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TIMECARD APPROVALS FOR STAFFING & SERVICES

Every Unapproved Timecard Is Unbilled Revenue

Your clients' supervisors approve timecards from their phone in seconds. No login. No portal. No training. Bills go out days faster.

See it with your data. No commitment required.

Timecard and approval log illustrations

The Approval Gap Is Costing You Real Money

Your contractors worked the hours. Your clients haven’t approved them. You can’t bill.

IT Staffing

50 contractors x $120/hr x 8 hrs x 2 days =

$96,000 stalled billing

Light Industrial

200 contractors x $25/hr x 8 hrs x 5 days =

$200,000 stalled billing

Your team spends 10-20 hours a week on follow-up calls — calling floor supervisors, chasing site managers, leaving voicemails that don’t get returned. That’s a half-time employee doing nothing but asking people to sign a piece of paper.

But the biggest cost isn’t labor. It’s relationships.

The person calling to chase the timecard approval is often the same person trying to sell the next placement. “Hi Jennifer, just following up on last week’s timesheets…” followed by, “Also, we have a great candidate for that open role…” Every one of those calls chips away at the relationship your business depends on. Your sales team is being turned into a collections department — and your clients are noticing.

Why Your Current Tools Can’t Solve This

There’s a $100K gap between “free time tracking” and “enterprise VMS.” You’re standing in it.

Your Payroll Tool

Not built for this

Built for employees. Can't send an approval to someone outside your organization.

ADP, Gusto, Clockify, QuickBooks Time

$50mo – $200/mo

The Missing Middle

The Approval Layer

The approval layer that sits on top of whatever you already use. External approvers approve from email or phone. No login.

Starts at $19/mo

All features included.

Enterprise VMS

Not built for this

Built for Fortune 500 staffing vendors. 6-month implementation. Full IT team required.

ShiftWise, Medefis, Bullhorn T&E

$100K+/year

$19/mo — The space nobody fills

Your time tracking stays your time tracking. Your payroll stays your payroll. ApproveThis adds the one thing none of those tools can do: send a client supervisor a link on their phone and let them approve timecards with a single tap. It connects to your existing systems through Zapier (5,000+ apps), webhooks, or email intake — no rip-and-replace, no six-month migration.

Starts at $19/month. All features included on every plan.

HOW IT WORKS

Four Steps From Submitted Hours to Sent Invoice

The bottleneck isn’t your team. It’s the ten seconds your client’s supervisor hasn’t given you yet. Here’s how those ten seconds finally happen.

Contractors submit hours

Hours flow in from your existing time tracking, ATS, or payroll system automatically — no new software for contractors to learn.

Timecards route to client supervisors

Each timecard automatically routes to the right approver at the right client site, based on rules you set once.
approvethis.com/workflow/routing

Supervisors approve from email or phone

Your client’s site manager taps “Approve” from their inbox or phone — no login, no portal, no password — and every approval is secured with a single-use token and logged to a full audit trail.

Approved hours flow to billing

Approved timecards sync back to your billing or payroll system automatically, so bills go out the same day.
A chart showing the approval process

See it running with your actual timecard data. No commitment required.

Your Clients Don’t Need to Learn Anything

Portal invites get ignored. Login credentials go unused. Your clients’ supervisors will never adopt your software — so the approval experience was designed to require zero adoption.

What your clients’ approvers see today

A messy desk full of all the possible ways you could approve a timecard today.

What your clients’ approvers see with ApproveThis

One-click email approval

One tap. Done. No account needed.

Secure link access — no portal, no account

Secure. No login. Expires automatically.

SMS alerts for supervisors who live on their phones

Text alert. Tap. Approve.

Every action secured with single-use tokens and logged with a full timestamp. No accounts to create. No credentials to distribute. Your clients’ supervisors tap a button — that’s the entire workflow from their side.

The System Chases So Your Team Doesn’t

Your account managers shouldn’t be making “just circling back on timesheets” calls to the same people they’re trying to sell the next placement. The follow-up is now automatic — and it protects the relationship, not just the billing cycle.

Your team reclaims 10-20 hours per week.
  1. Day 0 Original request

    Timecard approval request sent to Jennifer M. (Hiring Manager)

  2. Day 1 Automated reminder

    Friendly reminder: 4 timecards awaiting your approval

  3. Day 3 Escalation to backup

    Escalation: timecards forwarded to Mark D. (VP Engineering)

  4. Day 5 Reroute to backup approver

    Rerouted: timecards assigned to backup approver Sarah K. (Director of Engineering)

  5. Day 5 (result) Approved

    Approved by Sarah K. on Day 5 at 2:14 PM

No phone call needed. The system escalates automatically.

Vacation? Handled.

When an approver is out, their approval group’s designated delegate receives the request automatically. Jennifer M. (out of office) → Mark D. (backup). No gap in coverage. No billing delays.

Your clients aren’t ignoring timecards to be difficult. They’re running sprint planning, managing patient care, supervising construction crews. Automated reminders reach them where they are — on their phone, between tasks — without turning your sales team into a collections department.

Book a Demo

See how automated follow-up works with your approval chain. No commitment required.

INDUSTRY SCENARIOS

Built for How Your Industry Actually Works

Not a generic approval tool stretched to fit. Four industries, four specific problems, four workflows designed around the way approvals actually happen in the field.

200 Contractors. 30 Sites. One Fax Machine From 2008.

Your floor supervisors sign paper timecards with a pen — when they remember. Faxes arrive sideways or not at all. At $20/hour across 200 workers, every stalled day is $32,000 you can't bill. SMS alerts reach the supervisor's phone. One tap. Hours hit billing the same day.

See the light industrial workflow

$120/Hour Contractors. 2-Day Approval Delay. $96K Stalled.

Your best account manager told you last week: "I can't keep calling Jennifer about timesheets and then pivot to a $300K placement." Automated reminders follow up professionally so your team never makes the awkward call. Clients approve from email between meetings. Your account managers go back to selling.

See the IT staffing workflow

12-Hour Shifts. Night Differentials. A Unit Manager With 30 Seconds.

Your travel nurses work complex schedules — overtime, night differentials, credential-based billing. Hospital unit managers are managing patient care, not doing timecard arithmetic. Pre-computed shift totals arrive with every calculation shown. The unit manager confirms the number — she doesn't calculate it. Approval from her phone between patient rounds.

See the healthcare workflow

Paper Sign-Off Sheets Disappear. So Does Your Proof.

A property manager calls: "Your guard wasn't at Riverside Thursday night. We're deducting 8 hours." You know the guard was there. But the paper sign-off sheet is gone. Digital approval creates a timestamped, immutable record: "Approved by Robert Chen, Site Manager, February 18, 2026 at 6:02 PM." Billing disputes end with documentation, not arguments.

See the field services workflow

ROI

The Math Your CEO Needs to See

You already know approval delays cost you money. Here’s exactly how much — and why the tool pays for itself before the first billing cycle ends.

Billing Acceleration — Example Calculation

Contractors
50
Average bill rate
$100/hr
Hours per day
8
Days of approval delay eliminated
3

$120,000

in billing accelerated per cycle

Tool cost

$250/month

Payback

First week

Even accelerating billing by one day pays for a year of ApproveThis.

$15K-$50K/year

10-20 hours/week at $30-50/hour — spent on follow-up calls your team shouldn’t be making.

5-10 days

Reduce your approval-to-billing gap from 5-10 days to same-day. That’s 5-10 days off your DSO.

Even eliminating one day of approval delay moves tens of thousands of dollars from “stalled” to “billed.” At staffing margins of 20-28%, that’s the difference between making payroll from cash flow and making payroll from a credit line.

Relationship value you can’t spreadsheet.
Every follow-up call about timesheets is a call that isn’t about the next placement. When the system handles follow-up, your salespeople go back to selling.

The cost.
ApproveThis at 500 timecards per month: $250/month. All features included — no tiered feature gates, no per-approver charges, no hidden fees. Payback: your first week.

Plug in your numbers.
Your contractor count x your average bill rate x 8 hours x the days you’d eliminate. That’s your number. The question isn’t whether you can afford this. It’s how much another month of manual chasing costs you.

SECURITY & COMPLIANCE

Every Approval. Documented. Defensible.

When a hospital compliance team asks “who approved these hours?” or a client disputes an invoice, you need an answer in seconds — not a three-day search through email inboxes and file cabinets.

Audit trail showing complete activity log for a timecard approval — timestamps, approver identity, actions taken, and exportable records

Immutable audit trail

Every approval decision recorded with timestamp, approver identity, action taken, and full details
Records cannot be edited or deleted after the fact — what happened is what the record shows
Exportable to Excel for compliance reporting, invoice documentation, or legal proceedings

Proof of approval for billing disputes

Client says they didn’t approve those hours? Pull the record: approver name, timestamp, IP address, and the exact timecard data they confirmed
Every record carries the full chain — who submitted, who was notified, who approved, and when each action occurred
Digital proof that replaces “he said, she said” with documented fact

Complete activity logging

Every action on every timecard is logged: submission, routing, notification delivery, reminder sent, approval, denial, escalation
Immutable — the log captures what happened, not what someone remembers happened
Searchable across your entire approval history

Data retention

24 months of searchable approval history on Standard plans
Unlimited retention for analytics on Enterprise
Your audit trail doesn’t expire when the billing cycle ends

Access controls

Role-based permissions: control who can submit, approve, view, and export
Configurable authentication requirements for portal access
TOTP-based two-factor authentication for internal users via authenticator apps
Time-limited, single-use signed URLs for external approvers — secure access without requiring accounts

When a hospital compliance team audits your staffing records, you produce the complete approval chain in thirty seconds. When a property manager disputes an invoice, you open the record: "Approved by Robert Chen, Site Manager, February 18, 2026 at 6:02 PM." Dispute over. Felipe: When a property manager disputes an invoice, you open the record: “Approved by Robert Chen, Site Manager, February 18, 2026 at 6:02 PM.” Dispute over.

Stop Chasing Approvals. Start Billing Faster.

No login for approvers. Automated reminders. Full audit trail. Your brand.

Works with your existing time tracking and payroll · No login for approvers · No IT setup required · All features included · Starts at $19/month