How to Create and Approve Timesheets in monday.com

Here's how to do timesheets in monday.com: use Tracket to have employees record work against monday.com items, submit their timesheets, and let authorized admins review the hours. Submission locks the timesheet until it is reopened or rejected.Tracket approvals overview.

‍Logging hours is only the first step. Before sending them to finance, you need to know whether the week is complete, the work is assigned to the right projects, and any mistakes have been corrected.

This guide covers setup, submission, review, corrections, and export, with a weekly routine you can adapt.

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Can you create timesheets in monday.com?

monday.com's native Time Tracking Column records time against tasks. Available on Pro and Enterprise plans, it supports timers, manual sessions, manually editable time entries, and Excel exports. It can be useful when you need to measure task duration. Native Time Tracking documentation.

A timesheet brings a person's work together for a period, so a reviewer can check whether it is complete and ready to approve.

The native column itself does not provide the submission and period-locking workflow described here. You could design a process using boards and permissions, but an “Approved” status should not be assumed to lock the underlying time records.

Tracket provides grid, list, and calendar timesheets with entries linked to monday.com items. This article uses that dedicated workflow. Tracket logging documentation.

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1. Set up a timesheet your team can use

Start with one team. Decide what a reviewer needs to check before adding fields or controls.

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Add Tracket to the workspace

Open the Tracket Marketplace listing and follow the installation flow. Add its board view for timesheets, settings, and approvals. Alternatively, the custom object makes the same functionality accessible from the workspace navigation. Installation instructions.

Choose one official place for recording time. Asking employees to enter the same work in both Tracket and the native column, or external tool like Everhour creates two records to reconcile whenever somebody makes a correction.

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Define a time entry

A monday.com admin can configure the Time Entry Template under App settings → Time management. Board, item, date, and time are always required; descriptions and custom fields can be configured to suit your process. Time Entry Template.

For a services team, a useful starting point is:

• The item or subitem representing the work.
• The date and duration.
• The responsible team, where relevant.
• An activity such as delivery, review, support, or internal work.
• A description explaining work that a reviewer could otherwise misunderstand.

For example, “Client website review: checked revised navigation and documented changes” gives a reviewer more useful context than “Website.” Keep it brief, but make the work clear.

Only require categories you use. If nobody reports on location, leave it out.

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Set billable rules and working capacity

Tracket records worked time and billable time separately. The billable field is available when an entry includes a custom-field option marked as billable, and billable time cannot exceed worked time. Billable-time rules.

For example, a consultant might work eight hours, with six eligible for client billing. The remaining two hours still belong in the timesheet. Your contract and internal rules determine which work is billable; approval should check that classification.

Configure capacity before using it to identify missing hours. Tracket uses working schedules and holiday schedules, including personal working patterns where configured. Comparing a part-time employee against a standard full-time week creates misleading exceptions. Capacity documentation.

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2. Configure who can review timesheets

Assign reviewer permissions deliberately. Being a monday.com team owner does not automatically make someone a Tracket team admin. These are separate roles. Team-management documentation.
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To configure a Tracket team admin, a monday.com admin can:

1. Open App settings → Teams and People.
2. Select the relevant team.
3. Find the intended reviewer.
4. Change their Permission to Team admin.

Repeat this for the teams they should manage. Team-admin setup.

Timesheets are not sent to one assigned approver. Eligible monday.com admins and Tracket team admins with access to the relevant team can review them, making sure that absence does not interrupt approvals. Current approval model.

Even with shared access, name a primary reviewer and backup in your internal process. Otherwise, each manager may assume somebody else is clearing the queue.

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Check reopening and self-approval settings

Approvals are enabled by default. Review the controls under App settings → Time management → Controlling:

• Reopening submitted timesheets: Users can reopen their own submitted timesheet by default. Disable this if corrections after submission must go through an admin.
• Self-approval: monday.com admins and Tracket team admins can approve their own timesheets by default. Disable self-approval if another person must review their hours.

If you disable self-approval, make sure another eligible reviewer is available. Approval controls.

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3. Record the week and submit it

Ask employees to record work regularly and check the following before submitting:

• Have all relevant working days been accounted for?
• Are entries attached to the correct projects and activities?
• Do worked and billable hours reflect what actually happened?
• Are descriptions clear enough for someone else to review?
• Have forgotten timers and mistaken durations been corrected?

The check matters more than hitting an arbitrary total. A timesheet can add up to forty hours and still allocate those hours to the wrong client.

To submit in Tracket:

1. Open My timesheet and check the period you intend to submit.
2. Select Submit timesheet.
3. Confirm with Submit.

Open and rejected timesheets can be submitted. If a user needs to revise a submitted timesheet, they can select Reopen when their settings allow it; otherwise, they need an authorized admin's help. Submission instructions.

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4. Review, approve, or return the timesheet

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In Tracket, open Team → Approvals, filter by status, team, and period, and select View on the relevant timesheet. You can also review through Team → Timesheets.

Choose Approve when the record is ready. To return it, select Reject, explain the correction, and confirm. For a submitted or approved timesheet that needs reopening, use the row's ⋮ menu → Reopen timesheet.

For a backlog, Pending Approvals presents submitted timesheets in submission order and loads the next after approval or rejection. Timesheet history records who performed each status change and when. Review instructions.

Use a repeatable review checklist

Use this suggested checklist for your review. These are manual checks:

1. Completeness: Does the period account for expected work, with any shortfall explained?
2. Allocation: Are hours charged to the right projects, items, and teams?
3. Billing: Does the billable classification match the agreement?
4. Exceptions: Are there unusual durations, apparent overlaps, or entries that need clarification?
5. Context: Do descriptions explain unexpected work or unusually large allocations?

Ask the employee about exceptions. The cause might be missing work, an unclear category, or an incorrect schedule.

When returning a timesheet, make the requested action specific. “Please review Wednesday's four-hour support entry: this work belongs to the internal support project” is actionable. “Incorrect timesheet” creates another conversation before the employee can fix anything.

What do the timesheet statuses mean?

Locking controls the correction path; it does not make approved hours permanently unchangeable. Status definitions.

For a correction after finance has already used the data, require a reason and notify the person responsible for the export or invoice. They need to know whether an earlier output must be replaced. Treat that notification as part of your process, rather than assuming a timesheet change updates an external file.

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5. Export the reviewed period

Once review is complete, prepare a report with the intended date range and scope. In Reports, choose filters, select the period, configure grouping and the time format, then generate the report. Tracket supports up to three grouping levels. Report setup.

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Save filters with clear names so you can reuse them for later periods. Report filters.

Choose the export that matches the handoff:

• Report table (xlsx): An Excel version of the aggregated report.
• Time entries (CSV): The individual entries behind the report, with selectable timezone, time format, and columns.
• Export to board: A monday.com item for each time entry in the report.

Before exporting, check that the report's people, dates, and totals match the reviewed scope. The export documentation does not establish that unapproved time is automatically excluded. Export documentation.

For billing, agree with finance which information they need: project reference, person, date, description, worked duration, and billable duration are useful starting points. Approving a timesheet does not set the contract rate or create an invoice.

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A weekly routine you can adapt

For a team that reviews weekly, this schedule is a useful starting point. The deadlines are suggestions, not Tracket defaults.

During the week: Employees record work while the details are still fresh. Unclear categories go to a named owner before they become a week of inconsistent entries.

Monday morning: Employees check and submit the previous week. The reviewer checks who is missing and follows up.

Monday afternoon: The reviewer accepts complete timesheets and returns exceptions with a clear explanation.

Tuesday morning: Employees correct returned entries. The reviewer checks the corrections, and finance receives the agreed export once the required scope is ready.

If one timesheet is delayed, decide whether finance should wait or receive a clearly identified partial batch. An unexplained missing person is harder to catch than an explicitly documented exception.

Pilot the routine with one team. Test a correction and have the backup reviewer handle a submission before extending it.

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Frequently asked questions

Why can't a manager approve a timesheet?

Check their Tracket role and access to the relevant team. If they are reviewing their own hours, also check the self-approval setting. A managerial job title alone does not establish app permissions. Reviewer permissions, self-approval settings.

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Can I remind people who have not submitted?

Yes. In Team → Approvals → Overview, find an open timesheet and use Send reminder from its menu. Reminders apply to open timesheets and cannot be sent to yourself. Email reminders are off by default. Reminder instructions.

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Does disabling approvals unlock old timesheets?

No. Disabling the approval process does not remove existing approvals or unlock already locked timesheets. Use the appropriate reopening action for a correction. Approval settings documentation.

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Make the review worth doing

Start with the fields your team needs, a named reviewer and backup, and the checklist above. Run one reporting period through to export, resolve any problems, then expand to more teams.

Ready to put the workflow into practice? Explore Tracket in the monday.com Marketplace and pilot one reporting period with your team.