Why approve hours before invoicing?
An invoice is hard to undo. A credit note takes time, and a client who finds one mistake starts distrusting the rest of the breakdown. A mistake caught before invoicing takes a minute.
Approval is also the moment someone with an overview looks at the week. An employee sees their own hours; a manager sees that a project suddenly got twice its budget, or that a colleague hasn't logged anything for three days.
Who should approve timesheets?
Someone who knows the work: the project lead, the team lead or the owner in a small business. They know whether ten hours for a job is reasonable and which client asked for what.
Use the four-eyes principle: nobody approves their own hours. If you work alone or are the only approver, that isn't possible. Then a fixed moment to reread your own week is the best substitute.
What do you check when approving?
You don't need to recalculate every line. Look for what a client or accountant would notice.
| Check | What you look at |
|---|---|
| Description | Can the client read what was done? Send back empty or vague lines like ‘work’. |
| Project and client | Is the work on the right client? A wrong client is the most expensive mistake. |
| Billable or not | Internal work on a billable activity, or the other way round. |
| Outliers | A fourteen-hour day, a five-hour task that normally takes thirty minutes. |
| Missing days | Gaps in the week without leave or a sick day. |
| Leave | Open leave requests that belong to the same week. |
If you're unsure about a line, ask rather than quietly changing it. The employee knows what happened; you don't.
What rhythm works?
Weekly. A week is short enough to still remember what you did, and long enough not to be a daily chore. Monthly approval looks efficient, but then people have to dig up mistakes from four weeks ago.
- Employees complete their week before the weekend, with a description on every line.
- On Monday or Tuesday the approver goes through the previous week.
- Clean weeks get approved in one go; weeks with a question get declined with a reason.
- The employee fixes the declined hours and submits them again.
- At the end of the month you only invoice approved hours.
How do you decline hours?
Always with a reason that says what needs to happen. ‘Wrong’ helps nobody; ‘This belongs to the Website project, not Maintenance’ does. A good reason is concrete and about the entry, not the person.
Only decline what's wrong. If one day is unclear, approve the rest and send back that day. That way invoicing for the other hours doesn't get stuck.
Which mistakes are easy to make?
Most problems don't come from bad intent but from haste. A few patterns keep coming back.
- Approving your own hours. The check is gone, even if the system allows it.
- Bulk-approving everything without looking. Bulk is fine for weeks without warnings, not as a replacement for looking.
- Quietly editing hours. The employee learns nothing, and the change is hard to explain later.
- Approving late. Unapproved hours can't be invoiced; a backlog delays your revenue.
- Waving through hours an AI assistant logged. They're a proposal too; read the description like any other line. More in logging hours with AI.
How Half5 does it
In Half5 you switch on "Approve hours before invoicing" in the organisation settings. Entries then have the status "Not approved yet", "Approved" or "Declined". Declining asks for a reason, which the employee sees. With this setting on, only approved hours go into draft invoices.
Admins approve, and department managers approve for their own departments. Nobody approves their own entries unless there's no other approver: your own entries are approved by another approver. Weeks without warnings can be approved in one go. Missing descriptions show as warnings, and leave requests appear on the same screen as open requests; see registering leave.
Hours an AI assistant logs through MCP also come in as "Not approved yet" and go through the same approval.
Frequently asked questions
Does a freelancer without staff need to approve hours?
There's nobody else to do it. The value is mainly in a fixed moment to reread your week before invoicing; you can do that without formal approval.
What happens to declined hours?
They go back to the employee with the reason attached. They fix the entry, and you review it again. Declined hours don't go on an invoice.
Can a manager edit an employee's hours directly?
Often technically yes, but it's better to decline with a reason. Then the employee knows what was wrong, and it stays clear who recorded what.
How often should you approve timesheets?
Weekly works for most teams. Everyone still remembers what happened, and you're not behind when the monthly invoice is due.
Who approves the manager's own hours?
Another approver, such as a fellow manager or the owner. If there's nobody else, your own review moment is the only option left.
