Approvals and the Team page
Use weekly approvals when you want someone to check hours and expenses before the records can be changed again. A team member submits their week; the reviewer approves it or sends it back with a comment explaining what needs correcting.
Approvals are optional. They control editing, not billing: unapproved hours can still be invoiced.
Turning approvals on
Under Settings, Time, tick Require weekly approval and press Save. Two more fields then appear: Remind on (a day of the week) and At (hour, 24h). The account’s Time zone and Week starts on settings decide which days a week covers and when “now” is.
Submitting a week
With approvals on, the week grid (My Time) and the Expenses page show a banner with the week’s state. An open week reads “This week hasn’t been submitted.” Submit it from My Time with Submit week for approval, which submits the week’s expenses too. Submitting needs at least one entry or expense in the week.
Submitting locks every time entry and expense in that week. The banner turns orange and reads Submitted, with the date, “waiting for approval. Entries are locked.” Their assigned reviewer gets an email. If nobody is assigned, every owner and admin does.
If you’re the account’s only active owner or admin, you see Submit and approve my week instead, and the week is approved on the spot.
What locks
Each entry carries its lock reason: submitted, approved, invoiced, or invoiced in Harvest for imported history. The grid greys locked cells and the day view shows the reason under each entry. A locked entry can’t be edited, and a submitted or approved week refuses new entries; the form says to ask an admin to reopen it.
Invoiced is the strongest lock. It survives a send-back or a reopen and only releases through the invoice.
The Team page
Team shows in the top bar for owners, admins, and managers who have at least one person assigned to them. It lists the people you review, one row each, with role, hours for the week shown, and, with approvals on, the week’s status: Open, Submitted, Approved, or Sent back. A Week of date picker moves the week. Open week opens that person’s grid, where you can fix entries on their behalf while the week is open.
Managers see only the people assigned to them. Owners and admins see every active teammate with a seat except themselves; accountants aren’t listed. The manager role is set under Settings, Team. Point each person at their reviewer in the Reviewed by column of the same tab: pick a manager, or Owners and admins for nobody in particular. It saves as soon as you confirm the change.
The review queue
With approvals on, four chips appear above the table: Everyone, Needs review, Approved, and Sent back. The last three show weeks in that state, each row with the person, the week (linking to their grid), hours, when it was submitted or reviewed and by whom, and any comment.
On a submitted week, Approve approves it. Send back opens a box headed What needs fixing?; the comment is required. Sending back unlocks the week’s uninvoiced entries and expenses, and the person sees the comment on their grid, in red, with Fix and resubmit. Both actions email the person, and both are audited.
Reviewers normally review other people. The only exception is an account’s only active owner or admin, who can submit and approve their own week. With two or more owners or admins, they review each other.
Bulk approve
Under Needs review, each row has a checkbox. A bar at the bottom reads With selected: with an Approve button, a comment field, and a Send back button. Sending back in bulk needs a comment too, and it applies the same comment to every selected week.
Reopening an approved week
Under Approved, owners and admins see Reopen. It puts the week back to open and unlocks everything in it that isn’t invoiced. Invoiced entries stay locked. It’s audited.
Unlocking a single entry
In the day view, an owner or admin sees Unlock under an approved entry. The Expenses page has the same button on approved rows. A submitted entry has no Unlock: send the week back instead, so the sheet’s totals stay true to what the reviewer sees. Invoiced entries can’t be unlocked this way.
Reminder emails
A job runs every hour and, at the day and hour you set, does two things for your account. People with hours in last week who haven’t submitted it get one email with a link to the week. Reviewers with weeks waiting get one email with the count. Each fires once per person per week.