[From Wrike] Timesheet Approvals in Wrike Labs ⏱️
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Hi everyone! 👋
We’re excited to let you know that Timesheet Approvals are now available in Wrike Labs on Enterprise Pinnacle plans ✨
Now you can review, approve and restrict your team’s timesheets to prepare for monthly billing or payroll. Once a timesheet is approved, the time tracking data is locked for the approved week for the given person ensuring that no additional time can be tracked. This will help you to prevent unexpected changes and preserve the data for accurate reporting and financial tracking.
We know that many of you have been supporting this feature idea and we’re happy to bring it to you today 🙌
Here’s how to get started:
1) Accounts admins or owners can enable Timesheet Approvals for their entire accounts from Wrike Labs starting today.
2) Once the feature is enabled, you’ll need to set up who in your account will have the right to view and then approve other people’s timesheets. By default, account owners and admins can approve time and view other people’s time entries. You have an option to grant admin rights to your approvers or create a custom user type role instead. If you decide to create a separate role (e.g. Time approver) for timesheet approvals, you’ll see the relevant right in the setup:
After creating this role, you’ll need to apply it for relevant users in the Users tab. Don’t forget to disable the ability to view time entries from other people if you don’t want Regular users to access timesheets and approval decisions for other people.
3) Now that everything is set, users with the right to approve time will see a new Approvals tab when opening Timesheets. They will also see the Approve button (there are also options to Decline & Cancel approval). Users with permission to approve time can view all timesheets submitted across the account. It’s also possible to narrow down the user list to only the team or department that is relevant to the approver by selecting a person or user group in the filter.
Users who don’t have the right to approve time will see the option to Submit for approval instead.
4) If you approve a timesheet, it will become locked. This means that the timesheet’s owner can no longer edit or track new time for this week across all tasks in your account. If they attempt to edit or track time anywhere in the account, the system won’t permit it.
5) Team members have an option to correct a timesheet only if it’s not approved. To edit an already submitted timesheet, cancel an approval or edit a declined timesheet.
6) Withdrawing a timesheet (canceling approvals) is only possible if no decision has been given and the timesheet is still pending. Editing a rejected timesheet is possible only after a Declined decision has been given. Once declined, team members can’t withdraw a timesheet anymore.
But that’s not all ✨ By enabling Timesheet Approvals in Wrike Labs, you will also receive personal timesheets experience update which includes:
- Enhanced table similar to the work-item Table view you already know and love
- Total hours row is now located directly under the table for enhanced visibility
- More prefill options: automatically prefill your timesheet with tasks assigned to you from all status groups: Active, Completed, Deferred and Canceled.
Please note: a few features are missing from the new personal timesheets compared to the old experience, but this won’t affect any existing or new time entries created. We’ll add the missing features soon! 🙌
That’s it!
We hope this is a welcome feature that will help drive time-tracking efficiency for your organization! 🔖
Let us know your thoughts and questions below 👇
Lisa Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover
Lisa Wrike Team member Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover
Except how many of us have "pinnacle plans"?
Nice idea. But where can I put our hierachie of approvers? Teamleads are approving timesheets for their team. So the teamlead should receive the approval for his team and no others (and he should not see others). Also as this account wise where can I make a boarder between bisuiness units of a big comapny? In this way it can perhaps work for a small company, but not for a big organization.
I've the same questions of Sven
Sven has a great point. We too would need some sort of reporting structure in place to keep sensitive information quarantined.
I agree with Sven. For this to be an end-to-end time tracking solution, we need to be able to configure the hierarchy. Or at the least, let the user choose the approver when they submit their timesheet for approval (and have that list contain only those users who have permission to approve). This is how we do it today for our workaround... when a user submits the form for their time approval request, they choose their manager from the dropdown list.
Agree with Sven, if I can approve, I should still not be able to approve my own timesheet, even if I can indicate who should approve my timesheet on submission.
Hi folks! Appreciate your feedback on this experimental feature, thanks for sharing 🙌
Regarding the hierarchy - it's on our team's radar 👍 But you also have the option to configure the permission to view other users' time entries and grant it only to those who need to see it, especially responsible users.
Lisa Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover
Lisa Wrike Team member Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover
Lisa granting access by hand is no solution. Our situation: we have about 70 people in R&D at our side. This means 10 teamleaders responsible for 7 persons each. We have more than 20 sides worldwide. No side should see the other one (or even worth approve it). So this workaround is no solution and we can not even think about evaluationg it. We have an own programmed workaround which copies hierachie from Microsoft Login.
Is the ability to pin tasks to the timesheet one of the missing features? When will this appear? We cannot move forward with this new feature without the pinning ability. Our users need this to be able to manage their timesheets.
Hey Jason Pontius! Alina from product team here. You are correct. But worry not, Pin feature is soon to come (in a couple of days) to the new personal timesheets experience!
Alina Kucherenko Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Learn about Wrike’s killer features and best practices with our Online Training Webinars
Alina Kucherenko Wrike Team member Learn about Wrike’s killer features and best practices with our Online Training Webinars
During the deminar for this update, I asked if there was an alert feature included with Time Approvals. Something to alert our users they have either not tracked any time or not enough time. We already have the ability to set a schedule for both full-time and part-time workers, which includes the hours. Reducing some of the manual upkeep that comes with tracking time would be appreciated, and some type of system alert would do just that.
Agree with Sven Passinger as well!
Pinning is crucial to how our enterprise tracks time, thank you Jason Pontius for calling this out. Alina Kucherenko looking forward to this update.
Hey everyone! Happy to let you know that Pin function has arrived to the new personal timesheets experience :)
Alina Kucherenko Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Learn about Wrike’s killer features and best practices with our Online Training Webinars
Alina Kucherenko Wrike Team member Learn about Wrike’s killer features and best practices with our Online Training Webinars
Hey Alexandra Torres! Thank you for the feedback! We are exploring ability to set time targets for timesheets to help solve the problem you've mentioned. More updates around it might come in Q4!
Alina Kucherenko Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Learn about Wrike’s killer features and best practices with our Online Training Webinars
Alina Kucherenko Wrike Team member Learn about Wrike’s killer features and best practices with our Online Training Webinars
Has this feature been enabled for everyone by default?
I was very surprised to see this today and received many questions from my team, we were definitely not prepared! Is there way we can disable this?
Yes, it looks like timesheet approvals feature was enabled on our account without our consent. Looking for an option to disable, as our enterprise will need new trainings and process docs before we move forward. We specifically chose not to enable at this time until we have established a change management plan with our finance team.
Yep. Looks like it went live on our account today, even though I had disabled in in Labs. It's not in Labs anymore so I don't know how to disable it.
This is BAD, Wrike, to enable such a big change without consent of the customer. This abrupt change will screw up a lot of companies' workflow.
We will probably migrate into it at some point, but it will take planning. Not "rip the band-aid off" approach.
Wow Wrike - poor form this! This is a massive change to a very core feature of the tool. I'm baffled this was pushed live without (seemingly?) any kind of heads up. We trialled the approvals when it first was released in Labs, but we found it to be super buggy and nowhere near ready for use yet. We couldn't pin tasks like we used to (that feature has been brought back already), but overall the feedback was unequivocally negative from my team;
The whole team was begging me to revert to the old time sheet set up within 2 days. I was super excited about this feature when it was announced because an approval system would be great, but it was disappointing to see how poor the functionality was. And now this feature is enabled without any warning.. Not the best experience.
Are others experiencing similar feedback from their teams?
Fleur Komen, I also determined that the change was not ready for use during the Labs period. I have not gone back to try it again, but I know some issues were improved upon.
However, going live without warning and without providing adequate time to make a transition within each company's workflow is inexcusable. Having no way for us to decide when to turn it on and controlling that change process is a surprisingly poor decision. There are other features in Labs that have been there for years that we can turn on or off. Why this is not treated the same way boggles my mind. You don't pull the rug out from underneath all of your users without warning.
Part of me wants to believe that this was a mistake and that Wrike is working to rectify the situation. However, we have heard no response from them on this thread. I am surprised that they have not responded either way, yes it is live, or sorry it was a mistake.
In July it was posted above that this was an experimental feature. Now it has been forced upon us? What is going on, Wrike?!?!?
Jason Pontius I reached out and have received responses, but they were conflicting.
From our CSM: I completely understand your position - our product team has just rolled this feature out to everybody and we have received several requests to limit the feature visibility similar to yours. This is currently possible through our support team, and I went ahead and logged a ticket. Our support team will get back to you shortly to assist with disabling the feature - please keep an eye out for an email from them.
On the Support Ticket from the Support Team: Previously, this feature was available in Wrike Labs. It has now been fully rolled out and is available for all Enterprise Pinnacle accounts, and it can no longer be enabled or disabled through Wrike Labs on your end. We recognize that adopting Timesheet Approvals requires time and adjustments. We are passing your request to our engineers to explore the possibility of disabling this feature for your account. We will inform you as soon as we have an update.
Jason Pontius Update! I just received an email from support that Timesheet Approvals have been deactivated in our account, and it looks like they have :)
Hi everyone!
We’re excited to announce that the long-anticipated Timesheet Approvals feature were launched yesterday for all Enterprise Pinnacle plans. Thank you for all of the continuous suggestions and questions on the feature. To help you get started, we've prepared a comprehensive Help Center article that explains how this feature works, and we hope you’ll find it useful!
To support you through this transition, we’ve included simple in-app tutorials accessible directly within the feature, available in the “How to use” timesheets section in the top right corner.These guides are designed to help you navigate and effectively use Timesheet Approvals and we hope that they will help you save you time on training.
Additionally, we’ll be announcing this feature in the Community in our upcoming Weekly Release Note on Monday.
We genuinely appreciate your feedback and understand that transitions can sometimes be challenging. Your insights are invaluable to us as we strive to ensure a seamless integration of new features, and we always are actively monitoring your feedback.
Previously, Timesheet Approvals was available through Wrike Labs to allow users interested in testing new features the opportunity to try it early. Now that the feature is generally available, Wrike doesn’t offer a process to collect user consent before releases. If your team feels unprepared to use this new feature right away, we recommend refraining until you're ready to integrate it into your workflow.
It’s important to note that not all users have default access to approve timesheets; this access is managed by account admins. Unauthorized usage is minimized without specific permissions and agreements.
We understand that adjusting to these changes may take time. If you need additional preparation or have any questions, please reach out to our Support team (as mentioned by some of you here). We’re committed to addressing your concerns through our ticket system. Additionally, we're collecting feedback and will consider developing a UI to address any high-demand needs more effectively.
Thank you for your understanding and cooperation. Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any further questions!
Lisa Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover
Lisa Wrike Team member Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover
Fleur Komen We also would like to let you know that these issues you mentioned are now fixed!
Lisa Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover
Lisa Wrike Team member Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover
I'm able to approve my own timesheet. That's a problem. How can this be rolled out with the ability for someone to approve their own timesheet?
Lisa, you noted: "Now that the feature is generally available, Wrike doesn’t offer a process to collect user consent before releases."
It's fine to release a feature when your team feels it's ready to be shipped to everyone. However, as others have noted, not providing a release date to help your customers prepare for the transition causes headaches for everyone involved. I previously worked on a community team for a software company and completely empathize with managing damage control here. But please, have your product team provide some advanced notice and your customers will be much happier. You're great at providing monthly updates regarding features—those posts would be a great place to provide that advanced notice. Thanks!
So just to clarify, if nobody clicks on "Submit for Approval" then the timesheets function just as they always have. In other words, if we ignore the approval option, nothing changes?
Or, if we do not use the approval process, what happens, if anything, to the timesheets?
What is the danger, if any, of not submitting for approval, and/or not processing any requests for approval?
Hey Jason Pontius ! Alina from Product team here. To answer your question:
If an approval decision is given, the timesheet and the time entries within it will be marked as "approved." Team members cannot add additional time or create new time entries for approved weeks. Additionally, once a timesheet is approved, team members can no longer cancel the approval. To revert back, the person with permission to approve time can cancel it. If canceled, the experience will be the same as described in point 1.
For more information on how Timesheet Approvals feature works, please visit our Help Center article and let us know if there are any questions left.
Alina Kucherenko Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Learn about Wrike’s killer features and best practices with our Online Training Webinars
Alina Kucherenko Wrike Team member Learn about Wrike’s killer features and best practices with our Online Training Webinars