Design a time-record approval workflow
Separate submission, review, rejection, approval and release to a recipient.
Define who can submit, review, reject and release a time record. Approval should be an explicit state transition with a record of what was approved, not a vague label on a total.
Write the states and their owners
Begin with draft, submitted, returned for correction, approved and released. Decide which states your workflow actually needs and map them to the product’s terminology. A submitted entry is not necessarily approved; an approved entry is not necessarily sent to the recipient. Define who can change each state and what happens when the reviewer is unavailable.
Verify editing behavior in the selected plan
Clockify documents approval on Standard and higher and distinguishes pending from approved records. Role and state affect what can be edited. Use that as a prompt to test your own candidate: submit a fictional entry, try a permitted correction, approve it and inspect what happens afterward. Do not assume a feature named approval provides the exact locking or history you require.
Return a useful correction request
A rejected fictional record W-412 might need a project code clarified, not a wholesale replacement. State the record ID, the exact question, the reviewer and the response required. Keep the original value available. Once corrected, show which version the reviewer approved. Avoid treating silence or a passed deadline as automatic agreement unless the organization has explicitly defined that process.
Separate approval from downstream acceptance
After internal review, verify the outgoing file and obtain the recipient’s acceptance through the normal business process. A successful export does not prove the recipient imported it correctly. Keep an exception list for unresolved records so the reviewer does not silently include them to close a period. This workflow does not determine wages, contractual billability or legal approval requirements.
Continue this work-record check
Use the linked guide for the next decision in this workflow. Keep your original records separate from experiments and record any unresolved requirement before changing a live process.
Sources and boundaries
Primary documentation supports the dated product facts. Proposed checks and fictional examples are our editorial method, not observed product results.
- Clockify — approval · checked September 23, 2026