Time Authorisation

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The Time Authorisation modes allow a practice to configure the application to better mimic their business practices. These modes are used to control how timesheet entries are made available for billing to deliver a more efficient billing process of time to clients. A practice can use standard PM authorisation, project based authorisation or simplified authorisation, or combinations of either.

Standard PM Authorisation

The existing Standard PM Authorisation mode requires an employee’s entire timesheet to be authorised and posted before any of the individual timeline entries can be billed. Each timesheet is likely to contain a number of different timeline entries across a combination of different assignments (projects) and tasks (activities), but these can only be billed once the user has submitted the entire sheet for approval (authorisation) and posting.

Typically, the timesheets are approved and posted by the employee’s line manager.

Project Based Authorisation

There is often a delay between an employee entering timelines against projects and the entire timesheet being authorised and posted. Under Standard Based Authorisation, this delay can prevent managers and partners billing the entries against their projects (assignments) as quickly or efficiently as they might like.

Project based authorisation allows managers and partners to authorise individual timelines entered against their assignments prior to the entire timesheet being approved and posted to the system. The billing interface and Client: Assignment window can be used to select individual (or grouped) timelines and make them available for billing.

Making individual timelines available for billing reduces the impact of the approval/posting process delay, negates the need for Estimate bills for unposted time and offers greater flexibility to the billing procedure.

Simplified Authorisation

In smaller practices it can be beneficial to use a simplified authorisation model where timesheets are created and then time posted without setting up people who are responsible for authorising timesheets. Whether timelines are available for billing is dependent upon the variation chosen.

Simplified Authorisation removes the requirement for the employee to submit their timesheet for approval (authorisation). It also removes the need for an approval employee – such as a line manager – to be established with sufficient rights or task permissions to authorise the timesheet.

Under Simplified Authorisation, the employee simply enters their timesheet entries and uses the single Post button to indicate that they have completed it and are finally committing it to the system.

A choice of combinations to authorise Timesheets

There are five combinations of Time Authorisation. A practice can choose to use one of these combinations to best suit their needs:

Timesheet Authorisation mode	Project Based Authorisation	Simplified Authorisation
Standard VPM	No	No
Project Based Authorisation	Yes	No
Removal of Authorisation	No	Yes
Project-based Authorisation, no authorisation on Timesheet	Yes	Yes
WIP Posted, no Authorisation on Timesheet	No	Yes

Note: Project Based Authorisation and Simplified Authorisation does not apply to Disbursement Sheets and Expense Sheets. These are processed using Standard PM Authorisation.

Note: the System Administrator sets up how their practice uses the Timesheet Authorisation modes via Maintenance > Time Setup > Timesheet Authorisation Mode.