Set up time sheets

Article
09/29/2023

Time sheets in Business Central handle time registration in weekly increments of seven days. You can use them to track the time used on projects, and you can use them to record simple resource time registration. Before you use time sheets, you must specify which users will submit time sheets and how you want to configure time sheets.

Tip

The people who use time sheets are resources. For example, that lets you use time sheets to track the work of non-employees. To track the work of employees, or to use time sheets to track employee absence, you must associate employees with resources. There's an assisted setup guide that can help you do that. To learn about the guide, go to Set up time sheets with the assisted setup guide.

Optionally, specify whether and how time sheets are approved. Depending on the needs of your organization, you can designate:

One or more users as the time sheet administrator and approver for all time sheets.
A time sheet approver for each resource.

When you have set up time sheets, you can create time sheets for resources, and the resources can post time sheet lines. Optionally, assign time sheets to project planning lines. To learn more, go to Use Time Sheets.

Set up time sheets with the assisted setup guide

An assisted setup guide can help you set up time sheets.

Tip

If you're a version earlier than 2023 release wave 1 (v22), you must enable the Feature Update: New time sheet experience feature in the Feature Management page to use this capability.

This setting also lets you use time sheets on mobile devices.

Open the Set Up Time Sheets assisted setup guide from the Assisted Setup page.

The assisted setup guide takes you through the following steps:

Set up the participants in the time sheet processes.

The first page in the guide shows you the number of users in your Business Central. It also shows other required and optional information.
Specify the first day of a work week in this organization.

The first day of a work week is the default first day for all time sheets.
Specify the person who administers time sheets.

This person can edit and delete all time sheets. Optionally, add the same role to other people in the User Setup page.
Set up the resources who will use time sheets, and the people who will approve time sheets.

At the end of the setup guide, you can choose to let Business Central create time sheets based on your configuration. View the new time sheets in the Time Sheets page, which you can open here. Alternatively, run the assisted setup guide again, or complete the setup manually.

Important

If you're using 2023 release wave 1 (v22) or later, to ensure that you can manage time sheets on mobile devices, you must manually turn on the Use New Time Sheet Experience option for the time sheet setup, as described in the next procedure.

Set up time sheets manually

The following sections describe how to set up time sheets if you don't use the Set Up Time Sheets assisted setup guide.

Set up general information for time sheets manually

Choose the icon, enter Resources Setup, and then choose the related link.
Fill in the fields as necessary. Hover over a field to read a short description.

Important

If you're using 2023 release wave 1 (v22) or later, to ensure that you can manage time sheets on mobile devices, turn on the Use New Time Sheet Experience option.
For the Time Sheet by Job Approval field, select one of the following options.

Option	Description
Never	The user in the Time Sheet Approver User ID field on the resource card approves the time sheet.
Always	The user in the Person Responsible field on the Project Card approves the time sheet.
Machine Only	If the machine time sheet is linked with a job, then the user in the Person Responsible field on the Project Card approves the time sheet. If the machine time sheet is linked with a resource, then the user in the Time Sheet Approver User ID field on the resource card approves the time sheet.

Assign a time sheet administrator manually

Choose the icon, enter User Setup, and then choose the related link.
Select the user who will be the time sheet administrator, and then select the Time Sheet Admin. checkbox.

Tip

We recommend that you designate only one user as the time sheet administrator for a company. In the following procedure, you set up a time sheet owner and approver where the time sheet approver is assigned for each resource.

Assign a time sheets owner and approver manually

Choose the icon, enter Resources, and then choose the related link.
Select the resource for which you want to set up the ability to use time sheets, and then select the Use Time Sheet checkbox.
In the Time Sheet Owner User ID field, enter the ID of the owner of the time sheet. The owner can enter time usage on a time sheet and submit it for approval. Typically, when the resource is a person, that person is also the owner.
In the Time Sheet Approver User ID field, enter the ID of the approver of the time sheet. The approver can approve, reject, or reopen a time sheet.

Note

You can't change the ID of the time sheet approver if there are time sheets that haven't been processed and have the status of Submitted or Open.

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