Timesheet approval software
Review every hour before it hits a client invoice. Members submit weekly timesheets. Managers approve or reject with a reason. Only approved hours are invoiceable. The audit trail is complete.
Approvals included on the Business plan.
Acme Corp · Rebuilt the checkout flow; tested across browsers.
Startup Inc · Migration planning meeting.
Acme Corp · "Worked on stuff". Needs detail.
Unreviewed timesheets are where billing errors get through
Most teams have the story. A junior logged a 12-hour day that was actually 4 hours. A contractor's "Worked on Acme" entry made it onto the invoice. A description that looked fine at the time read terribly when the client got the PDF.
A weekly approval step takes minutes per manager and catches most billing errors before they reach a client.
- Junior descriptions go straight to clients with no editing pass.
- Contractors forget to log time and the manager does not know until invoice day.
- Non-billable hours sneak onto billable invoices.
- Errors are caught after the invoice has already been sent.
How approvals work in Hour Cap
Turned on per person, reviewed a week at a time, and enforced at the point the invoice is built.
Approvals only where you need them
Mark which members require approval and who their approver is. Senior staff submit and ship; juniors and contractors get a review pass. Nobody has to be in a workflow that does not fit them.
- A requires-approval flag per member
- Assign an approver, who must be a manager or above
- New entries auto-marked Unsubmitted, ready for the next weekly submit
Approve or reject with a reason
The review screen shows every entry for the week. Approve in bulk or one at a time. Reject with a written reason and the submitter sees what to fix.
- Approve, reject, or comment on individual entries
- The rejection reason is visible to the submitter
- Fix and resubmit in the same flow
"Worked on stuff"
Eight hours needs more than three words. Split it by task and say what changed for the client.
Only approved hours get billed
Entries in PendingApproval and Approved status are locked. The invoice wizard only includes approved entries, and entries that do not require approval at all. Nothing in flight ends up on a client invoice by accident.
That includes time logged against a support conversation, which is an ordinary time entry and follows exactly the same rules.
- Submitted entries lock automatically, with no further edits
- The invoice wizard scopes to approved or no-approval-needed entries
- A full audit trail: who approved, who rejected, what reason, and when
Turn approvals on in three steps
Decide who needs a review, point them at an approver, and let the weekly rhythm do the rest.
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Choose
Pick who needs approvals
Usually juniors and contractors. Senior people whose entries are already trusted can be left off entirely, so nobody is reviewing work that never needed reviewing.
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Assign
Map each submitter to an approver
One approver can cover many people, and must be a manager or above. Approvers see everything their people logged that week, including hours from support threads.
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Review
Friday submit, Monday review
The cycle takes minutes. By the time you reach invoicing, only approved entries are eligible and nothing still in review can be pushed to Xero.
What an approval step changes
Common questions
What is a timesheet approval workflow?
A timesheet approval workflow is a structured review step between time being tracked and time being billed. Team members submit their weekly timesheet, an assigned approver (typically a manager) reviews each entry, and only approved time becomes invoiceable. Rejected entries are returned with a reason so the submitter can fix and resubmit.
Why do agencies and service teams need timesheet approvals?
Two reasons. First, accuracy: junior staff and contractors benefit from a second pair of eyes on the description and duration before that line item lands on a client invoice. Second, control: managers want to make sure cryptic, missing, or non-billable entries are not being charged out by mistake.
Does every team member need approvals?
No. Each member has a requires-approval flag. Senior people whose entries are already trusted can be left off the workflow; juniors and contractors who need a review pass through it. New entries for members requiring approval are automatically marked Unsubmitted.
Does time logged against a support conversation go through approvals too?
Yes. Time logged from a thread in the Customer Support Inbox is an ordinary time entry, so it follows the same rules as everything else: it belongs to the member who logged it, it appears on their weekly submission, and it is only invoiceable once approved. Approvers see it in the same review screen alongside project work.
Can rejected timesheets be resubmitted?
Yes. When an approver rejects with a reason, the submitter sees the reason on the entry, fixes the issue (clarifying a description, splitting a long block, correcting a duration), and resubmits. The full audit trail of who approved or rejected what stays on the record.
What stops approved time from being edited later?
Entries with status PendingApproval or Approved are locked. The policy layer prevents edits or deletes by anyone. If something genuinely needs to change after approval, the entry has to be rejected first, which puts the audit trail back in motion.
Why I built Hour Cap
I'm Jonathan, a freelance web developer in Brisbane, Australia. After 15 years, I wanted my client work to run on one system instead of separate tools that didn't handle retainers or Xero, copy/paste errors, and time that never got invoiced. I needed one tool that handled retainers, fixed-price, and hourly projects, let me write proper multi-line descriptions, showed me what was actually profitable, and pushed straight to Xero as invoices. Nothing did all of it, so I built one. Today it is pivotal to my business: all my time tracking, invoice drafting, and profitability runs through Hour Cap, and it scales the same way for agencies and teams.
Independent and self-funded. When you email support, you reach the person who built it.
More about JonathanApprove before you invoice
A weekly review pass is the cheapest QA you can run. Every feature unlocked during your trial.