Approving timesheets in Odoo: with Enterprise, with TimeViking, or both

Two kinds of approval

When people say "approving timesheets in Odoo", they usually mean one of two things:

1. Validating in Odoo Enterprise. A manager marks the hours of a period as validated. From then on they are locked and ready to invoice.
2. Signing off a week. The employee says "my week is done", the project manager reviews it and approves it, or sends it back.

Odoo Community has neither. Enterprise has the first. TimeViking has the second, on Community and on Enterprise.

Validating in Odoo Enterprise

Timesheet validation belongs to the Enterprise module timesheet_grid. The field for validated hours does not exist in the source code of Odoo Community 18, 19 and 20; without Enterprise, Odoo locks nothing.

Exactly how validation looks in Enterprise depends on your version and settings, and the Enterprise source code is not public. So here we only describe how TimeViking handles it:

• When someone validates in Odoo, the line gets a lock in TimeViking. It shows as approved, and the app no longer changes or deletes it.
• If such a line still has to change, undo the validation in Odoo first. The app never forces anything.
• If you use Odoo Online or Odoo.sh, you have Enterprise. When the Timesheets app is installed there, validation is usually available too.

Apart from validation, Odoo also locks invoiced hours (sale_timesheet, in Community too). TimeViking leaves a line on a posted invoice alone and shows you why.

Weekly approval in TimeViking

In TimeViking it works like this:

• The employee fills in the week and clicks Submit. From then on they can no longer change those hours.
• The project manager sees, per person and per week, how many hours were submitted, how many of them are billable and on which projects.
• They approve, or send the week back so the employee can correct it.
• An approved week can be reopened later as well.

Good to know: the hours go to Odoo immediately, even before they are submitted. Your project figures in Odoo stay current. Approving in TimeViking is a check and a lock in the app; it validates nothing in Odoo.

Which approach suits your team?

Without Enterprise

Approval in TimeViking is then your whole approval process. Bear in mind that someone with the right permissions in Odoo can still edit the hours there; Odoo itself has no lock. In practice you keep that small by giving few people those rights in Odoo.

With Enterprise

You can use both. Approval in the app is then the first check, by the people who know the work; validation in Odoo is the final step before invoicing. Whatever is validated in Odoo is locked in the app as well.

Approved hours on paper

Do clients want a signed timesheet? TimeViking creates a PDF per employee per month with signature boxes, in your own branding. Still working without an app? Start with our free monthly timesheet template.

Try it yourself

Weekly approval is built into TimeViking, and teams of up to 3 users use the app for free. See the pricing, read how the Odoo integration works, or start for free.