User Guide

Approval workflow

Time entries flow from draft → submitted → approved/rejected. Scoped by role; auditable end to end.

Draft→Submitted→ApprovedorRejected

Time entries start as draft. At the end of the week, the employee clicks Submit Week — all draft entries flip to submitted. Managers review and either approve (entries become billable) or reject (entries return to draft with a required reason).

Approval inbox

Managers and super_admins see all pending submitted weeks at /time/approvals, oldest first. Click a row to open the per-week review — a read-only weekly timesheet grid with Approve / Reject buttons.

Per-role scope

👑

Super admin

Approves any week, anywhere. No scope limits.

👤

Manager

Approves weeks for assigned clients only. Cross-client weeks where the manager doesn't own every client are blocked with a clean AuthorizationError.

🏢

Vendor admin

Reviews their vendor's contractors' weeks but never finalizes — the firm always owns approval. Vendor admins submit on behalf; firm-side reviewer approves.

Withdraw a submitted week

If the submitter realizes they made a mistake after clicking Submit but before approval, they (or someone authorized) can click Withdraw on the week to pull it back to draft for editing. Service-layer guard atomically filters by status = 'submitted' so a race with an approval can't undo an approved entry.

Notifications

✉️

Approval / reject email

On approve or reject, the submitter receives a notification email if opted in (default ON). Rejection emails include the verbatim manager reason so the submitter knows what to fix.

🔔

Submit reminders

Friday-afternoon reminders to billable users with outstanding draft hours. Honor each user's timezone — Pacific consultant gets it at 3pm PT, not 3pm UTC.

Approved entries — locked by default, super_admin can override

Once a week is approved, entries are immutable to the normal edit path — the submitter and manager both get a ValidationError. Super_admin has a direct-edit escape hatch: PATCH any entry regardless of status (submitted / approved / rejected) without the reject → auto-draft → edit → re-approve dance. Audit log tags every override with metadata.type: "admin_direct_edit" + previousStatus so reviewers can find every one. Managers still use the standard reject flow — the escape hatch is super_admin-only.

Per-session drawer on kiosk / Timer cells

Cells that carry real session data (kiosk clock-in/out or Timer start/end) become clickable — opens a right-side sheet with one card per session showing start-end range, kiosk location, identity selfie thumbnail, description, and status. Non-legal cells with only manual grid entries stay plain text (no drawer). Legal-matter cells use their own sub-entry review panel for per-entry UTBMS codes.

Overnight shift indicator

Cells with a session that crosses midnight (10 PM → 6 AM, etc.) render a small amber "→" glyph next to the duration so reviewers spot overnight sessions while scanning the grid. Tooltip shows the full "22:00 → 06:00 next day" range; for multi-day gaps ("forgot to clock out Friday, closed Monday") the tooltip carries the end-day name.

Multi-selfie thumbnails per cell

A field tech clocking in 4 times in one day produces 4 selfies. The approval-page cell shows up to 4 thumbnails with a "+N" overflow badge, each clickable to a lightbox. Enables per-session identity verification, not just first-of-day.

Tip

Opt-out per user via Settings → Profile → Notifications. The Friday reminder cadence is lazy-on-read with a 5-minute in-process throttle — no cron required.

Kiosk-only users auto-submit

Users with clockInSource=kiosk_only auto-submit their week on each clock-out — each clock-in/out cycle IS the whole submission unit. Reviewers see one submitted entry per session in the inbox; no weekly-grid ceremony from the tech. Combined with per-session job photos (field context) this is the fully-auditable pattern staffing + field-service firms use.

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