Approving timesheets before time becomes billable
Who approves weekly timesheets in Achekam, why time is billable only once someone other than its recorder approves it, and what an approver should check.
By Achekam · · 5 min read · For Accountants & audit firms in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
Every firm has taken the call. A client queries a line on the invoice, the manager pulls up the time behind it, and the entries turn out to be booked to the wrong engagement, described only as "admin", or recorded twice. By then the invoice has gone, and putting it right costs more goodwill than the hours were ever worth.
The cheapest place to catch those mistakes is before the time can be billed at all. That is what timesheet approval is for: a second person reads the week's time while the work is still fresh in everyone's mind, and only then does it become something the firm may put on an invoice.
Here is how that cycle runs in Achekam, who may approve, why the default insists on a different person, and what approval does not tell you.
The weekly cycle
Staff complete a timesheet for the week and submit it. The approver then either approves it or returns it to the person who recorded it. The screen is under WORK & DELIVERY > Timesheets, on the Team approvals view.
A returned timesheet is not a rejection of the work. It is a request to fix something specific: a wrong client, a vague description, time on an engagement that has already closed, or a day that looks short or long against the diary. The recorder corrects it and submits again.
Where a firm uses automatic time capture, captured time reaches the timesheet only once the person confirms it, by default. The weekly submission therefore stays the recorder's own statement of what they did, and the approver is reviewing a claim someone has stood behind. The capture itself is explained in how automatic time capture works.
Who may approve
A manager, a partner or an administrator can approve or return a timesheet. A firm that wants finer control can grant named time permissions to a role or to an individual under SETTINGS > Permissions & RBAC, and can check there why a particular member may or may not act.
Recorded by one, approved by another
By default, time becomes billable only after someone other than the person who recorded it approves it. A manager's own week, or a partner's, becomes billable only when a colleague has approved it.
The reasoning is ordinary segregation of duties. AccountingTools' definition of segregation of duties puts it simply: the steps in a process go to different people, so that no one can both commit and conceal an error. The person who recorded the time has every reason to believe it is right. A second reader asks different questions. Does this engagement still have budget? Was this task agreed with the client, or is it scope creep? Would the description survive being read by the client in an invoice narrative?
The firm's client billing controls add to this. They can require approval of time before billing, and a second issuer for invoices above an amount the firm sets. Between them, unapproved hours cannot drift onto an invoice simply because someone was rushing on the last day of the month.
What approval does not settle
Approval confirms that the hours are real and correctly allocated. It does not put a value on them.
Achekam values time from the firm's rate cards, kept under BILLING & FINANCE > Rate Cards & Realisation. Time recorded by someone who has no rate is counted as unvalued rather than estimated. An approved week from a new trainee whose rate was never set will show hours in the age of unbilled work but no value against them. That is deliberate: a guessed rate would flatter WIP and distort realisation, so the gap is shown instead of quietly filled.
Approved, valued time sits in the WIP Register. From there a partner, manager or administrator can write it up, down or off with a reason, and bill it into a client invoice, after which the same hours cannot be billed a second time. Those adjustments have their own approval rules, set out in writing WIP up, down or off.
Using approval to watch the budget
The weekly approval is also the natural moment to compare effort with the plan. Under WORK & DELIVERY > Hours: Allocated vs Consumed, staff can set each engagement's planned hours against the hours logged. An approver who sees a file running ahead of its plan halfway through fieldwork can raise it with the manager then, rather than leaving the partner to discover the overrun at billing.
The Capacity / Resource Planner shows people by weeks. A week in which no capacity has been recorded shows as "not set", not as spare time. An empty cell is a prompt to record capacity, not proof that someone is free to take another job.
A checklist for the approver
Before approving a week, look for:
- Every line on an open engagement for the right client, not on a catch-all internal code.
- Descriptions a client could read in an invoice narrative without confusion.
- Hours that agree broadly with the person's diary and the meetings they attended.
- Time on engagements already over their planned hours, flagged to the manager.
- Non-chargeable work such as training or practice development coded as such.
- Anything you would want explained before a client sees it, returned with a short note.
A timesheet returned with a specific note is quicker for everyone than one approved now and argued about at the billing run.
Why the extra step pays for itself
Some firms resist approval because it puts a step between the work and the invoice. In practice, time reviewed every week is faster to bill. The partner preparing the invoice is looking at hours that someone has already questioned, with narratives that are already fit for the client. Realisation figures mean more too, because they rest on time that was checked before it was valued.
For a view of each person's recorded time against their working hours, see the Team Activity page.
A sensible start is to name the approver for each team, confirm that your firm has kept the default requiring a second person, and make sure every fee earner has a rate before the first week is approved.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
