Streamline Time Tracking with ClickUp's Time Sheet Approvals

Content Management Doesn’t Need to Be Complicated

For teams managing billable hours, contractors, or strict budgets, that means having a clear process for reviewing & approving time — not just hoping everyone filled things in correctly.

ClickUp’s Time Sheet Approvals feature gives you exactly that. It adds structure on top of your existing time tracking: submissions, reviews, approvals, and locked records you can rely on.

In this walkthrough, we’ll cover:

• How to set up Time Sheet Approvals in ClickUp

• What the submission experience looks like for team members

• How managers review, approve, or request changes

• A simple way to handle billable vs. non-billable time

  
  

🕣 Set Up Time Sheet Approvals in ClickUp

To configure Time Sheet Approvals, you’ll need to be an owner or admin in your ClickUp workspace. Only admins can be set as approvers, so if department heads need to sign off on time sheets, make sure their role is updated first.

Where to find it:

1. Open the left-hand navigation and click Time Sheets.

2. Inside Time Sheets, switch to the Approvals tab.

3. Click the setup button to create your first approval cycle.

During setup, you’ll:

• Choose a deadline for when time sheets should be submitted

  • e.g. Friday at 5:00 p.m.

• Configure reminders

  • 24 hours before the deadline

  • 8 hours after the deadline (for anyone who still hasn’t submitted)

• Add your submitters

  • Typically your whole team or a specific group

• Assign one or more approvers

  • Remember: approvers must be admins in ClickUp

Once saved, your approval rules run quietly in the background. You can revisit the Approvals tab at any time to update deadlines, submitters, or approvers as your team changes.

Pro tip: Keep approvers simple. One primary approver per team is usually better than a long list that creates confusion and bottlenecks.

Submitting Time Sheets as a Team Member

Once approvals are set up, your team uses the same Time Sheets area they’re already familiar with — they just gain a clear “submit for approval” step.

If a submitter doesn’t see Time Sheets in the sidebar, they can click More in the left navigation and pin it so it’s easy to access.

The submission flow looks like this:

1. Open Time Sheets and select the correct week.

2. Add tasks to the sheet (for example: “TikTok content”, “Newsletter,” or “Client reporting”).

3. Enter the hours worked for each day on each task.

As they log time, ClickUp shows helpful metrics like:

• Total hours for the week

• Weekly capacity (for example, 16 of 40 hours filled)

When everything looks good, the team member clicks Submit for approval. The time sheet’s status moves to Pending, and the entries are locked so they can’t be changed by accident.

If they spot a mistake after submitting, they can:

1. Hover over the approval status.

2. Withdraw the time sheet.

3. Fix their entries (for example, adding a missing hour on Wednesday).

4. Submit again for approval.

   
   

Reviewing, Approving & Requesting Changes

Approvers see a notification badge next to Time Sheets whenever there are new submissions to review. Inside the Approvals tab, the workflow is very clear:

• Needs my approval – time sheets that are ready for review

• Changes requested – time sheets sent back to team members

• Approved – everything that’s been signed off

• All – a full history of time sheets across every status

When an approver clicks Review, they can see:

• Total hours logged for the selected period

• The team member’s weekly capacity

• Billable vs. non-billable hours (if billable tracking is enabled)

From there, they have two main options:

1. Approve

   • The time sheet is locked and moves to the Approved section.

2. Request changes

   • The approver adds a note (for example: “Please add Friday’s newsletter hour”).

   • The submitter gets a notification, withdraws the time sheet, updates it, and resubmits.

     
     

Once a time sheet is approved, it becomes a reliable source of truth for billing, reporting, and payroll. Any further changes require the sheet to be reopened or withdrawn, which helps prevent accidental edits after invoices have been sent.

Make Billable vs. Non-Billable Easier

If your team tracks client work, approvals get even more valuable when you combine them with ClickUp’s billable time settings at the Space level.

For each Space in your workspace, you can:

1. Open the Space menu and click Space settings.

2. Find Billable time tracking.

3. Set that Space as billable by default (great for client or retainer work).

From that point on:

• Any task created in the Space will default to billable.

• Time logged on those tasks will automatically be tracked as billable.

• Team members can still toggle individual entries to non-billable when needed.

This small tweak keeps your reporting accurate even if someone forgets to flip a billable/non-billable switch on a specific timer.

🎥 Watch the Full Time Sheet Approvals Workflow

In the video walkthrough, you’ll see:

• How to set up Time Sheet Approvals from scratch

• How a team member fills out & submits their time sheet

• What the process looks like for a manager reviewing and approving

• How “request changes” works in practice

• A quick demo of billable vs. non-billable Spaces in ClickUp

Turn Time Tracking into a Clear Approval Flow

Time Sheet Approvals adds the structure most teams have been trying to manage in spreadsheets and Slack messages:

• Team members know exactly when & how to submit.

• Approvers have a dedicated place to review, approve, or request changes.

• Once approved, time sheets are locked and ready for billing or reporting.

Start small: set up approvals for a single team or department, test your reminder timing, and refine the workflow. Once it feels smooth, roll it out to the rest of your organization.