Time and expenses approval policies define who must approve time and expense submissions on a budget and ensure nothing gets logged without the right review. Instead of setting up approvers manually each time, you can create a policy once and reuse it across multiple budgets.
📌 Example: Billable Hours & Travel Policy → requires approval from the budget owner for time entries, and from the employee's manager for expenses. This way, every budget follows the same approval flow without extra setup.
Setting up time and expenses approval policies is available on the Ultimate subscription plan.
Before You Start
Make sure the relevant organization-wide approval features are enabled:
Time Approval
Approval policies for time entries won’t apply until time approval is turned on in Settings > Time Tracking > Time Approval.
Expense Approval
Approval policies for expenses won’t apply until expense approval is turned on in Settings > Expenses > Expenses Approval.
Both or One Disabled
Approval policies only apply to features that are enabled organization-wide.
Only Time Approval enabled → Policies will apply to time entries. Expenses will be auto-approved.
Only Expense Approval enabled → Policies will apply to expenses. Time entries will be auto-approved.
Neither enabled → Policies will not apply at all until the features are turned on in Settings > Time Tracking and Settings > Expenses.
📌 Policies created while time or expense approval features are disabled organization-wide will still be saved, but they will only take effect for the enabled submission type.
Accessing Time and Expenses Approval Policies
Navigate to Settings > Budget, scroll to Time & Expenses approval policies at the bottom, and click Add Approval Policy.
📌 Only users with Admin permissions can access these settings.
Create and Configure a Policy
1) Add Name and Description
Name – Give your policy a clear name so it’s easy to identify.
Description – Add a short explanation so everyone knows what the policy is for.
2) Set Up Approvers for Time and Expenses
People who need to approve – Choose how approvals should work:
No approval needed – Submissions are automatically approved.
Any one of the listed approvers – Only one person needs to approve.
All approvers – Everyone listed must approve.
Approvers – Pick who will approve submissions:
Manager – The person’s manager will be the approver. If no manager is assigned, the Budget Owner will be used instead.
Budget Owner – The owner of the budget becomes the approver.
Project Manager – If the budget is part of a project, the project manager will be the approver.
📌 Tip: You can quickly copy approvers between time and expense approval. Under Time, click Copy to Expense Approval to use the same approvers, and vice versa.
3) Save the Policy
Once everything is set up, click Save. Your policy is now ready and can be assigned to budgets.
Default Approval Policy
Once a policy is created, you can set it as the default approval policy for new budgets in Productive.
Otherwise, you can select the "No default policy" option so no policy is assigned to new budgets.
Visibility and Permissions
Who Can See, Create, and Edit Approval Policies?
Manage Policies: Users with Administrate Organization can view, edit, or archive approval policies.
Who Can Assign Approval Policies?
Assign Policies: Users with Add, edit, and delete budgets permission can assign policies to budgets and edit time/expenses approvers.
Assigning the Policies to Budgets
Once the policies are set up, assign them to budgets in bulk in Financials > Budgets or in each budget individually.
👉 Learn more about assigning time and expenses approval policies to budgets here.
Managing Existing Approval Policies
Time and expenses approval policies can be modified or archived to adapt to your organization’s needs.
👉 Learn more about modifying policies, archiving them, and restoring archived policies here.
