Submit and approve time entries

Move a time entry from Draft to Submitted, approve or reject it as a supervisor, lock it for payroll, and fix a mistake on a finished entry with a correction or reversal.

In the sidebar, open Projects & Tasks, then Time & Mileage, then Time Entries. The page address is /work/time-entries. Every entry moves through statuses: Draft, Submitted, Approved, Locked (and Exported once payroll has taken it). The row menu at the end of each entry offers only the moves allowed for its current status.

Before you start

• Submitting needs the Submit time entries permission; approving and rejecting need Approve time entries; locking and unlocking need Lock time entries. Ask your admin if a menu item described here is missing.
• Stop any running timer first. A timer that is still going is not a draft yet.

Steps

1. Find the entry. Press Filters and set Status to Draft to see what still needs submitting, or Submitted to see what is waiting for approval. User, Start From and Start To narrow it to one person or one week.
2. Open the menu at the end of the row.
3. On a Draft entry, choose Submit. Nova shows Time entry submitted. On a Rejected entry the item reads Resubmit; fix the entry with Edit first.
4. On a Submitted entry, a supervisor chooses Approve or Reject. Rejecting asks Reject this time entry? with a Rejection reason and finishes with Reject time entry; the reason stays on the entry.
5. On an Approved entry, choose Lock once payroll has it. A locked entry cannot be edited. Unlock reverses that, and asks you to confirm in Unlock Time Entry.

To fix an entry that is already submitted, approved or locked:

1. Open its row menu and choose Create correction. In Create Correction, type the change in Delta Minutes (a plus number adds time, a minus number takes it away) and the reason, then press Create correction. Nova adds a linked correction entry rather than changing the original.
2. If the whole entry was wrong, choose Reverse instead and confirm in Reverse time entry? with Reverse entry. The original stays on record and a matching reversal cancels it out.

What you see

• The Status column shows where each entry is. A correction entry shows Correction entry at the top of its details, with the entry it corrects and the reason.
• Discard draft appears in the menu only while an entry is still a draft or was rejected; after that, corrections and reversals are the only way to change the time.

If something looks different

• Submit is missing from a draft's menu: your role cannot submit time entries.
• Approve and Reject are missing on a submitted entry: your role cannot approve time entries.
• Edit is missing: the entry has been submitted, approved or locked and your organization does not allow edits at that stage. Use Create correction instead.
• The correction refuses with a message about a whole-number delta: type minutes as a whole number other than zero, and give a reason.
• Timesheets group entries by person and pay period and are approved separately; see Submit and approve a timesheet.