How should timesheet approval work?
Hours are captured daily against a job, submitted by the worker, validated automatically, approved by the supervisor who ran the crew, escalated only where there are exceptions, then locked and released once to payroll and job costing. Nothing is re-typed, nothing is edited without a trail, and no one chases paper on payroll morning.
- First-level approver — the direct supervisor or leading hand
- Second level — manager approval for overtime, allowances and billable variations only
- Rejections — sent back with a comment, never silently overwritten
- Release — approved hours lock and flow to payroll and invoicing together
The seven-step timesheet approval process
Most contractors do not have an approval problem — they have a capture problem that only shows up at approval. If hours arrive late, uncoded and unverified, no workflow will rescue the week. These seven steps work in that order for a reason.
Capture hours as the work happens
Approval only works if the underlying record is honest. Hours are entered daily against a job, task and cost code — on the phone at the face, or at a workshop kiosk — with breaks, allowances, travel and plant hours captured at the same time, offline if there is no coverage.
Worker submits and declares
At the end of the shift or week the worker submits the timesheet and confirms the hours and breaks are correct. That declaration is the thing that makes later approval defensible, and it is what a paper docket handed in by a leading hand never gives you.
The system validates before a human sees it
Automatic checks first: missing job or cost codes, overlapping entries, no break on a long shift, hours above a daily or weekly threshold, unapproved leave, work booked to a closed job. A supervisor should be judging the work, not hunting for typos.
Supervisor review by crew, job and day
The direct supervisor or leading hand reviews their own crew — was that person on site, on that job, for those hours. Reviewing by crew and by job takes minutes; reviewing a stack of individual sheets takes an afternoon.
Reject back, never silently edit
If something is wrong the line goes back to the worker with a comment for correction. Where a supervisor must adjust it directly, the change is recorded with who, when, what changed and why — the original entry stays visible.
Second-level and exception approval
Project managers or admin approve only the exceptions: overtime beyond a threshold, callouts, allowances, variations and anything billed back to a client. Everything clean flows straight through instead of queuing behind a second signature it does not need.
Release to payroll and job costing
Approved hours are locked and released once — to payroll with award, overtime and allowance interpretation applied, and to job costing and invoicing as billable labour. Any post-lock change becomes an adjustment with its own trail, not an overwrite.
Who approves what
Worker
Records hours daily against the right job and cost code, notes breaks and allowances, submits by the cut-off and corrects rejected lines.
Supervisor or leading hand
Approves their own crew's hours for accuracy and job coding. First-level approver, and the person who owns rejections.
Project or contract manager
Approves exceptions — overtime, callouts, allowances, client-billable variations — and watches labour cost against the estimate.
Payroll or admin
Confirms all crews are approved, resolves outstanding lines, locks the period and releases the pay run. Does not chase individuals — the system does.
A weekly approval timetable that works
Adjust the days to your pay cycle and roster. The point is that every step has a named owner and a fixed time, so payroll is never the first person to discover a timesheet is missing.
| When | What happens |
|---|---|
| Daily, end of shift | Workers enter and submit hours; validation flags obvious errors immediately |
| Daily, next morning | Supervisors clear yesterday's exceptions while the shift is still fresh |
| Monday 10am (or last shift of the roster) | Cut-off for worker submission of the previous week |
| Monday midday | Supervisor approval deadline; auto-reminders to anyone outstanding |
| Monday afternoon | Manager approval of overtime, allowances and billable variations |
| Tuesday morning | Payroll locks the period, releases to the pay run and to invoicing |
What to automate first
Approval is where admin time disappears in a contracting business, and almost all of it goes on chasing and checking rather than deciding. Automate in this order.
Do this, not that
Do this
- One named first-level approver per worker, with a nominated delegate
- A published cut-off time that never moves, tied to the pay cycle
- Reject-back with a comment as the default; direct edits as the exception
- Full audit trail on every submission, edit, rejection and approval
- Approval by exception so clean hours are not held up
- Approved hours retained as time and wage records for seven years
Avoid this
- Approving a whole week in one click without seeing job coding
- Supervisors editing hours with no comment and no history
- Approval that depends on one person's inbox while they are on a swing off
- Chasing missing timesheets by group text on payroll morning
- Re-typing approved hours into payroll and again into an invoice
- Backdating or altering submitted records instead of raising an adjustment
What to look for in timesheet approval software
Almost every timesheet product can collect hours. The differences show up in the approval layer, so test these in a demo with your own crew structure rather than a sample dataset:
- Approval hierarchies that match your crews, sites and contracts — not one flat approver list
- Delegates and automatic escalation for swing rosters and leave
- Validation rules you can set yourself, including per-site or per-contract thresholds
- Reject-back with comments, and a visible audit trail on every change
- Approve by crew, job or day, on a phone, from a camp room
- Award, overtime, penalty and allowance interpretation applied on release
- One release feeding payroll, job costing and client invoicing — not three exports
- Period locking with proper adjustments instead of retrospective edits
- Approval status reporting so you know at a glance who is outstanding
The Australian compliance context
Employers must make and keep accurate time and wage records for at least seven years, and those records must not be false or altered without trace — see Fair Work record-keeping rules . Ordinary hours, overtime, penalties and meal breaks come from the modern award or agreement covering the worker, listed on the Fair Work awards list , and long shifts or swing rosters carry fatigue duties under Safe Work Australia guidance . An approval workflow with a complete audit trail is how you demonstrate all three. This is general information, not legal or payroll advice for a specific worker.
