Client Approval For Time Entries
Client Approval allows you to get your time entries verified and approved by the clients you’re working for. This would let the clients know the total number of hours you’ve worked for them. The approved time entries alone can later be invoiced to the client.
In this page…
Understanding Client Approvals
Let us try to understand Client Approval with the help of a scenario.
Scenario: Andy and his team of employees work on a project, for which they are paid based on the number of hours they work. He records the work done by each employee and sends the time entries to his customer for approval. The customer gets to know the exact number of hours spent on each task and the total time spent on finishing the project. Once the time entries are approved by the customer, Andy can invoice the client for the same, thus making the whole process smooth and easy for both the Andy and his client.
Enabling Client Approvals
- Log in to your Zoho Books organization.
- Go to Settings and select Preferences.
- Go to the Projects tab in the left menu.
- Mark the Enable Client Approvals for time entries box.
If you haven’t enabled projects and timesheets in the Client Portal, a pop-up will appear asking you to enable it.
- Mark the box Enable Projects and Timesheet in Client Portal, and click Save and Enable to let your customers view your client approvals from the Client Portal.
Insight: Client Approvals are only available for customers for whom you’ve enabled the Client Portal.
Creating Client Approvals
Once you have enabled Client Approval, you can view it by going to Time Tracking and selecting Client Approvals.
Client Approvals are available only for projects for which you’ve enabled them.
To enable Client Approval for a project:
- Mark the box Enable Client Approval for the time entries of this project when creating a new project or editing an existing project.
There are two ways through which you can create client approvals:
1. From the Client Approvals Module
- Go to the Time Tracking module in the left sidebar.
- Select Client Approvals.
- Click + New Create Approval in the top right corner of the page.
2. From the Timesheet Module
- Go to the Time Tracking module in the left sidebar.
- Select Timesheet.
- Select the time entries that need to be sent for approval.
- Click the Submit for Client Approval button on the top.
Once you choose any of the above methods, you’ll need to fill in the following details:
- Choose a customer from the Customer Name dropdown.
- Provide a name for the approval in the Name field.
- Select the projects for which you’d like to include time entries from the Projects dropdown.
- Add a description (if any) for the client approval in the Description field.
- Choose a due date in the Due Date field if you want your client to approve the time entries before a specific date.
- Select the time entries you wish to send your customer under Timesheet.
- Click Save and Submit to save and submit the approval immediately. Next, click Submit for Approval in the following pop-up.
- Click Save to save and submit it later.
Note: You cannot include the time entries that have already been invoiced in a client approval.
Next >
Client Approval Actions
