Time Approval in Resource Management

Trevor O.

I have created a placeholder in Resource Management that gets time assigned to it for a project. I am the approver assigned to the placeholder for all hours associated with it. Right now, all the time that is being assigned to the placeholder is logging itself as unconfirmed as each day goes by because I have not "approved" the time yet to make the hours confirmed. However, I cannot find anywhere on my resource management page where I have the ability to click the "approve hours" button for the placeholder so the hours continue to log themselves as unconfirmed. Looking for any answer as to why this may be and a solution to fix it. Thanks

Georgie

Hi @Trevor O.,

It’s expected behaviour that hours for placeholders cannot be approved. Tasks can be assigned to a placeholder and then be assigned to a real user later. Only licensed users can track time and submit it for approval. Take a look at the following articles for more information: 

• Resource Management: User licenses and subscriptions
• Time tracking settings in Resource Management

As an alternative, you could change your time tracking method in your Resource Management account settings so that you track confirmed and unconfirmed past scheduled hours - more on this here: Select a default time tracking method.

Hope that helps!

Georgie

Trevor O.

@Georgie Thank you for your response, that was very helpful. Question though. Is there an alternate way to utilize something like a placeholder in RM so that hours can be assigned to it and those hours count against the budget without having to adjust our time tracking settings for unconfirmed hours? Basically we have a part time position that is filled by different people at different points in the year and we can not license all of them but we want their hours to count against any project they work on.

Georgie

Hi @Trevor O.,

Only licensed users can have hours approved. I understand why you’d like to be able to approve hours for placeholders or have a similar solution, but that’s currently not possible. 

I found a related product idea here: Portfolio Management: Team member part-time availability on Projects. Please add your vote to this idea if it matches your request. You’ll then receive updates when the status of the idea changes! 

 If the request provided doesn’t quite match your suggestion, please create a new Idea Post in the Smartsheet Product Feedback and Ideas topic. This will allow other users to vote on your enhancement idea!

Thanks,

Georgie