In many teams, “approving” the week happened on WhatsApp, by email, or on an extra spreadsheet tab. The person wrote “I already logged it.” The manager replied “ok” — or did not reply. On billing day, someone found a hole, an hour on the wrong project, an empty Tuesday. There was no trail of who rejected it, and no clear way to send it again.
That scene is what motivated hour approval in RabbitWork: a flow inside the timesheet itself, with a status visible to both sides.
The problem with approving outside the system
Approving in chat is cheap at the start. Everyone is already in the group. The cost shows up later.
Without a single place, each person has their own version of close. The person logging thinks they submitted. The manager thinks people are still missing. Finance chases a report nobody can defend because the “ok” stayed in a conversation from three weeks ago.
Rejecting also becomes awkward. Instead of a comment on the week — “Wednesday is missing on client X” — the conversation becomes a private message, an ambiguous tone, rework with no record. The next week, the same hole comes back.
Anyone who has tried to “approve” in a spreadsheet knows the other side: the spreadsheet does not lock the period. You can edit after the ok. The number that went to the client stops being the number in the file.
Why this is hard to solve by hand
Closing mixes three rhythms: the person who logs during the day, the person who reviews on Friday, and the person who bills during the month. An informal nudge only reaches the first. The second becomes a cop. The third inherits whatever is left.
A reminder in the group fixes one week. It does not fix the habit. And it leaves no history that the team was notified.
We wanted a flow the person and the manager use every week, not a module only the admin configures and then forgets.
What was built
On the Ultimate plan, the admin turns on the approval flow: who submits, until when, whether the week goes up on its own at the deadline, and which emails chase a missing submission or a stuck queue.
The person reviews the grid and submits the week. While the week is in approval or approved, those days cannot be edited. That is what the spreadsheet did not do: the ok now has a consequence.
The manager approves or rejects with a visible comment. They can close the whole week at once — without going project by project — and undo a submission or an approval made by mistake, without a support ticket.
If the week comes back, the person knows what to fix. The step is in the week was rejected — what to do.
Timesheet reminders sit in the same design: lateness, the week’s deadline, pending approval. The manager stops being the company’s WhatsApp. The notice stays in the history.
Weekly timesheet with submit for approval
Before and after in weekly use
Before: Friday afternoon in the group, “send the screenshot,” “is it already in the spreadsheet?”, an ok nobody can find later, and finance billing in the dark.
After: the person sees the same status as the manager. The queue moves in minutes when the week is whole. A mistaken click can be undone. A rejection becomes a correction, not a side conversation.
Payroll, commission, and the invoice start from hours with a trail — not from memory.
What this opens
With approval on the timesheet, close stops being a favor. It becomes a ritual: log, review the grid, submit, validate.
You get a shorter conversation with the client (“these hours already went through the manager”), fewer holes in the report, and a record that the team was asked on time — without turning the lead into a collector.
The launch detail is in the 2026 Changelog. The steps for each role are in the help center.
If your close still lives in chat, it is worth seeing the flow in RabbitWork at rabbitwork.io.
