Approve Shifts Settings - Pre-approve and Bulk approve settings

Accessing Approve Shifts in your platform and the ability to Approve Shifts in advance as well as in bulk

Approve Shifts works alongside the Roster & Clocking (Clock app or Employee app) options in foundU to allow you to approve shifts on a daily basis, these shifts in turn start to build your employees' draft payslips for the appropriate pay period. Managers can approve shifts daily instead of employees submitting timesheets for approval at the end of the week. 

Once you publish a roster, the shifts will then flow through to Approve Shifts. As your employees clock, these clock times will flow in as well. This will make it easy to check attendance and edit/approve shifts for payroll.

  Please note: Employees with salaried positions will not display in Approve shifts, as the pay for these employees is automated. 

There are a few key settings you may want to consider to use Approve Shifts in your platform:

  • Enabling the Approve shifts function - this can be done for your entire platform or a single Operation.
  • Enabling the setting to pre-approve shifts in advance- allows shifts to be approved before the day actually takes place.
  • Enabling the ability to approve shifts in bulk- if managers are confident in their ability to approve shifts accurately they can save time by doing so in bulk.
  • Show more information in Approve shifts- will show the total approved and leave hours for each employee under their name in Approve Shifts.

We will run through how to access these settings below. To learn how to Approve, edit or decline shifts, check out this article.

Turning on Approve Shifts in settings

Initially, this function will be enabled for most platforms, if you would like to start using Approve Shifts, it's best to reach out to one of our Customer Success managers to discuss with you the ways in which this will change your platform.

To turn on Approve Shifts:

  1. Navigate to the hamburger icon, open the full menu and in the Platform Settings > Timesheet Settings.
  2. Navigate to the Enable Approve Shifts option.
  3. Approve Shifts can be turned on across all operations/clients or per operation/client. Select the relevant option:
    • Enabled: Shifts can be approved for all operations or
    • Enabled: Shifts can be approved for select operations or
    • Disabled: Time sheets submitted by employees only.
  4. Click Save Settings.

 

Approve Shifts for large platforms

If your platform is quite large (approx. more than 400 employees requiring shift approvals per week), you may consider disabling the setting to 'Load shifts immediately on the Approve shifts page'. This allows you the opportunity to see your targeted shifts by loading them specifically by using the Operation filter.  

To change this setting:

  1. Navigate to the hamburger icon, open the full menu and in the Platform Settings > System Settings.
  2. Navigate to the 'Load shifts immediately on the Approve shifts page' option, and disable the toggle.
  3. Click Save Settings at the bottom of the page.

With this setting disabled, when you navigate to the Approve shifts page, you'll now select the Operation in the Operation filter and Apply filter. Now only your targeted shifts will load onto the page.

If you trial this setting and aren't sure it's for you, you can change it back at any time.

To turn on Approve Shifts for a Single Operation

If you have selected the platform setting 'Enabled: Shifts can be approved for select operations, you will then need to turn on Enable Approve Shifts feature for a single operation or a few operations of your choice.

To do this you will do so in the individual Operation profiles:

  1. Navigate to Operations > Approved Operations. 
  2. Find the Operation and click the name to go to the Operation profile.
  3. Open the Quick Settings tab.
  4. Change the Enable Approve Shifts feature toggle to On. 

You will now be able to use the Approve Shifts feature for the selected operation.

Once you have enabled this function, you'll want to consider if you want your approval managers to have the ability to approve shifts in advance and/or approve shifts in bulk. Consider these options by reading the content below.

 

Enable the ability to Pre-approve shifts

You're able to approve shifts in advance by enabling the pre-approve shifts setting.

You may want to pre-approve shifts if:

    • You don't have a manager working over a weekend period to approve shifts daily.
    • An approver is leaving before the end of the day and would like to approve shifts beforehand.
    • You are preparing shifts for payroll early.
    • You know the expected end times of the shifts in question.

To turn on pre-approve shifts:

  1. Navigate to the hamburger icon > full menu and select Platform Settings > System Settings.
  2. Scroll to the bottom and locate the setting called Enable Pre-approve shifts and switch the toggle to On.
  3. Save settings.

When you approve a shift for a future date, the shift will now display as a pre-approved shift. 

  Please note: The line for this shift will stay white until the specific date has passed, at which point the entire line in Approve Shifts will turn green. The status will remain 'Pre-approved' though, which allows you to always know that this shift was approved in advance.

If the pre-approved shift setting is off, you will not be able to approve any future shifts. as you can see below the green tick is greyed out making it unavailable to select.

Disabling the ability to approve, decline or adjust shifts in bulk

This setting is enabled by default but if you do not want your managers to have the ability to approve, decline or make adjustments to shifts in bulk, this can be disabled. 

To adjust this setting:

  1. Navigate to the main menu > Platform Settings > System Settings.
  2. Ctrl + F and search for the word 'bulk', this will help you to find the setting for 'Approving, declining and adjusting shifts can be done in bulk from Approve Shifts page'.
  3. Turn the toggle off. Scroll to the bottom and Save.

When this toggle is 'on' allowing bulk approval and decline, your screen will display as shown below.

To bulk decline or approve:

  1. You can either use the 'Select all' button or select the tick boxes on the left of the shifts you would like to action in bulk.
  2. Choose the appropriate action button (approve 2 shifts, or decline 2 shifts) in the bottom taskbar.
  3. If you have made an error on one shift, you can still use the edit pencil to make an amendment.

When this toggle is 'off', none of the admins for your platform will have the ability to approve or decline shifts in bulk. This will display as shown below. You will notice the tick boxes next to each shift (allowing you to multi-select) will also be missing.

If you want supervisors to review and approve each shift with care, so that errors are reduced and shift approvals are accurate, then consider turning this toggle off to disable bulk approvals and bulk declines.

Show more information for total hours on employee shifts in Approve Shifts

You can decide how much or how little information you would like to flow through to Approve Shifts in terms of hours worked. This includes showing per employee:

  • total hours approved.
  • total leave hours approved.

To enable this additional information:

  1. Navigate to the main menu > Platform Settings > System Settings.
  2. Ctrl + F and search for the word 'information', this will help you to find the setting for 'Show more information for total hours of employees shifts in Approve Shifts'.
  3. Turn the toggle on. Scroll to the bottom and Save.

 

Example of 'more information' shown in Approve Shifts when this toggle is on.

 

Example of 'less information' shown in Approve Shifts when this toggle is off.