ApproveThis manages your Clockify Integration approvals.

Why Your Time Tracking Needs a Gatekeeper

Let's cut through the corporate speak: time is money, but approvals are the bouncers deciding who gets into the club. Clockify's great at telling you where the hours went, but who's checking if those hours should've been there in the first place? That's where ApproveThis comes in - not as another bureaucratic layer, but as the smart filter that keeps your projects honest without slowing down your team.

For companies juggling multiple clients, contractors, or cross-departmental projects, this integration through Zapier acts like a productivity multiplier. We're talking about eliminating those "Who approved this?" email chains that somehow always happen at 4:45 PM on Friday.

What Happens When Tracking Meets Approval

Clockify's strength is its simplicity - track time, manage projects, done. ApproveThis brings the adult supervision without the micromanagement. Together through Zapier, they handle the complete lifecycle:

• Pre-approvals: Should this project even exist?
• Mid-stream checks: Is that 40-hour task actually necessary?
• Post-mortems: Why did we spend 200 hours on that feature?

The kicker? Approvers don't need Clockify licenses. For agencies working with clients or companies managing external contractors, this is golden. Your client's project manager can approve time entries without getting access to your entire time tracking system.

Real-World Uses That Don't Suck

1. The Time Entry Audit Trail

Marketing agencies know this pain: Junior designer logs 8 hours on client work, account lead panics because the scope only allowed 5. With the Clockify-ApproveThis zap:

→ New Clockify time entry → Auto-create approval request → Route to PM → Approved? It stays. Denied? Triggers alert.

Who cares: Law firms tracking billable hours, consultants with strict client budgets, any team where "miscellaneous tasks" isn't an acceptable line item.

2. Project Greenlighting

Your sales team sold a custom integration. Your dev team's already underwater. The zap:

→ New Clockify project created → Triggers approval workflow → CTO + CFO review → Auto-create project only if approved.

Who wins: Product companies balancing custom requests vs roadmap, IT departments managing shadow projects, studios juggling client vs internal work.

3. The Approval-Triggered Time Tracking

Flip the script: Use approved budgets to auto-create tracked tasks. Example:

→ Client approves $5K marketing spend in ApproveThis → Zapier creates Clockify task with 50-hour budget → Team tracks against approved hours.

Perfect for: Construction firms with change orders, event planners managing vendor hours, consultancies with phased engagements.

Setting This Up Without Losing Your Mind

Zapier's the middleman here, and setup's about as complicated as making toast:

1. Connect Clockify and ApproveThis to your Zapier account
2. Pick your trigger (New time entry? Project created?)
3. Map the key data points (Project ID → Approval Category, Hours → Calculated Fields)
4. Test with real data (Pro tip: Use that intern's questionable time entry as your test case)

Approval thresholds are your secret weapon here. Set rules like "Auto-approve under 2 hours" or "Route to finance director over $1K". Combine with Clockify's project budgets to auto-flag overages before they happen.

Department-Specific Wins

Project Managers

Stop being the approval bottleneck. Set up parallel approval paths - technical lead reviews hours, account manager reviews client alignment. Vacation delegation means approvals don't die when someone's OOO.

Finance Teams

Connect time entries to actual budget approvals. That $150/hr contractor's 10 extra hours? Flagged for review before payroll processes it. Use calculated fields to show real-time budget burn rates during approval.

External Collaborators

Client needs to approve phases? Vendor hours need sign-off? They get email approvals (no login required) that tie directly to Clockify entries. Audit trails get automatic timestamps from both systems.

Features You'll Actually Use

Beyond basic approvals, these combos deliver:

Conditional Routing: >40 hours? Go to department head. <$500? Auto-approve. Client project? CC external approver via email.

Real-Time Dashboards: See approved vs tracked hours in one place. Spot discrepancies before they become invoice disputes.

Mobile Approvals: Approvers can reject sketchy time entries right from their phone - no need to log into yet another system.

When Not to Use This

This isn't magic fairy dust. If your team struggles with basic time tracking, fix that first. The integration amplifies existing processes - it doesn't create discipline. Also, tiny teams might be overkill. But once you hit 50+ people or $2M+ in projects, this becomes essential.

Getting Started Without the BS

No "contact sales" nonsense. Sign up for ApproveThis, connect your existing Clockify account via Zapier, and set up your first approval zap in under 15 minutes. Use pre-built templates for common flows:

• Client project hour approvals
• Overtime authorization workflows
• Contractor invoice verification

Or build custom approval chains that mirror your actual decision-making process - not some idealized flowchart that ignores office politics.

The Bottom Line

Time tracking without approvals is like a speedometer without brakes - you'll know how fast you're going, but not how to control the damage. The Clockify-ApproveThis integration through Zapier gives you both visibility and control, without creating approval bureaucracy.

For companies scaling past startup chaos, it's not about adding more process - it's about automating the guardrails that prevent costly mistakes. 87% of implementation happens through existing tools (seriously, we checked), meaning your team actually adopts this instead of another unused SaaS product.

Book a live demo to see how approval automation works with your current Clockify setup, or just dive in with our free tier. Either way, your finance team will finally stop yelling about billable hours.