Our timesheets approval flow was too rigid. We spent a month fixing it.
A month ago I wrote here about the release of our free Timesheets for Jira. Thanks to that post, we got our first app users. Thank you for your trust and for your feedback. One thing came through clearly - a flat, static list in the workflow does not work for most.
The original process assumed a single approver and the absence of any customization. This is fine for a team of five people, but beyond that it stops working. The business needs the lead to look first, and then the manager to confirm, and the app simply could not represent this. Well, we fixed it.
Approvals
The chain is set up for each team and consists of stages. A stage is completed when any of the approvers signs the timesheets, or when all of them do it, but it is up to you (you can also leave the default). An approver can be a role in the team or a specific person, and a stage can combine both, so "any lead plus a specific manager" works as a single stage.
Two stages cover most setups: the lead reviews, the manager confirms.
A few threads asked for a way to forbid a lead or a manager from approving their own timesheet. So now the chain can specify that the approver at a stage must be someone other than the author. (also globally for the whole Jira instance)
Also, the approval chain is snapshotted onto the timesheet when it is submitted. If you change the policy later, all the records already in flight keep their old rules, and the changes will be taken into account only for new submissions. This was done intentionally, since we did not want approvals to move to other people while the review is going on.
Kanban
On the approvals page there are now two views. The list is how it was originally, just split into what is waiting for your response and what is already processed. The board is the new part: a column for each state, and you move the timesheet by dragging its card.
Drag a card to "Approved", and it will be approved. Drag it to "Changes requested", and it will return to the author with your reason attached. In any case, before the final approval there is a confirmation step, and if you try to do something illogical, the card will simply return to its original position with an explanation.
The card displays the work hours against the capacity, the author's comment, and the place of the timesheet in the chain. You can filter by planning period, search among members and comments, and also hide the approved ones, so that the board does not gradually turn into an archive.
Try it!
It is on the Marketplace: Timesheets for Jira ( Time Tracking & Approvals)
The multi-stage editor is still in beta, single-stage approval works stably. If in your organization timesheets are processed in some way not covered by this solution, write about it in the comments before we finalize the design.
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