What it means
Employees record hours on a time sheet, and managers may need to approve them before payroll or project billing, so approval lag measures the wait between submission and that decision. A long delay can hold pay processing, invoices or cost reports.
Define submission as the timestamp when the completed time sheet enters the approval queue, since saving a draft is not necessarily sending it for review. Define approval as the timestamp of final approval under the company's workflow, because a manager opening the record is not a decision.
Distinguish first review from final approval, since a sheet may require two stages and measuring only the first may understate the wait before payroll release. Record rejections separately, as a returned sheet may require corrected hours or project codes, and decide whether to measure the total elapsed path or each review cycle.
ADP guidance notes that some organisations require supervisor-approved time pairs before payroll processing, and Oracle's timesheet settings can preserve submission, rejection and approval history. The exact requirement is a company configuration and policy matter.
An illustrative lag is approval Thursday 10:00 minus submission Tuesday 10:00, or 48 elapsed hours, and if the business reports working hours it must define its calendar. Check who owns the queue, because an absent manager without a delegate can block a team, so assign backup authority in advance under policy.
Measure open items too, since an average based only on approved sheets ignores those still waiting, and show aging bands for unapproved submissions. Use percentiles where useful, because a quick majority may hide a small group delayed past payroll cutoff, and segment by role and location, comparing only under the same submission and approval definitions.
Check employee submission timing, since late submission leaves a manager little time before the cutoff, and report it separately from manager approval lag. Review data quality, because missing project codes, unrecorded breaks or conflicting shifts can require clarification, and faster approval should not mean rubber-stamping incorrect time.
Watch edits after approval and link to pay runs: an approved sheet that changes may need another review, and an approval entered after the payroll cutoff may be valid but miss the current run. Consider billable time, because professional-services teams may need approved hours for customer invoices and late approval can delay billing even when payroll is unaffected.
Handle holidays and leave with delegated review instead of a hidden exception, send reminders that identify the sheets nearing cutoff, check rejection reasons for unclear project setup, and keep an audit trail of timestamps and actors while protecting employee information. Avoid targets that invite early approvals, such as a two-hour target achieved by approving before the final shift data arrives, and compare lag with payroll corrections, late invoices and employee queries so the metric shows the wait, open backlog and causes without weakening payroll accuracy.
In practice
Real-world examples.
Example
A manager approves a submitted weekly sheet 48 hours after it enters the queue. The report shows the submission and approval timestamps, so the 48 hours can be traced to the exact workflow steps.
Example
A delegate covers an absent approver before payroll closes. The team had named the backup in advance, so the sheets cleared on Thursday morning and none missed the Friday cutoff.
Example
A project team tracks late billable-hour approval separately from employee submission. Customer invoices were held for three days waiting on one approver, and the separate measure showed that the delay sat with approval and not with the staff who submitted the hours.
Formula
Calculation
Illustrative elapsed approval lag = final approval Thursday 10:00 - submission Tuesday 10:00 = 48 hours; define the business-hour alternative separately.
A queue of several sheets shows why the tail matters. Suppose five sheets are approved after 4, 6, 8, 10 and 72 elapsed hours, and one further sheet is still open at 80 hours. The average of the five approved sheets is (4 + 6 + 8 + 10 + 72) / 5 = 100 / 5 = 20 hours, and the median is 8 hours. Neither figure shows the open sheet at 80 hours, which is why aging bands for unapproved submissions are reported alongside the average.Case study
Seen in the real world.
This entirely fictional example follows Juniper Studio. Its payroll team often found unapproved time sheets at the Friday cutoff. The dashboard showed that most were submitted on time, but one manager queue waited for an absent approver. Juniper assigned a trained delegate and measured both approval lag and later payroll corrections. The example does not set a universal approval deadline.
Watch out
Common mistakes.
- Starting the clock when a draft was first saved rather than submitted.
- Reporting only approved sheets while old open ones remain in the queue.
- Approving quickly without checking edited hours and required codes.
Questions
People also ask.
When does the lag start?
When a completed sheet is submitted into the defined approval queue.
What about rejected sheets?
Report the total path or each review cycle under an explicit rule.
Why track open-sheet age?
A completed-only average can hide the longest current delays.
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