Time card approval is the step where a manager reviews a finished week of hours and signs off on it before payroll runs. The employee confirms the week is right, the manager checks it against the schedule and the exceptions, fixes what is wrong with a written reason, and marks it approved. After that the week is locked evidence: it is what the employee gets paid for and what you would show if someone ever disputed the check. This guide covers the workflow for a 10 to 50 person team, a weekly checklist, the exceptions that hold a week up, and how the approval flow works in ClockOut.
Why the approval step exists
Three reasons, in order of how often they bite a small business.
- Errors cost real money. A single missed clock-out on a $20-an-hour employee, auto-closed at 12 hours instead of the 8 they worked, is $80 of overpayment. Four of those a month is a thousand dollars a year.
- Records law. Federal wage and hour rules require employers to keep accurate records of hours worked. An approval trail with dated corrections and stated reasons is far better evidence than a spreadsheet someone retyped.
- Disputes. When an employee says “I worked later than that,” the useful answer is a record showing what the punch said, what it was changed to, who changed it, when, and why. Approval is where that record gets made.
The manager workflow, start to finish
- 01
The week ends
Approve completed weeks only. If your workweek runs Monday to Sunday, Monday morning is the approval slot. Trying to approve a week that is still running means the totals you signed off will not match the totals payroll sees. - 02
The employee submits
The employee reviews their own week and submits it, with a note if something needs explaining (“forgot to clock out Thursday, left at 5”). This is the cheapest error catch you have: the person who worked the shift knows the right answer, and it takes them two minutes. - 03
Clear the exception queue first
Before you look at any totals, work through the flagged items: missed punches, no-shows, late arrivals, early leaves, out-of-area punches, break violations, auto clock-outs. Almost every wrong number in a timesheet is sitting in that list. - 04
Compare hours against the schedule
Scan for shifts that ran long, shifts nobody was scheduled for, and totals that crossed 40 hours. You are looking for the two or three lines that do not match what you expected, not auditing every punch. - 05
Fix what is wrong, with a reason
Edit the entry, type why (“forgot to clock out, confirmed left at 5:00 PM with shift lead”), and save. Never correct a time card without a written reason, and never correct one without telling the employee what changed. - 06
Approve, or reject with a reason
Approve the week if it is right. If it is not, and the fix belongs to the employee rather than you, reject it with a specific reason so they can correct and resubmit. “Please add a note explaining Thursday” beats “wrong.” - 07
Run payroll from approved hours
Pull the pay period only after every week in it is approved, then lock or export it so later edits cannot change what was already paid.
The weekly approval checklist
Print this or paste it into your task list. For a 10 to 50 person team, it is a 15 to 20 minute job once the habits are in place.
- Confirm the week you are approving has actually ended.
- Check who has not submitted yet and chase those people first, so you only touch the list once.
- Clear every open exception for the week.
- Look at anyone over 40 hours and decide whether the overtime was authorized. Note the answer either way.
- Look at any shift longer than about 10 hours: it is usually a missed clock-out, not a long day.
- Look at any shift with zero break recorded where a break was required, and at breaks that ran much longer than policy.
- Check for punches from outside the work area if you use a geofence.
- Make corrections with a written reason and tell the affected people.
- Approve the clean weeks. Reject the ones the employee must fix.
- Once every week in the pay period is approved, run and lock payroll.
The exceptions that hold up a week
These five account for nearly all of the delay in a small business’s approval run.
| What it usually means | How to resolve it | |
|---|---|---|
| Missed clock-out | Employee left without punching out; the entry ran until an auto clock-out closed it | Ask the employee and the shift lead for the real time, edit with that reason, and keep both answers in the note |
| Missed clock-in | Employee started work before opening the app, or the punch failed offline | Use the schedule start time only if a second person can confirm it, and record who confirmed |
| Unapproved overtime | Someone crossed 40 hours without a manager saying yes first | Pay it, then fix the cause. Overtime worked has to be paid whether or not it was authorized |
| Long or missing break | A meal break ran well past policy, or none was recorded on a shift that required one | Correct the record to what actually happened, then check your state rules before adjusting pay |
| Punch from outside the work area | Clock-in from off site: a legitimate errand, a wrong location, or a policy problem | Ask before assuming. Record the explanation on the entry so the pattern is visible next month |
Missed clock-outs are common enough to deserve their own playbook: how to handle missed clock-outs.
How time card approval works in ClockOut
Timesheet approval is included on Starter and Pro (not on the Free plan). Here is the flow as the product actually behaves.
The employee side
- On their timesheet page, an employee submits a completed week for approval and can attach a note.
- The week has to match the company workweek and has to have ended. Submitting a week that is still in progress is refused, with a message saying which date it can be submitted after.
- On Pro, where the compliance pack is available, the submission can carry a signed attestation statement recorded against that week.
- They see the status of every week they have submitted, and they get a notification when it is approved or rejected. A rejection carries the manager’s reason.
- A rejected week can be corrected and resubmitted. Resubmitting clears the previous review so it reads as fresh.
The manager side
- Admins get a notification when a timesheet is submitted, and a Weeks to approve queue on the timesheet approvals page that can be filtered by employee group.
- Each row shows the person, the week, the total hours, when it was submitted, their note, and whether an attestation was signed.
- Approve week signs it off. Reject sends it back with a reason that goes to the employee as a notification.
- A Recently approved list lets you unapprove a week if you signed off too early. That is blocked once the week sits inside a locked or exported pay run, so paid totals cannot drift away from the timesheet underneath them.
- Approving, rejecting and unapproving are all written to the audit log with who did it and when.
Corrections and the exception inbox
- Editing a time entry requires a reason of up to 500 characters. The edit is refused without one.
- Every edit that actually changes a clock-in, clock-out or break writes a permanent before-and-after record the employee can read, so they see “clock out 5:02 PM to 5:00 PM” rather than a silently different number.
- Edits are refused inside an approved timesheet or a locked pay period. Unapprove the week first if a correction is genuinely needed.
- The exception inbox (Starter and up) collects missed punches, no-shows, late arrivals, early leaves, out-of-geofence punches, break violations and auto clock-outs. Each one can be acknowledged, resolved with a note, or dismissed, and they can be cleared in bulk.
- Overtime-approaching alerts warn you before someone crosses the threshold, which is cheaper than discovering it at approval time.
What ClockOut does not do here
- Approval is per employee per week. There is no multi-level approval chain where a supervisor approves and then a director approves again.
- A manager cannot approve a week the employee has not submitted. The submission is the first step of the flow by design.
- There is no built-in payroll processing. Pro runs pay periods and exports payroll-formatted files for ADP, Gusto and QuickBooks; every plan can export CSV. There is no live API sync into a payroll provider.
If you are still approving time cards on paper
The paper version of this workflow is the same shape: collect the cards, compare them with the schedule, question the odd ones, initial the top, hand them to whoever does payroll. What paper cannot give you is the exception list, the before-and-after edit record, or proof of when the sign-off happened. If you are moving off paper, our guide to switching from paper timesheets covers the transition week by week.
FAQ
What is timecard approval?
It is the manager sign-off on a completed timesheet before payroll runs. The employee submits the finished week, the manager compares it against the schedule and the flagged exceptions, corrects anything wrong with a documented reason, and marks it approved. Approved hours are the hours that get paid, and in most systems approving also freezes the period so later edits cannot quietly change what was paid.
How often should timesheets be approved?
Once per pay period, right after the period ends, and never while it is still running. Weekly and biweekly payrolls should approve weekly so the review stays small. If you approve monthly, expect the memory of what actually happened on a Tuesday three weeks ago to be gone, which makes corrections guesswork.
Who should approve time cards?
The person who knows whether the shift happened: the direct supervisor or shift lead, not the bookkeeper. Payroll should receive approved hours, not decide them. Nobody should approve their own timesheet. In ClockOut, approving is limited to owner, admin and manager roles, and every approval is written to the audit log with the approver’s name.
Can a manager change an employee's time card?
Yes, when the record is inaccurate, and the correction has to be documented. Editing to make a record match reality is normal practice. Editing to remove hours the employee actually worked is not, and unauthorized overtime still has to be paid. In ClockOut an edit is refused without a written reason, and it writes a before-and-after record the employee can see.
What happens if an employee does not submit their timesheet?
Payroll still has to run and the hours still have to be paid, so do not let a missing submission delay a check. Chase the submission first, and if it does not come, review and approve the recorded hours yourself, note that the employee did not submit, and follow up on the habit separately. Chasing non-submitters before you start reviewing is why it is step two of the checklist above.
Related reading
- How to handle missed clock-outs
- What a time and attendance system does
- Export payroll hours to ADP, Gusto or QuickBooks
- Run weekly payroll in 30 minutes
Sources
Written by the ClockOut product team. The ClockOut behavior described here was checked against the shipping product on September 9, 2026: the timesheet submission and approval flow, the exception inbox, the edit-reason requirement and the pay period lock. Plan availability is listed on the product facts page, which carries its own verification date. General wage and hour points refer to the federal Fair Labor Standards Act; state rules on breaks and daily overtime differ, and this is not legal advice.