Approving Your Team's Time — Manager Guide
For anyone who approves timesheets for the people who report to them. Short version: you approve a whole pay period in one tap, once it has closed and everyone on it has certified. You never approve day by day, and you never touch an accounting account.
For: supervisors and line managers · Time: ~8 minutes · You'll need: the Arcvue mobile app, and to be set as the supervisor on at least one person's record.
How to access
Open the Arcvue mobile app and tap Approvals in the bottom tab bar. This guide walks the phone, because approving is a short, repeated action you mostly do away from your desk.
The same decisions are on the web, if you would rather work at a desk: Labor → Approvals opens Timecards to approve, the same queue shown as a grid of the whole pay period (the Approval Routing guide walks it), and Labor → Leave Requests is where a request from someone you approve time for carries Decide (the Leave Requests guide). A decision made in one place shows in the other.
If you do not see an Approvals tab, no one is routed to you yet. Ask your timekeeping administrator to set you as their supervisor. The tab also appears when a subcontractor's hours are waiting on you (see Subcontractor hours below).
Part 1 — The one idea that matters most
You approve a pay period, not a day.
Arcvue does not do daily approvals. An employee records and certifies their own hours as they work them; you approve the closed pay period afterwards, over hours they have already certified.
This is not a preference about screen design. It is how the control is meant to work, and it is what an auditor expects to see: the person who did the work attests to it contemporaneously, and their supervisor reviews the completed period. A supervisor signing off Tuesday's hours on Wednesday morning is not a stricter version of that control — it is a different and weaker one, because there is nothing complete to review.
So the screen will not let you approve a period that is still open, and it will not let you approve one where somebody has not certified. Both are listed, with the reason, so you can see what you are waiting for.
Part 2 — Reading the screen
The screen has two lists of timesheets, and the split is the whole point. Above them, when anyone you approve time for has asked for leave, is a third.
Leave requests
Shown only when someone you approve time for has asked for leave. Each card is one request: the person, the kind of leave (Paid Time Off, Sick Leave, never the plan behind it), the hours, the day, when it was filed, and any note they added. A request that has waited a week or more says how long.
One request can cover a stretch of days. People ask for a week or two off as a single request, with weekends and company holidays already left out. The phone's card shows the first day and the total hours; Labor → Leave Requests on the web lists every day the request covers when you open it. Read the days there before you approve a long one.
- Approve asks you to confirm, then records the leave against the person's balance as it stands right now. If they have not accrued enough yet, the phone says so (how much they hold, and what the balance becomes), and approving anyway is a second, separate tap: Approve anyway, drawn from future accrual.
- Deny opens a box for a reason, which is optional, then Deny request. Cancel closes it without deciding.
You cannot decide your own leave; it goes to your own supervisor. A leave decision is not saved offline: with no signal the phone says the decision was not saved, and you decide it again once you are back online. The number on the Approvals tab counts these requests together with the timesheets ready to approve.
Subcontractor hours
Shown only when a subcontractor's submitted hours are waiting on you — because their staffing names you as the person they report to, or because you review subcontractor work for the company. Each card is one person's submission: their name, their company, the dates, the total hours, and every entry in date order with its contract and what they wrote about the work. An entry that repeats an earlier one exactly is marked Possible duplicate of an earlier entry, and a day with more than one entry says how many and the day's total.
- Approve all asks you to confirm, then approves every entry on the card.
- Send all back opens a box for a reason, which is required, then Send all back returns every entry on the card to the subcontractor with that reason.
- Send this entry back, beside a single entry, does the same for that one entry: type the reason, then Send back. Cancel closes the box without deciding.
The subcontractor sees the reason on their phone and on the web, corrects the entry, and sends it again — or withdraws it, if it should not exist (a day entered twice). A corrected entry comes back to you carrying the reason you gave, as Corrected after a return — followed by that reason, so you can check what you asked for against what you got. A withdrawn entry does not come back; who returned it, why, and who withdrew it are kept on record.
Entries are decided one at a time behind the scenes; if one is refused, the phone stops there and says how many went through and the reason it was refused, in the system's own words — for example, you cannot approve hours you submitted yourself. Like a leave decision, a subcontractor decision is not saved offline: with no signal the phone says it was not saved. The number on the Approvals tab counts each waiting submission once.
Ready to approve
Every card here is one person's one pay period, and every one of them can be approved right now. The card shows:
| On the card | What it is |
|---|---|
| Name | the person whose period this is |
| Hours, top right | total hours on the period |
| Date range | the pay period the card covers |
| Entry count | how many separate time entries make it up |
| N late | how many entries were recorded after the day they were worked |
The late count is information, not an accusation, and nothing was sent to anyone. Arcvue does not notify you when an employee records time late, and it does not tell the employee their entry was reported to you. The count is here because you are already looking at the period and it is a fair thing to ask about — not because an alert fired.
Not ready yet
Listed, never hidden. Each row says why it cannot be approved:
| Reason shown | What it means | What you do |
|---|---|---|
| N of M entries not yet certified | the period has closed, but someone has not signed their own hours | ask them to certify; it moves up on its own |
| Period runs through <date> | the pay period is still open | nothing — it appears above when it closes |
| No payroll cycle set for these dates | the dates fall outside any configured pay period | tell your timekeeping administrator; you cannot fix this from here |
Why they are shown rather than filtered out: a queue that hid them would make "nobody on my team has certified in three weeks" look exactly like "I have nothing to do." Those are opposite situations and only one of them needs you.
The end-of-day reminder
On a workday, at about 5 p.m. in your organization's time zone, the app sends one reminder when something is waiting on you: Timecards ready to approve, Leave requests ready to approve, or Timecards and leave requests ready to approve. It counts in the same units as this screen — a timecard is one person's pay period, never a single entry — and it stays quiet on a day with nothing to decide. Tapping it opens Approvals. Reminders start only once your organization is live on Arcvue timekeeping, and a phone gets them only from the organization it last signed in to.
Part 3 — Approving a period
- Find the card under Ready to approve.
- Optional, and recommended the first few times: tap Review N days to expand the timesheet. You get one row per day of the pay period — fifteen rows in a fifteen-day period, in date order, including the days nobody charged, which show a dash. Each day row carries that day's total hours, and underneath it every charge on that day with its own hours: the contract (with its CLIN where the contract tracks time by CLIN), the indirect account by name — B&P Labor, Overhead — or the kind of leave. The employee's own description of the work shows under the charge when they wrote one. Tap Hide to collapse it again.
- Tap Approve timecard.
- Confirm the dialog, which restates the entry count, the hours and the date range so you are agreeing to a specific thing rather than to a button.
That is the whole approval. One tap covers the period.
You never choose an accounting account. Approval is what posts the labor cost to the general ledger, and Arcvue resolves the accounts itself from the contract and the charge code. Nothing on this screen asks you about the chart of accounts, and nothing should.
The day list is for reading, not for approving
There is deliberately no Approve button on an individual day or on an individual charge. Approving is a period-level act. If there were a per-charge approve, an ordinary fortnight would arrive as dozens of separate decisions — which is what this screen was rebuilt to remove.
A day is one row even when it carries several charge codes, with the day's hours totaled on the row and the codes broken out beneath it. Eight hours on a contract and one hour of B&P on the same Tuesday is a nine-hour Tuesday, and that is what you are checking — not two unrelated lines you have to add up yourself.
A day with no hours is still listed. That is deliberate. The question you are answering is as much "why is Thursday empty" as "is Tuesday right", and a day that renders as nothing at all cannot be noticed.
A changed hour shows why it changed. When someone changes an hour after typing it, the reason they gave appears under that charge, and a changed after certification badge marks a change made after they certified. Read both before you approve: the reason is the person's own words for why the number moved.
Part 4 — Sending one entry back
A return corrects one line. It is not a verdict on the whole period, which is why it works per entry while approval does not.
- Expand the period with Review N days.
- Find the day, then the charge on that day that is wrong, and tap the return arrow beside its hours — that is Send this entry back.
- Type a reason. The reason is required — Send back stays grayed out until you have written something. Say what is wrong, not just that something is: "this looks like it belongs on the other task order" tells the person what to do; "please fix" does not.
- Tap Send back, or Cancel to abandon it.
The entry goes back to the employee with your reason attached. The rest of the period is untouched.
Part 5 — When you have no signal
Approvals work offline, and the design is deliberately cautious about it.
- Your decision is saved on this device, with the reason you typed if it was a return. It is not lost and you do not need to remember it.
- It is never sent automatically. When you are back online, a panel at the top of the screen lists the decisions you made offline and you re-confirm each one with a single tap.
Why it is not replayed for you: an approval puts your name against a set of hours. If those hours changed while you were offline, replaying your decision unattended would post your approval against something you never saw. One tap is a small price for that not being possible.
Two cases behave differently, and the difference is intentional:
- No signal, or the server was briefly unavailable → saved on the device, as above.
- The server answered and refused — the entry was already actioned, or you are not authorized for it → you are told immediately, and nothing is saved. Storing that would promise you a retry that can only fail again.
If the app can reach neither the server nor its own storage, it says so plainly rather than implying your decision was kept.
Part 6 — When something looks wrong
"Nothing to approve right now" with a count of timesheets still open. Working as intended. Those periods appear under Ready to approve as they close and get certified.
"No timesheets are routed to you." Nobody has you set as their supervisor. This is a configuration question for your timekeeping administrator, not something you can fix in the app.
"We can't match you to an employee record." Your login works, but it is not linked to a personnel record, so Arcvue cannot record who approved. Ask your Arcvue administrator to link your account. You are not signed out and signing in again will not help.
"Approved X of Y entries. N could not post." A partial result, reported as partial. Some entries posted and some did not, and the message names the first reason. Pull down to refresh; whatever did not post is still in your queue. Nothing here is a silent failure — if it says approved, it posted.
The queue looks stale. Pull down on the list to refresh it.
Part 7 — What approving actually does
Worth knowing, because it explains why the screen is strict.
Approval is the step that posts labor cost to the general ledger. Before you approve, the hours are recorded and certified; after you approve, they are cost against a contract or an indirect pool, and they feed billing, indirect rates and every report built on them.
That is why the period has to be closed and certified first, why the reason on a return is mandatory, and why your offline decisions wait for one deliberate tap.
Related
- Timekeeping — Employee Guide — what your team does before it reaches you, including how and when they certify.
- Approval Routing (controller guide) — how supervisors get assigned, and how routing is configured. That is the administrator's side of this screen, and it walks the web's Timecards to approve queue.
- Leave Requests (controller guide) — deciding leave on the web, including the days a long request covers.