Managers and team leads can approve submitted time for the same individual. It’s a way to divide up and streamline the time approval process. Here’s how it works:
- Staffers log their time as usual.
- Team leads only see hours logged toward billable projects.
- Managers see all submitted hours (both billable and non-billable). Managers are able to approve hours logged toward both billable and non-billable projects.
This article explains how billable/non-billable approval works, and the steps you need to have in place in order to use this feature.
How Billable/Non-Billable Approval Works
Billable project hours are filtered to the team lead for a project. When the team lead looks at PENDING APPROVALS (MY COMPANY...PENDING APPROVALS), they’ll see billable hours and can approve or reject these hours so long as the project associated with them has been marked as billable. Their window will look like this:
Eight hours have been logged to the Site Development project and they’re ready for approval. If there is no team lead, the system admin can approve the hours.
In contrast, non-billable time is filtered to the staffer’s manager. Managers see all submitted time, including billable hours. However, they’re only able to approve non-billable hours.
Based on the image above, the manager can see the billable hours logged to the project (they’re in gray), but can’t do anything to these hours.
Using Billable/Non-Billable Approval
There are three things to have in place to use billable/non-billable approval:
- Identify a team lead for a project,
- Create an internal project and indicate that it’s non-billable, and
- Identify a manager for the project and grant him/her managerial rights over a specific department.
We’ll explain each of these points next.
First, identify a team lead for a project, so they can approve billable hours. Do this by navigating to MY COMPANY...PROJECT LIST.
Click on a project, and the Project Dashboard for that project will populate on the right-side of your window. Click on the TEAM tab.
Add a staff member, their role, and check the box under LEAD. Click SAVE CHANGES to save your work. Read more about adding team members to your projects.
Second, create an internal project, and indicate that it’s a non-billable project. To do this, navigate to MY COMPANY…PROJECT LIST and select your internal project. The Project Dashboard for that project will populate on the right-side of your window.
Under the DETAILS tab, check the box next to the phrase HOURS/EXPENSESBILLED TO THIS PROJECT SHOULD BE CONSIDERED NON-BILLABLE. Then, click SAVE CHANGES to save your work.
Note: If you want all of your staffers to be able to apply time to this internal project, check the box next to the phrase ALLOW EVERYONE TO BILL TIME/EXPENSES TO THIS PROJECT.
Third, identify a manager for the project, and grant him/her managerial rights over a specific department. Navigate to MY COMPANY...STAFF LIST from your navigation bar, and select a staffer from your list on the left-side of your window.
You staffer’s Dashboard will appear on the right-side of your window. Click on the USER RIGHTS tab.
Under the USER RIGHTS header, check the box next to MANAGEMENT, or a similarly named field (learn more about user rights). Under the MANAGEMENT AUTHORITY header, select a department this staffer should have managerial rights over. In the image below, our staffer Ben has managerial rights over the Engineering department. Click SAVE to save your work.