheets for each supervisor who should be able to do it. Admins can always sign off without the tick.
The per-user tick is greyed out while the company switch is off - it would mean nothing until the company switch is on, so the screen says so rather than letting you set something that does not apply yet.
Signing off
Sign-off happens in one place: the Sign Off button on the Timesheets screen, beside Submit All. It opens in two steps.
Step 1 - who, and over what dates. The same popup the PDF button uses: a From and To date, defaulting to the week you are looking at, and a checklist of your team with an All box on top. It defaults to whoever the screen is already showing, or All.
Step 2 - the worklist. What came back, grouped by person. Each person gets a heading with their name, how many entries they have, their total hours, and a Sign off all for name button. Under it, one line per entry: the date, the job, the hours, the labour code and the start and stop times. Each line has either a Sign off button, or the sign-off tick and an Un-sign button.
The list only ever contains entries that have not been submitted yet, which is the point - sign-off is something you do before the hours go out, not after.
A few details worth knowing:
- Sign off all for name covers only the one person it sits above, over the dates you asked for, and nothing else. Hover it and it tells you the count and the range.
- The list is re-read from the server after every action, so what you are looking at is always what is actually stored.
- Entries recorded as hours only, with no start and stop time, leave that column blank. That is a normal way to record an entry, not missing data.
- If Exclude Lunch Breaks from Totals is on for your company, a person’s total here excludes lunch exactly as the week table does - and says so, as 0.00 hours (4.00 lunch excluded), so a total that disagrees with the rows beneath it explains itself.
Seeing it afterwards
On the Timesheets screen, a signed-off row carries a tick beside it. Hover the tick and it says Signed off by name on date and time - in your own local time, not UTC.
The rows in the week table only report sign-off; they have no button to change it. That is deliberate: reviewing somebody’s hours is a pass over a whole week rather than something you do while keying in one row, so there is one route to it rather than two, and that last cell is already five buttons wide.
Un-signing, and what withdraws a sign-off by itself
You can un-sign an entry that has not been submitted - use Un-sign in the worklist.
You cannot un-sign one that has been submitted. The hours are already in your accounting system, so withdrawing the authorisation afterwards would record something nothing can act on. (Signing off an already-submitted entry is allowed - it is harmless record-keeping, and the bulk route will meet stragglers.)
Editing an entry’s content clears its sign-off. Change the hours, times, job, labour code, description, comment or cost centre and the tick goes, because the tick vouched for the figures somebody looked at - and those are no longer the figures.
Adding or changing only the note does not clear it. The note is not what was authorised.
What it does not do
- It does not appear in the Mobile app. A team member does not sign off their own hours.
- It does not notify anybody. Nobody is waiting on a sign-off to get on with their work, so there is nothing to email.
- It is not on the timesheet PDF yet.
See also
- Timesheets - the screen it lives on, and submitting.
- Users - the Can sign off timesheets permission.
- Add a timesheet entry - keying somebody’s hours in for them.
- Timesheet PDF - the other popup that uses the same staff-and-dates picker.