How to choose the time approval mode#
For: Admin You’ll need: Owner or Admin role.
You’ll choose how worked hours get signed off in your company: a manager approves them alone, the employee confirms their own hours first and then a manager approves, or Shiftavo records and approves them on its own. The setting applies to everyone.
Open the company settings#
Open the account dropdown (top-right) and click ‘Settings’.
In the right column, find the ‘Attendance’ section.
Choose a mode#
Open the ‘Time approval mode’ dropdown and pick one:
‘Manager approval only’ — a manager confirms the hours and approves them. One person signs off.
‘Employee confirmation + manager approval’ — the employee confirms their own hours first, then a manager approves. A manager can’t approve a row until it’s confirmed. This is the two-step (four-eyes) control.
‘Automatic’ — nobody signs off by hand. See below.
Save#
Click ‘Save’.
Note
New companies start in the mode that fits their country: Switzerland, Germany, Austria, and France default to employee confirmation + manager approval; Italy, the UK, and the US default to manager approval only. Changing the mode takes effect immediately and doesn’t alter rows that are already approved.
Tip
In the two-step mode, employees most often confirm by clocking out at the kiosk — that clock-out is their confirmation. A manager can always confirm on someone’s behalf for an absent or departed worker. See How confirmation and approval work.
The Automatic mode#
In ‘Automatic’, Shiftavo owns the whole positive workflow. Every hour it:
Records the scheduled hours for shifts that have ended and that nobody punched, confirms them, and runs the usual accruals.
Approves those rows, and approves rows where both a clock-in and a clock-out were punched.
Use it where the schedule is the record — salaried teams, or small companies where a manager signing off every row buys nothing.
Warning
While Automatic is on, confirming and approving by hand are refused — on the web, in the mobile app, and over the public API. That’s the point of the mode: one authority decides, so there’s never a question about who signed off.
The undo actions stay available and are your escape hatch: ‘Unapprove’ and ‘Undo confirmation’ work exactly as before, so you can always pull a row back, fix it, and let the next sweep pick it up.
Two more things to know:
Your history is safe. Automatic only looks at shifts that ended after you switched the mode on. Turning it on never sweeps through and approves your back catalogue.
Guessed clock-outs are still held back. A row carrying the ‘Auto clock-out — verify’ badge is left out of automatic approval, exactly as it’s refused for manual approval. A person still has to verify or correct that time. See How to turn on automatic clock-out.
Verify it worked#
Open Planning → Management → Timesheet.
In the two-step mode, unconfirmed rows show ‘Awaiting confirmation’ and the ‘Approve’ action is disabled until they’re confirmed.
In manager-only mode the timesheet looks exactly as before.
In Automatic, the ‘Confirm’ and ‘Approve’ actions are refused, and within an hour the rows for ended shifts read ‘Approved’ on their own.