The Arcvue Mobile App — Employee Guide
Everything you do from your phone: log and certify your time, ask for time off, capture a receipt, track a drive, and, if you supervise people, approve their time. The app suggests; you confirm. It never submits anything on your behalf.
New to Arcvue? Start with Your First Day — Signing In. It covers the invitation email, two-factor setup, choosing your password, and installing the app.
Getting in
The app is Arcvue Mobile, on the App Store and Google Play. The sign-in screen asks for:
- Organization: the first part of the sign-in address in your invitation
email, before
.arcvue.ai. You can also paste the whole address. The app remembers it after your first sign-in. If the app says there is no organization by that name, check it against the sign-in address; it is not your company's full name. - Username: your username or your work email address.
- Password: the same password you use on the web.
Then enter the six-digit Authenticator code from your authenticator app. The app signs you in as soon as the sixth digit is in, so there is nothing else to tap; a code you paste or that your phone fills in works the same way. Verify is there if you want it. Every account uses two-factor authentication. If yours is not set up yet, the app walks you through it; see the first-day guide.
After one sign-in with your password, Use Face ID / Touch ID lets you unlock the app with your face or fingerprint instead. Forgot password? and Forgot username? are on the sign-in screen, so you do not need an administrator for either.
Just installed the app? Open it once, close it completely, and open it again. The first launch after an install can run an older version while the current one downloads.
The tabs
| Tab | What it's for |
|---|---|
| Home | Today at a glance: today's hours, anything waiting on you, and today's entries |
| Time | Your timesheet for the pay period: log hours, certify, submit, and time off |
| Expense | Receipts and expense reports |
| Mileage | Tracking drives and charging them |
| Approvals | For supervisors and leads, and for anyone with something waiting on their decision: timesheets, leave requests and subcontractor hours |
| Settings | Your account, security, and help |
If you do not see Approvals, you do not hold a supervising role and nothing is waiting on your decision. That is expected, not a missing feature. The tab appears the moment something is routed to you.
The main screens show the name of the organization you are signed into at the top. Check once that it is your company: everything you record goes there. If it is not, sign out and sign in with the right Organization.
Logging time
The Time tab
The Time tab shows one pay period at a time, because the pay period is what you certify. Each day of the period is a row showing its hours and whether you have certified it (certified or not certified). Tapping a day opens the entry screen for that day.
- Previous pay period and Next pay period are the arrows either side of the dates. They move by your company's payroll calendar, so a 15-day half-month and a 16-day one both land right.
- This period appears once you have moved away from the current period, and brings you back to it.
- Total this period shows the period's hours, with In progress or Submitted beside it.
- Submit timesheet certifies the period. See Submitting your timesheet below. Once the period is submitted it reads Review timesheet.
- Add entry for today opens today's entry screen from wherever you are in the period.
- Log by voice opens voice entry for today, and What can I say? · Voice commands lists the phrases the app understands.
- Time off opens your leave balances and the request form. See Time off below.
Two notices can appear at the top of the tab, whichever period you are looking at:
- Submit your … timesheet. A pay period has ended and some of its days are still not certified. Your supervisor cannot approve it until you certify. Tap the notice to go to that period. Hours brought in from your previous timekeeping system never raise it: they were certified there, and certifying in the app attests only to hours entered in Arcvue.
- … entries need correction. Your supervisor sent entries back, with a reason under each one. Tap an entry to fix it and certify it again.
If the tab says Pay periods aren't set up yet, your company has not told Arcvue its payroll calendar. You can still record hours; only the period certification waits until it is set.
The entry screen
Tap a day on the Time tab and you land on the entry screen for that day: big tiles for your charge codes and a number pad. Tap a code, tap the hours, repeat if you split the day, then certify. A day you missed last week works exactly the same way as today.
A day still to come takes leave only. Tap next week's day and enter your PTO or sick hours there, so they are on your timesheet before you go. Hours worked go in once the day arrives.
The tiles are ordered so you are looking at your day rather than hunting for it: codes you have already charged that day come first, showing their hours, then your usual codes, ordered by what you have charged recently, then the rest.
Hours already recorded show on the tile, and typing over one changes it. Coming back to a day never adds a second row for the same code, and a line you leave alone stays as it is.
Where several tasks post to one account, each task is its own tile, named with the account and the task, for example OH Labor · CMMI. The hour keeps its task all the way to your supervisor's review. Hours recorded on that account before tasks were kept have no task: they are listed under Recorded on this day, and the account's tiles read Hours on this account have no task yet. Open Day details. Change or remove those hours in Day details, then enter them against the right task.
Onsite and offsite are two tiles. On a contract that bills your labor category at different rates depending on where the work was done, the contract appears twice, once marked Onsite and once Offsite. Use the tile for where you worked; a day split between the two takes hours on both. Nobody else sees the pair — it appears only where your assignment on that contract needs it.
Some codes have no tile, on purpose. These are left off:
- lines of a contract your administrator has not allowed you to charge;
- codes that need an approval first, such as bereavement, until you have it;
- retired codes;
- closed contracts.
An hour on a line you are not allowed to charge is refused with a message naming the lines you may use.
A certified line is not typed over here. You signed for those hours, so changing them asks you why, and that happens on Day details (linked at the bottom of the screen). Day details is also where you remove an entry.
Review & certify sits at the bottom and is how a day ends. It opens a summary of everything you entered, with the certification statement you are signing, and Certify underneath it. Nothing is signed until you press Certify. The review step exists so you read the day before you attest to it. Keep editing closes the summary with everything still entered. Once the day is certified, or saved on the phone because you had no signal, Done returns you to the tab.
Review & certify does nothing on an empty day, so enter hours first. While a certification is going through, the button shows a spinner and ignores a second press; wait for the screen to change.
By voice
Voice entry lets you say the day out loud instead of tapping, which helps when you are walking out of a site visit. On iPhone you can also start it from Siri without opening the app first.
Voice drafts an entry. You still read it and confirm it before anything is recorded.
Day details
Day details lists what is recorded on a day and is where you CHANGE it: correct an entry a supervisor returned, change hours on a day you already certified, or remove an entry. Reach it from Day details · change or remove an entry at the bottom of the entry screen, or by tapping a returned entry on the Time tab.
Add hours takes you back to the tiles for the same day. Discard entry removes one entry. It is the way out of a row you cannot fix, and it is what the screen points you to if you try to save a line with no hours on it.
Fixing time you already certified
Until your supervisor approves it, you can still change it. Tap the entry in Day details and the editor asks Why are the hours changing? — say why in a sentence. The reason goes on the entry's record with the change, the day is no longer certified, and you certify it again over the new hours. Removing a certified entry asks the same question. Nothing is overwritten quietly: the original hours, the new hours, who changed them and why all stay in the history. The same rule applies on the web.
Once a supervisor has approved the entry, or it has reached the books, it can no longer be changed here. Use Amend — it records the correction and keeps the original, so the history stays intact.
Submitting your timesheet
Submit timesheet opens Certify timesheet for the pay period. It lists each day that has hours and is not yet certified, with its hours and the total, and shows the certification statement you are signing.
Hours your company brings in from its other timekeeping system count toward your totals but are not listed here and are never certified here: you certified them where you entered them. They also never make a pay period show as overdue.
Read the statement, then select I certify N days. That certifies every day listed. The screen that follows tells you where you stand:
| What you see | What it means |
|---|---|
| Timesheet submitted | The pay period has ended and every day with hours is certified. It goes to your supervisor. |
| Days certified | The period is still open. This pay period is still open. Come back when it ends to certify the rest — that is what closes out the period. |
| Nothing left to certify | Every day with hours is already certified. Add hours from the Time tab first. |
| Some days didn't certify: | Each day that failed is listed with the reason. Fix those days on the Time tab, or try again. |
You can certify before a period ends, for example before a vacation. That does not close out the period: anything you add afterward needs certifying, and the certification at period end is the one that counts.
Company holidays
A paid company holiday you are entitled to fills itself in: when you open a pay period that contains one, Arcvue enters the holiday hours on your holiday line. It is not certified. You review and certify it with the rest of the period. If you worked that day and already entered hours, nothing is added.
Time off
Time off on the Time tab shows Your balances, one line per kind of leave you hold, such as PTO and Sick Leave, with the hours available.
Below that, Request time off asks for:
- the kind of leave. A kind you hold that cannot be used yet is shown grayed out, with the reason.
- Hours, no more than 24.
- Note (optional), anything your approver should know.
The Date is today, and on the phone it cannot be changed. To ask for any other day, including time off in advance, use Arcvue on the web; see Time Off.
The button names your request, for example Request 8h PTO. Until something is missing it names that instead, such as Pick a leave type. or How many hours?.
Asking is not getting. After you send, the app says one of three things:
| Message | What it means |
|---|---|
| Request sent for approval | Your approver reviews it. Your balance does not change until it is approved. |
| Time off approved | Your company approves this kind of request automatically, so your balance has already moved. |
| Saved — will send when you're back online | You had no signal. The request is on your phone and goes out by itself. |
The phone does not list requests you have already sent. To see them, or to withdraw one, use Leave Requests on the web.
Expenses
Photograph a receipt with Snap receipt and Arcvue reads the merchant, amount and date from it. You check those, say what the money was for and what to charge it to, and the line goes on an expense report that you submit for approval.
The full walkthrough, including the required fields and why each is required, is in Submitting an Expense.
Mileage
On the Mileage tab, Start tracking a trip measures a drive by GPS while the tracking screen is open. Stop tracking shows the miles, which you can correct, and asks what to charge the trip to: a contract, an indirect pool, or Personal. Save trip records it.
Trips do not become expense lines one at a time. They collect on the Mileage tab by charge, and Add mileage lines to expense report folds a month into one line per charge.
The full walkthrough, including automatic drive detection and what the location permission covers, is in Mileage.
If you supervise people: the Approvals tab
Approvals lists what is waiting on your decision. The number on the tab counts decisions, not individual entries: one for each person's pay period ready to approve, one for each leave request, and one for each subcontractor submission you review. Timesheets come a pay period at a time.
Ready to approve shows one card per person and pay period: their name, the total hours, the dates, and how many days and charges it covers.
- Review N days opens the timesheet one row per day, in date order, including days with no hours. Each day shows its total and every charge on it, by contract, indirect account or kind of leave, with what the person wrote about the work. A charge the person has not certified says Not yet certified. When the person changed an hour, the reason they gave shows under it, marked changed after certification if they had already certified that day, with the number of changes when there was more than one. Hide N days closes it again.
- Approve timecard approves the whole pay period, after a confirmation that states the hours, the number of charges, the person and the dates. You never pick accounts: Arcvue works out where the hours post. You are approving the time, not doing the accounting.
- Send this entry back is the small return arrow beside each charge. It opens Reason for return…. Send back stays unavailable until you type a reason, because an entry returned without one costs the person a guess and you a second round trip. Cancel closes the box and sends nothing.
Not ready yet lists timesheets still in progress, with the reason: the period is still open, or days are waiting to be certified. They move up to Ready to approve when the period closes and the person certifies.
If you approve or send something back with no signal, the app keeps your decision on the phone and does not send it by itself. When you are back online it appears at the top of the tab: Nothing has been sent yet. Confirm each one to record it. Select Confirm to record a decision, or Discard to drop it. If the entry changed after you decided, the app says so and asks you to review it again.
If the tab says No timesheets are routed to you. and you expected some, ask your timekeeping administrator to set you as those people's supervisor.
Leave requests and Subcontractor hours appear on the same tab when someone's leave or a subcontractor's submitted hours are waiting on you, and the number on the tab counts them with the timesheets. Approving Your Team's Time walks all three.
Reminders
The app sends three reminders, each only when there is something to do, and only once your organization is live on Arcvue timekeeping:
| Reminder | When it comes | Tapping it opens |
|---|---|---|
| Log your time | A workday afternoon, about 4 p.m. in your organization's time zone, when today has fewer hours recorded than you are scheduled for | the Time tab |
| Submit your timesheet | Once a pay period has closed with days still not certified: once a day, weekends included, until you certify | the Time tab |
| Timecards ready to approve | Only if you approve someone's time: workdays at about 5 p.m., when a timesheet or leave request is ready for your decision | Approvals |
A phone gets reminders only from the organization it last signed in to, and Forget this device stops them on that phone. Whether the app may notify you at all is your phone's own setting; Settings → Notification preferences opens it.
The Home tab
- Log Today's Hours opens today's entry screen. The line under it tells you where today stands: Tap to log today — confirm your usual, how many hours are left, or Today's hours are in ✓.
- Say your hours starts voice entry for today, and What can I say? lists the phrases it understands.
- Today's hours shows the hours recorded today against your usual day, and Open timesheet goes to the Time tab.
- Needs attention lists only what you can act on: timecard entries returned for correction, drives waiting to be classified, and expense reports you have not submitted. Tap one to go straight to it. With nothing waiting it says All caught up.
- Today's entries lists what you have recorded today, with what each was charged to.
Changes waiting to sync. The app works offline and queues what you enter. It syncs on its own, and while anything is waiting a yellow bar shows how many changes are queued. Sync now (announced to screen readers as Sync pending changes now) sends them immediately. Use it before you walk into somewhere with no signal, or before you ask someone whether they can see your time.
Sign out is the icon at the top right. Signing out keeps everything you have already saved, and you can sign back in with Face ID or Touch ID.
The voice controls, named
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Log hours by voice / Log today's hours by voice | Opens voice entry. |
| Start voice entry / Stop listening | The same button. It reads Start voice entry when idle and Stop listening while it is hearing you. |
| What can I say? · Voice commands / What can I say? Voice commands / See what you can say to Siri and the mic | Opens the list of phrases the app understands. The Time tab and the voice screen word it slightly differently; it is the same list, and it is short. |
| Say your hours | The prompt on the voice screen, and the shortcut to it from Home. |
| Add a row | Adds an empty row to the drafted entries, for something the dictation missed. |
| Continue | Accepts the microphone consent prompt. |
| Delete | Removes one drafted entry and keeps the rest. |
| Discard this voice entry | Throws away everything you just dictated. |
| Close | Leaves the screen. |
If a permission prompt never appears, look for Open Settings. Once you have refused the microphone, or location on the mileage screen, the app cannot ask again. That is your phone's rule, not Arcvue's. The button changes from Continue to Open Settings, which takes you to where the phone lets you change your mind. This is the most common reason a control looks dead.
Log time by voice is not inside the app. It is a shortcut on the Arcvue icon: long-press the icon on your home screen. It only opens the voice screen; nothing is recorded until you confirm it yourself.
Settings
Settings shows who Arcvue thinks you are (name, email, role, company, and division if your company uses them) and holds your account controls: Change Password, Two-Factor Authentication, Notification preferences, Voice commands, Privacy Policy, Terms of Service, Help & Support and Open Source Licenses, then the app version.
Forget this device, at the bottom, signs you out completely, turns off Face ID and Touch ID on this phone, and stops this phone's reminders. Use it before you give the phone away or if it is lost. What each control does is covered in Checking Your Own Record.
What the app deliberately will not do
- It never submits or certifies anything for you. Entry suggestions, voice and shortcuts all propose; you confirm. Your timesheet is your statement about your own hours.
- It never fills in hours you worked. Suggested codes only change the order of the tiles. The one exception is a paid company holiday, which Arcvue enters for you to review and certify.
- It does not edit certified time in place. Corrections go through Amend.
- It does not track your location when the tracking screen is closed, unless you turned on automatic drive tracking yourself.
If something looks wrong
"I don't have an Approvals tab." No timesheets are routed to you. Expected.
"My charge code isn't on the entry screen." It only shows codes you are authorized to charge. If one is missing, ask your supervisor rather than charging the nearest similar code. A contract that has been closed is no longer shown, and the app refuses hours on it.
"A screen says it can't match me to an employee record." Your sign-in works, but your account is not linked to your personnel record. Ask your administrator to link it. Signing out and back in does not help.
"I signed in, and every screen says to change my password." You are still on the temporary password from your invitation. Select Change password in the bar at the top, or open Settings → Change Password, and everything loads. Time and mileage you saved in the meantime upload by themselves once it is changed.
"I signed in, and now every screen says it couldn't load." On an app that has not picked up the latest update, the temporary password looks like this; change it in Settings → Change Password. Otherwise, pull down to refresh; if that fails too, check your connection.
"The miles look too high or too low." Correct them on the review screen before saving. GPS is a starting point, not the last word.
"My trip didn't show up as an expense." Trips wait on the Mileage tab until you add them to an expense report. See Mileage.
"I can't edit yesterday's certified hours." Use Amend. Editing certified time in place is not offered, on purpose.
"Voice heard me wrong." Correct the draft before confirming. Nothing is recorded until you do.
"A screen in this guide is missing." Close the app completely and open it again. The update applies on the next launch.
Related
- Signing in for the first time → Your First Day — Signing In
- The same timesheet on the web → Timekeeping
- Balances and time-off requests → Time Off
- Receipts and expense reports → Submitting an Expense
- Mileage in depth → Mileage
- Home, statuses and Settings → Checking Your Own Record