Skip to main content
Two entries ticked as approved and a third still flagged, above a count of 24 in the period and Approve all Two entries ticked as approved and a third still flagged, above a count of 24 in the period and Approve all Approving is what makes recorded hours count in approved-only figures. Until somebody signs an entry off it sits in the table like any other, but it is missing from Weekly paid hours and approved-only calculated report hours. Payroll exports exclude it by default; an integration set to Include unconfirmed hours can include pending or needs-review entries, but never rejected or cancelled ones. Raw report rows, counts and durations still keep every status visible. This is the month-end job.
Approving is its own permission, Change timesheet status. Administrators and managers have it; an employee role does not. Without it Approve is absent from every entry’s ⋯ menu, whatever the entry’s status.

Approve one, a selection, or the whole period

Right-click an entry, or open its ⋯ menu, and choose Approve. The action is there for anything not already approved, including rejected and cancelled entries, so read the entry’s own Status rather than the menu to know where it stands. For several at once, tick their checkboxes and pick Approve selected from the actions the selection bar offers. For everything in front of you, the period action names its own count: Approve all 24 entries in period. That last one is the one to read twice. Approve all acts on the period you have open and the filters you have applied, exactly as Publish does on the schedule. Filter to one location and approve, and nobody outside it is touched. The count on the button is what would actually go through, so if it is larger than you expected, something is in view that you did not mean to sign off. The same scope applies to Delete all, which asks you to confirm and then removes every entry in view. Ten entries or fewer apply while you wait. More than that runs in the background, appears in the sidebar as Approving entries, and can be cancelled part-way. Above 2,000 entries the action is refused; narrow the filter and go again.
The week filtered to two statuses, leaving a running entry, a flagged one and a pending one to decide onThe week filtered to two statuses, leaving a running entry, a flagged one and a pending one to decide on

A status filter turns the week into the queue you work down

Or ask Begin AI (Cmd / Ctrl + J):

Approve last week's pending time entries.

It shows one card to confirm the whole batch before anything changes, unless its approval mode applies changes automatically.

Why an entry says Needs review

Needs review is Begin asking for a human, and it happens two ways. A clocking policy flagged the punch, because it came from outside the allowed area or carried no location where the policy wanted one. Or nobody clocked out, and the timer was closed automatically. Both mean the hours on the entry may not be the hours worked. Correct the times first, then approve: approving a flagged entry unchanged signs off whatever the clock happened to leave behind.

Reject, and say why

Reject turns an entry down and offers a Rejection reason. The reason is optional and worth writing, because it is what the person reads. Rejections reach people at once, one notification per entry, carrying the date, the times and your reason. Approvals are gathered up instead: approving somebody’s whole month row by row sends them one message rather than thirty, and an approval you undo within a couple of minutes is never announced at all.

Change your mind

Approval is not final. The Status submenu on any entry moves it to Pending, Needs review, Rejected or Cancelled, and undo (Cmd / Ctrl + Z) takes back the last entry added, edited, deleted or moved between statuses. Undo works on the workspace’s timeline rather than your own, so it takes back the last thing anyone did here, and it refuses when that was something your role cannot edit.
Approving does not lock anything. There is no period close in Begin, so an approved entry stays editable by anyone whose role reaches it. Treat approval as a statement about the hours, and read the entry’s own activity trail when you need to know who changed what.
Nobody, by default. An entry that lands in Pending or Needs review waits on the page. To be told, build a workflow that ends in Send notification or Request approval, or set the clocking policy to ask for approval, which files Approve ‘s timesheet entry into the inbox of people who can approve.
Only where Auto-sync linked statuses is on under Settings → Schedule → Timesheet linking. With it on, Approved, Rejected and Cancelled move between linked shifts and entries. A shift changes from its entries only when every live linked entry has the same status. Undo is local and does not mirror. With the setting off, the records are independent.

Next

Workflows

Let Begin flag and chase entries instead of you.

The hour columns

Where approved hours turn up, and why a total can differ.

Still need help?

Contact support

Email the Begin team and we’ll get back to you.

Ask Begin AI

Open the AI assistant and get instant answers based on these docs.