Once employees have submitted their attendance sheets, supervisors and HR Admins need to approve them before payroll. If you approve sheets for many employees, you can approve them together from the Attendance Sheets screen.

Note: From 8.2.2 onwards, the Approve Attendance Sheets screen has been combined with the Attendance Sheets screen. Approval now happens on Attendance → Attendance Sheets. For an overview of the screen, refer to How to View and Manage Employee Attendance Sheets.

Which Attendance Sheets Can Be Approved

An attendance sheet can be approved only when its Sheet Status is Submitted and none of its Approval Status values is shown in red. A value shown in red stops the sheet from being approved. A value shown in orange is only a warning, and the sheet can still be approved.

The selection checkbox at the start of each row can be used only for sheets that can be approved. For every other sheet, the checkbox is read-only, and hovering over it shows why:

For the full list of approval statuses and what each one means, refer to the Statuses section of How to View and Manage Employee Attendance Sheets.

Approve Attendance Sheets in Bulk

Step 1 - Go to Attendance → Attendance Sheets.

Step 2 - Select the Pay Policy. You can select one pay policy at a time.

Step 3 - Select the Pay Period. When you open the screen, the pay period currently in progress is already selected. To add more, tick up to two further pay periods in the list and click Done. The field shows the first selected pay period followed by the number of others, for example "+2".

• If you try to select a fourth pay period, it is not added and the message "Too many pay periods selected - A maximum of 3 pay periods can be selected." is shown.
• If you clear every pay period and click Done, the message "No pay period selected - At least one pay period must be selected." is shown, and your previous selection is kept.
• If you change the pay policy, the selected pay periods are cleared and the pay period currently in progress for the new pay policy is selected.

Step 4 - Optionally, click the filter icon to narrow the list. For example, set Sheet Status to Submitted, or Approval Status to Ready to Approve, then click Search.

Step 5 - Choose how to approve:

• Approve specific sheets - tick the checkbox on each sheet you want to approve, then click Approve Selected. The checkbox in the column header selects every sheet on the current page that can be selected. It does not select sheets on other pages.
• Approve all eligible sheets - click Approve Eligible (n), where n is the number of sheets that can be approved. This counts every sheet that matches your filters, on every page, whose Sheet Status is Submitted and that has no approval status shown in red. Sheets that carry only orange warnings are included.

Step 6 - Confirm the approval. The Sheet Status of each approved sheet changes to Approved.

After approval:

• If Approved is selected in the Sheet Status filter, the approved sheets stay on the screen with the Sheet Status Approved.
• If Approved is not selected in the Sheet Status filter, the approved sheets are removed from the list.

Note: When no sheets can be approved, the button is shown as Approve Eligible (0) and is read-only. Hovering over it shows "There are no attendance sheets available for approval."

Note: An approved attendance sheet cannot be changed back to another status from this screen.

Who Can Approve

• HR Admin - sees and can approve the attendance sheets of all employees.
• Supervisor - sees and can approve only the attendance sheets of the employees who report to them. The number in Approve Eligible (n) counts only those sheets.

Note: A user who can view the screen but is not allowed to approve sees the selection checkboxes and the Approve Eligible (n) button as read-only. Everything else on the screen is shown in the same way.

Employees with More than One Sheet in a Pay Period

An employee can have more than one attendance sheet in a pay period, for example when they leave the organization and return within the same pay period. Each attendance sheet appears on its own row and can be approved independently. When you open one of these sheets, use the Attendance Sheet Period field in the panel on the left to move to the employee's other attendance sheet periods.

Approval Statuses That Block or Warn

To protect the accuracy of payroll data, a submitted attendance sheet shows an Approval Status describing anything that stands in the way of approval, for example Unpublished Roster Shift(s) or Unapproved Leave(s). A sheet can carry more than one approval status at the same time.

Whether each approval status blocks approval (shown in red) or is only a warning (shown in orange) is decided by the settings on the pay policy. Where only some sheets are blocked, use Approve Eligible (n) to approve the ones that can be approved.

Note: A sheet with a red approval status cannot be approved until the pending actions are completed - for example, publish the roster shifts or approve the leave. Once the blocking condition is resolved, the sheet shows Ready to Approve.

Note: A sheet with the approval status Pay Code Recalculation is having its paid time worked out again after a change, so its figures may not be correct yet. Check the sheet again later before approving it.

Approve Attendance Sheets with Citra

Attendance sheets can also be approved, rejected, or canceled using Citra. Please refer to this article: https://help.orangehrm.com/hc/en-us/articles/55248940099097

Related Articles

• How to View and Manage Employee Attendance Sheets
• Approve Attendance Sheets with Citra