Once a timesheet has been sent for approval, it s up to the matter’s manager or a LawRD administrator, the needed approval. Only then, the tasks that such timesheet refers to, will be available to be included into the billing sheet.

To take this action, click the Approve Timesheets option:

LawRD will display a list with timesheets from all lawyers. That list Timesheet Overview, contains all timesheets chronologically sorted, from the most recent downwards:

On the first column, the timesheet’s status appears. The status can be one of the following:

• No tasks: timesheet open with no tasks yet submitted
• Clear: timesheet with tasks logged in but not yet sent for approval
• To approve: this timesheet is already sent for approval, but not fully approved. A single task with pending approval is enough for the whole timesheet to keep its To approve status.
• Closed: timesheet fully approved.

Matter managers should keep special focus on To approve status timesheets:

On the second column, the Timesheet Overview shows who submitted the timesheet user’s ID. On the present example, hoovering the mouse over CB we are informed that it was Charles Bartholomew who submitted the timesheet:

The third column shows the week that the timesheet refers to. The previous example depicts the one sent for approval by the resource CB, which reflects the 45th week of the year, spanning from November 2 until November 8:

The fourth and fifth columns report the amount of tasks on approval (7 in this case) and the total time spent on those tasks (18h25m on this example).

When approving a specific timesheet, just click on See Details, Weekly View or on Approve Now.

By clicking on See Detaills, LawRD opens up a window wherein tasks are sorted by client and, on this last category, by matter:

This screen is where the manager must select which tasks to approve and send for billing. To approve a task, the box on the approval: column must be ticked.

For an approved task to be billed to the client, the box on the bill: column has to be checked.

By default, LawRD considers as billable all tasks but the ones submitted to the General Internal Matter (this matter is automatically added by the system, wherein internal tasks not assignable to clients, are accounted for).

In case of an approved task, if the box on the column bill: is altered to unchecked, it won´t be billed to the client, though it will afect that matter’s profitability. On the depiction, if the task ”Meeting with the Head of Human Resources” is not to be billed, that will increase the cost of that matter on 1h20m x the lawyer hourly cost rate.

At any given moment, a manager can partially approve a timesheet by clicking on Save Current Selection. From that moment on, the selected approved tasks are available to be billed.

Please keep in mind that, it takes just one task to have its approval pending for a timesheet to keep its To approve status.

The button Approve and Bill all will set all tasks in the timesheet as approved and available for immediate billing to their matters. This is the best option for a quicker timesheet approval.

When a manager does not agree with one or more tasks, he/she must click on Reject, having the choice to inform who submitted that timesheet on the grounds for the rejection.

A task rejection will afect all other tasks within that timesheet:

• Tasks not yet approved can be changed by the user that submitted them;
• Approved but not yet billed tasks, can be changed by the user that submitted them;
• Approved and billed tasks can no longer be changed.

Upon rejection, a timesheet will remain in the Clear status, being the user that submitted it for approval, informed of the changes to be performed, so that timesheet can be sent again for approval.

Timesheet approval can also be done clicking on Weekly View:

The picture depicts a matrix identical to the one for submitting tasks:

Days (columns) and matters (rows) can be swiftly approved by clicking on Approve », thus being instantly available to be billed.

Approved days and matters are shown in green:

As it happens with the See Details view, the Approve and Bill all and Reject are available.

Click on Open details + to see tasks within a matter:

Here, as described in the View Details view, each task can be approved and/or tagged as billable. Click Save List to approve the selection.

Finally, quickly approve timesheets clicking on Approve Now turning the tasks immediately available for billing: