Timesheets
The Timesheets page: a person's week of time across their projects, day by day and item by item; the week put to its approver, held while they read it, locked when approved, reopened when it must change, and exported as a file.
By the end of this page you will know how a week of time becomes a timesheet, how to read your week across every project you worked on, how to put a project's week to its approver, what happens to the week's logs while it waits and once it is approved, how an approver reopens a week, and how to take a week away as a file.
A timesheet is one person's week of time on one project, Monday to Sunday. It is not the time itself; the time logs are. The timesheet names the project, the person and the Monday the week starts on, keeps the tallies the approver read (the minutes, the billable minutes among them, and how many logs), and carries where the week stands:
- Open while the week's logs still change and nobody has put the week forward.
- Awaiting approval from the moment the week is put to the project's approvers until they answer or the week is withdrawn. The week's logs hold: nothing is added, changed or removed on that project for those days, unless the approver asked for changes.
- Approved once the approvers approve it. Every log of the week is locked, stamped with who approved and when, and the week counts for billing. Only an approver can open it again.
One timesheet exists per project, person and week, and it is created the first time the week is put forward. A week nobody has submitted is simply open, with no row behind it yet.
Where the approval lives
The approval itself is an approval like any other, of the kind Timesheet approval. Who answers comes from the project's policy, the project manager by default; the request waits in the approvers' Approvals inbox and on the week's own approval bar, and the verdicts, reminders and events are the ones every gate shares. The Timesheets page is where a week is put forward and read; the decision can be taken there or in the inbox.
Before you begin
- You are a member of the team, not a client guest. Time is the team's record of effort; a guest never sees a timesheet and the page refuses them.
- To put a week forward you need to log time on the project. To put a colleague's week forward, to approve one or to reopen one, you need to approve time on the project.
- To read a colleague's week you need to see the team's time, which every seeded staff role but the guest carries.
| Action | Permission |
|---|---|
| Open the page and read your own weeks | Any staff member; never a client guest |
| Read a colleague's week | time-log:view-any |
| Put your own week forward | time-log:create |
| Put a colleague's week forward | time-log:approve |
| Approve or return a week | To be named by the project's Timesheet approval policy |
| Reopen an approved week | time-log:approve |
| Export a week | Your own: any staff member; a colleague's: time-log:view-any |
Open the page
Timesheets in the sidebar, under the workspace entries, opens on the current week: the Monday to Sunday that holds today in your own timezone. The week lives in the page's address, so a link to a given week keeps that week.
The row of controls steps back a week and forward a week or returns to This Week; the badge beside them names the days in view. The three figures under the controls add the whole week up across every project: the time logged, how much of it is billable, and the number of entries.
Read a week
Below the figures, a block per project you logged time on that week, in alphabetical order. Each block carries:
- the project's key and name, and the status of its timesheet: Open, Awaiting approval or Approved;
- one sentence with the time logged on that project, the billable share and the count of entries;
- Open Time Page, which opens the project's Time page on the same days, where the logs themselves are written and changed;
- the approval bar, once the week has been put forward at least once: where the request stands, who has answered, and the buttons the viewer may press;
- the grid: one row per work item worked on that week, with a cell per day holding the time logged on that item that day, a total per row, and a Day totals row at the bottom. A cell with no time shows a dash. The item's reference and title open its flyout on the backlog.
When the week holds no time at all, the page says so and points at the places time is logged: the item's flyout, a project's Time page, or the timer.
A colleague's week
Anyone who may see the team's time has a person picker beside the week controls. Pick a colleague to read their week; a callout names whose week you are reading, and what you may do with each block depends on your role on its project. My week returns to your own. Someone who may not read others' time has no picker, and a link naming a colleague falls back to their own week with a word of explanation.
Put a week forward
When a project's week holds time and has not been put forward yet, its block offers Submit Week.
- Press Submit Week on the project's block.
- In the dialog, add a word for the approver if the week needs one: what the time went into, or anything odd about it. It is optional, up to two thousand characters, and the approver reads it beside the totals. Press Submit Week.
- The block's status turns to Awaiting approval, the approval bar appears with the request, and a toast confirms that the week is with the approver and that its time holds.
From that moment the week's logs on that project are held. Logging more time on those days,
changing a log or removing one is refused with a note that the week is awaiting approval; withdraw
the request from the approval bar to change the week, then put it forward again. The approvers are
told the way the project's policy says, the request appears in their Approvals inbox, and
approval.requested and timesheet.status_changed go out.
Once a week has been put forward once, the approval bar in its block carries the later moves: Submit again after a rejection or a reopen, Resubmit after the approver asked for changes, and Withdraw while the request waits.
Changes requested
When the approver asks for changes instead of deciding, the week stays awaiting approval but its logs are free again, so the changes can be made. Fix the logs on the project's Time page, then press Resubmit on the approval bar; the next round reads the tallies as they stand.
Approve or return a week
An approver named by the policy sees Approve, Request changes and Reject on the week's approval bar, here and in the Approvals inbox.
- Approve locks every log of the week on that project: each is stamped with who approved and
when, shows a lock on the Time page, and can no longer be changed or removed. The timesheet turns
Approved, carries its first version, and
timesheet.approvedgoes out with the tallies the approvers signed. - Request changes keeps the request open and frees the logs so the owner can fix the week, as the callout above describes.
- Reject returns the week to Open with the reason on the bar; the owner changes the logs and puts the week forward again.
A policy switched off approves a submission at once, with no approver named; the logs lock all the same.
Reopen a week
An approved week sometimes has to change: a log was missed, a day was billed that should not have
been. Someone who may approve time on the project presses Reopen Week on the block and confirms.
The logs unlock, the week turns Open, records who reopened it and when, and timesheet.reopened
goes out. The owner changes what needs changing and puts the week forward once more; the next
approval writes the next version.
Export a week
Export CSV hands over the week in view as a file named after the person and the week's Monday. One row per log: the project and its key, the client, the item's reference and title, the person, the day, the hours as a decimal and as minutes, the kind of work, whether it bills, the note, how the log came to be, and where the project's timesheet stands for that week. It is the week as the page shows it, across every project, for the person in view.
All the fields
The page writes one thing and reads many. The dialog that puts a week forward has one field; the grid's columns are listed with it.
What happens next
- Putting a week forward opens an approval request of the kind Timesheet
approval;
approval.requestedgoes out, the approvers are told, andtimesheet.status_changedcarries the week from Open to Awaiting approval. - Each verdict announces itself in the
approval.*family; an approval also emitstimesheet.approvedwith the tallies, and the locked logs show the lock on the project's Time page and over the API. - A reopen emits
timesheet.status_changedandtimesheet.reopened; a restore of an earlier version emitstimesheet.restored. - Every submission, verdict and reopen writes a version of the timesheet, with its state and tallies at that step, readable over the API.
- The week's tallies on the timesheet follow its logs while it is open, so the figures the approver reads are the figures the logs hold at that moment.
- My Work lists the past weeks on which you logged time and never put the week forward, each a link to that week here.
Heimdall on this page
The page has no assist of its own. Heimdall's panel reads timesheets the way an agent does, so ask it which weeks still wait for approval on a project, whose week has not been put forward yet, or how a person's approved hours split between billable and not; its answer names the weeks.
From the API and MCP
Timesheets API
A project's weeks and your own, one week, the submission that opens a week, the reopen, and the versions.
Approvals API
Deciding and withdrawing the request a week is under, like every other gate.
submit_timesheet and list_timesheets
An agent puts a week forward on the person's word and reads where each week stands with its tallies.
timesheet.* events
A week put forward, approved and locked, reopened, or restored.
Permissions
| Action | Permission |
|---|---|
| Open the page, read and export your own week | Any staff member; never a client guest |
| Read or export a colleague's week | time-log:view-any |
| Put your own week forward | time-log:create |
| Put a colleague's week forward | time-log:approve |
| Approve, request changes or reject | Named by the Timesheet approval policy; approval:decide over the API |
| Withdraw a request | The person who put the week forward, or approval:withdraw |
| Reopen an approved week | time-log:approve |
| Restore an earlier version | time-log:approve |
Frequently asked
I submitted the wrong week. Can I take it back? Yes. Press Withdraw on the week's approval bar while the request waits; the week returns to Open, its logs are free again, and the approvers lose it from their queues.
Why can I not log time on last week? Because last week's timesheet on that project is awaiting approval or approved. Withdraw it, or ask an approver to reopen it, and log the time; then put the week forward again.
Does one submission cover all my projects? No. A timesheet is one project's week, approved by that project's approvers, so each block is put forward on its own. The export, on the other hand, takes the whole week across projects.
Who approves my week? Whoever the project's Timesheet approval policy names, the project manager role by default. A project with nobody in that role refuses the submission until someone is named or the gate is switched off under the project's approval policies.
Can an approver change my logs? Someone who may approve time on the project changes and removes anyone's logs on the Time page, while the week is open. Once the week is approved, even they must reopen it first.
What does the export carry when a project's week is approved? The same rows, with the last column reading Approved; the logs of an approved week are the logs that were locked, so the file matches what was signed.
Related
- Time tracking: the logs a week holds, the timer, and the lock an approval puts on them.
- Approvals: the Timesheet approval policy, the inbox and the verdicts.
- Revisions and versions: the versions a timesheet writes at each step.
- Project settings: the approval policies, including who approves timesheets.
How is this guide?
Last updated on
Time Tracking
The Time page of a project and the timer in the sidebar: log a stretch of work on an item by hand or by the clock, with the day, the kind of work, whether it bills and what is left on the item; who may change a log, and what the logs feed.
Git linking
Put an item's key in a branch name, a commit message or a pull request and the repository's webhook links the code to the item; read an item's code in its flyout and the project's on the Branches & PRs tab, link by hand what the key missed, and take a wrong link off.