Tutorial: Timesheet External Approvals

Modified on Wed, 17 Jul at 9:45 AM

In certain scenarios, as an Employee, you may need to generate timesheets for external clients who do not have access to HReasily Pro. This article provides a comprehensive overview of the entire process, starting from the admin's configuration to the employee's generation of timesheets for external approvals.

Configuration of External Timesheet Approval

This process is exclusively available for Administrators only. Employees can skip this step.

As an Administrator, it is necessary to create a customized approval template for all the different assignments or projects within your organization before your employees can begin generating timesheets for external approvals.

Creating the External Approval Template:

Go to Company > Approvals > Approval Settings.
Click on the Create button to create a new Approval Template.
Fill in the following fields:
1. Name: Name of this Approval Template
  1. Note: If you have multiple external clients with different approvers, you can consider naming your Approval Template with the [Company Name + Client’s Name]. This will allow you to recognise which employees you can assign this approval template to.
2. Description
3. Approval Chain: The sequence of approvals by either external or internal users.
  1. If your first approval is an external user, then you will have to select the Approver as “External Approval”. Once selected, you will have to fill in the Client’s Name, Title, and Company.
  2. These fields are important as they will be showing up when your employee generates their timesheet for external approval.
  3. If your company requires an internal approval after the external approval, then you can set the 2nd approval as someone in your company (Either the direct manager or a specific employee).

Assigning of External Approval Template to Employees:

Once the External Approval Template is created, the next step is to assign these templates to your employees.

Go to Timesheet > Timesheet Settings > Assignments.
Create the necessary assignments and assign them to your employees by clicking on “Assign to employees” button.
Search for the employees and assign them this assignment by ticking on the respective checkboxes.
Under “Approval Template”, make sure that they are following the correct External Approval Template that you have created in the previous step.
Your employees will now be able to generate their timesheet based on these assignments / projects.

Generating Timesheet for External Approval

This process is for Employees.

As an Employee, you have the ability to generate your timesheet as a PDF and send it to your respective external client for approval.

The first step would be to populate a timesheet with time entries. You can refer to this article on How to Bulk Upload or Clone Timesheets.
Once the timesheet has been created, select all the time entries that you want to submit for external approval by clicking on the checkboxes.
Once you are done selecting all the time entries, click on the button “Send timesheet for approval” at the top of the page.
You will notice that all your time entries have changed to the status “Pending External Approval”.
Click on the “Submissions” tab at the top of the page, and open the timesheet that you just submitted.
At the top of the page, click on the button “Upload Timesheet”.
Click on the “Download” button to download your External Timesheet Approval (in PDF format).
The Template will be downloaded in PDF format. Take note on these few important points:
1. Ensure your name and designation are correct
2. Check through all the time entries and make sure they are accurate
3. Ensure your client’s name, title, and company name are correct
Once this External Timesheet has been signed by all parties, you can go back to step 7, and click on the button “Click here to upload files”.
Select the signed External Timesheet and upload it into HReasily.
After uploading, you will be able to see the document you just uploaded. Click on “View Uploaded Timesheet” to make sure you uploaded the correct document.
Once you have confirmed the document is uploaded correctly, click on the “Submit” button to send your signed timesheet for any further approval.
If your company does not require an internal approval, then the whole process ends at step 12.

Internally Approving the External Timesheet

This process is for Internal Managers who are responsible for approving External Timesheets.

As an Internal Manager, if you are required to do a final approval of the external timesheet, you will need to perform the following:

Go to Timesheet > Team Timesheets > All Records.
Search for the timesheet that is pending your approval and open the timesheet.
Click on the button “View Uploaded Timesheet” to view the external timesheet that your employee has uploaded.
Once you have confirmed that the uploaded external timesheet is correct, you can click on the “Approve” button to approve this external timesheet.
If you require resubmission of the external timesheet by your employee, click on the “Reject” button to reassign this task to your employee to reupload the timesheet.
Once the timesheet has been approved by you, the statuses of the time entries will be changed to “Approved”.