Skip to main content
Language Selector

  1. Other Languages

    (machine translation)

Planview Customer Success Center

Timesheet Overview

  1. Last updated
  2. Save as PDF

For information about the Timesheet UI, see Working with Timesheets.

Time tracking improves the ability to accurately forecast project timelines and deliverables, helping to predict and measure task and project progress. It enables you to realize billing and chargebacks, understand resource rates and perform quick reconciliations, and generally manage expenses. Visibility into what your resources are working on, whether task, portfolio, or administrative, helps you ensure appropriate balance. You can log time to Projects, Portfolios, and non-business related events, which is referred to as Administrative time. Note that you can log time to projects by default; your PPM Pro administrator needs to configure the system to support Portfolio and Administrative time.

  • Project Time - time you spend working on projects, both client-related and internal

  • Portfolio Time - time you spend working on a portfolio. Note that individual portfolios can be configured to allow/disallow entering time (Allow Time Entry and Who Can Charge Time settings on portfolio Details). 

  • Administrative Time - non-working hours including Holiday, Sick Leave, Personal Leave, Jury Duty and Other Non-Bill­able. Contact your PPM Pro administrator if you wish to customize your Timesheet Administrative Time Types lookup list.

You access your timesheets from Home / Timesheets, or click the Timesheet icon timesheet_icon.png in the header to view the timesheet facility in its own window. Each row on a timesheet is called a "timesheet entry." All of the entries for a date range comprise one timesheet. For example, on one timesheet you might log time for several different tasks and a day off - each time you "Add new" you are creating an entry. Depending on how your organization has configured timesheet approvals, one person might approve the entire timesheet, or project managers might approve entries for their projects.

If you are a member of the Admin Timesheet team (also know as "Time Manager"), you can view all users' timesheets on Organization/Manage Time & Expense/Resource Time. See Managing Resource Time for more information about the "Time Manager".

For information about the Timesheet interface, see Working with Timesheets.

If you are a timesheet approver, see Approving Timesheets.

If you are an PPM Pro administrator, see About Timesheet Administration.

Timesheet Reports

Organization/Time reports based on the "Summarize Timesheets by Month" and "Summarize Timesheets by Timesheet Period" report sources aggregate timesheet data on a nightly basis. As a result, there is a one day lag for report data.

Who Can Enter Time?

To enter time, a user must have a valid time sheet activation date that is prior to or equal to today to enter time. Additional requirements are described below:

Type of Time

Who can log time

Project

The Timesheet filters that your organization uses determine who can log time to a project. These filters are configured in Admin/Timesheet Settings by a user with administrative privileges. See Configuring Timesheet Rules and Settings for more information.

Portfolio

Portfolio owners determine who can log time to portfolios by configuring the Allow Time Entry and Who Can Log Time portfolio settings.

The ability to enter Portfolio time is an Organization setting. If you don't see Portfolio as an option in the Category droplist then it is not enabled for your organization. Enter a support ticket if you wish to enable this feature.

Admin

All users who have timesheets present in Home/Timesheets can log Admin time.

The ability to enter Administrative time is an Organization setting. If you don't see 'Administrative' as an option in the Category droplist then it is not enabled for your organization.  Enter a support ticket if you wish to enable this feature.

 

See Configuring Timesheet Approvers for information about who can approve time.

Submission/Approval/Rejection Workflow

After timesheets are approved in any scenario, the user receives an email notification that the timesheet status is now "Approved".

1-step Approval

The user submits a timesheet (all time types) and it is sent directly to the Final Timesheet Approver, who will also receive an email notification. The approver can approve or reject the timesheet as a whole. If rejected, the timesheet status will be "rejected" and it will be sent back to the user who can make edits and resubmit.

2-step Approval

For a timesheet that incudes project time, the user submits a timesheet,a  read-only version is sent to the project owner who also receives an email alert that timesheet is ready for approval. If the user entered a submission note, it is appended to end of the email. After the project owner(s) has approved project time entries, a read-only version of the timesheet  is sent to the Final Approver, who also gets an email notification. Either of these approvers can reject the timesheet/project time entries, which returns it to the user (see below). For Portfolio/Administrative time, the timesheet is forwarded directly to the Final Approver. 

2-step Approval and Rejected Project Entries

If user logs time to Projects A, B and C and the time for project A is rejected but projects B and C are approved, the timesheet will be sent back to the user who will be able to edit their timesheet for project A only. When the user re-submits, the timesheet will be sent to the PM (who rejected project A initially) for approval.

Alternatively (imagine that some project time is rejected), the Time Admin can edit the user's timesheet and remove the entry for project A (which had been rejected by the PM) and resubmit the entire timesheet. At this point, the timesheet will go directly to the Final Timesheet Approver (it will not go back to any project managers).

Automatic Approval

Your organization can configure the system to automatically approve timesheets after a specified number of days. See Automatic Timesheet Approval for more information.

No Approval Process

Users save timesheets but do not submit them. The hours can be tracked on reports.

Time Admin approval (user on Admin Timesheets team)

Regardless of the state of the timesheet (Pending PM Approval or Pending Final Approval), if a Timesheet Admin approves a timesheet via Organization/Manage T&E/Manage Resource Time, the timesheet is fully approved.