Approving and rejecting variances

A variance is created when a clock record's worked hours don't match what was expected from the employee's shift — for example, they clocked in 30 minutes late, or didn't clock out at all. Variances need a manager to confirm or correct the worked hours before they roll into payroll.

Where to find them

There are two places:

1. Reports → Variance Approval — the dedicated queue, showing only records that need attention.
2. Reports → Attendance Report — set the Approval filter to Pending to see them in context with the rest of the day's clocks.

The two-stage approval

Each variance has a supervisor approval and a manager approval. Either approver can approve or reject. The overall status rolls up like this:

Supervisor	Manager	Overall
Pending	Pending	Pending
Approved	Approved	Approved
Approved	Pending	Pending (waiting on manager)
Pending	Approved	Pending (waiting on supervisor)
Rejected	any	Rejected
any	Rejected	Rejected

This is the default, with both sign-offs required. If your team doesn't have a separate manager-approval layer, untick Require both supervisor & manager approval in Settings → Tenant Settings. Supervisor approval alone is then enough to mark a variance Approved.

Approving a single record

1. In the Attendance Report, click Approve on the row.
2. The Approve record window shows the shift against the actual clock times, plus an hours summary (should work, worked, difference, and the normal/overtime split).
3. If needed, correct the record under Edit record if needed: location, shift, clock-in or clock-out time. This is useful if the employee forgot to clock out and you know they actually finished at 17:00.
4. Optionally add an Approval comment, then click Save & Approve.

The approved hours are taken from the (possibly corrected) clock times.

For a missed shift, the window first asks whether the employee was at work. Answer yes and you can enter their clock times. Answer no and you can record the day as leave with Approve as leave.

Bulk approving

If you trust a whole day's records (e.g. low-risk admin staff), you can:

1. Open the Attendance Report.
2. Filter to Approval: Pending.
3. Tick the checkboxes on the rows you want to approve, or use the header checkbox to select every pending record on the page.
4. Click Approve Selected in the bulk-action bar that appears.

Reject Selected works the same way. Both are recorded in the variance history, so there's an audit trail of who actioned what.

What gets recorded

For every approval or rejection, Timed records:

• Who approved or rejected it (as supervisor or manager)
• When they did it
• A reason (for example "Approved via Attendance Report" or "Rejected via Attendance Report")
• An entry in the variance history

So if a payroll dispute comes up later, you can always trace who approved what and when.

A common gotcha: missing variances

If you expect to see a variance and don't, check two things:

1. The clock record has no shift. Variances are worked out against an expected shift. If the record isn't linked to one, there's nothing to compare against.
2. Auto-approval is on. If Auto-approve clock variances is ticked in Settings → Tenant Settings, records within the grace period are approved automatically and never reach the approval queue.