Approving Timesheets and Syncing Hours to Payroll

Purpose

Getting tracked hours into paychecks is a two-step process. First you approve each employee's timesheet, which locks it against employee edits. Then you sync the pay period to payroll, which sends the approved hours to the pay run. Hours that are approved but never synced do not reach the paycheck. That gap is the most common cause of "missing hours" at payroll time.

When to do this: approve as you go during the pay period, and sync once before your payroll approval deadline. Both actions can be repeated. Un-sync, correct, re-approve, and sync again if something changes before payroll is initiated.

Who can do this: users with Employee Timesheet permission for the employees concerned (typically the Employer Admin; Reporting Managers within their team scope). Syncing needs timesheet access to every employee in the pay group's pay frequency, so in practice it is an Employer Admin action.

Step 1: Approve timesheets

1. Open Time Tracking > Employees Timesheet.
2. Select the Pay Group and the Pay Period.
3. Approve:
• one employee with the Status toggle in their row,
• everyone at once with Approve All, or
• open an employee's detailed timesheet, review the entries, and approve there.

Once approved, the employee can no longer edit their own entries. Users with timesheet permission can still correct entries, and the toggle can be set back to Not Approved at any time before the period is synced.

Approval blockers. The toggle is disabled while the employee has any of these on the period:

• a Missing Clock Out,
• a Running Time Entry (still clocked in), or
• a Manager Approval Pending item (an employee's manual add or edit that nobody has accepted or rejected).

Break exceptions (missed, short, long) do not block approval. See Understanding Time Entry Exceptions and What Blocks Approval.

Step 2: Sync hours to payroll

1. On Employees Timesheet, with the pay period selected, check the approval status of the rows.
2. Click Sync Hours to Payroll.
3. If some employees are still unapproved, UZIO shows Unapproved Hours Found: "There are N employees with unapproved hours in this pay period. These employees will be excluded from the current payroll sync unless their hours are approved first." Choose Cancel to go back and approve them, or Continue Sync to sync the approved employees only.

After a successful sync the page confirms it and the period is stamped Hours synced to payroll on [date]. The button label changes to Unsync Hours from Payroll.

Only the approved hours of hourly and non-exempt employees flow to payroll. The sync applies to the whole pay period, not to individual employees.

Correcting after a sync

A synced period is locked for everyone, including admins. To correct it:

1. Click Unsync Hours from Payroll.
2. Set the employee back to Not Approved, make the correction, and approve again.
3. Click Sync Hours to Payroll again.

Un-syncing is only possible while payroll for that period has not been initiated. Once the pay run is drafted or processed, the rules change; see Why is everything locked after payroll ran? below.

Expected outcome

• Synced hours appear in the payroll grid for the pay run: regular, overtime, double overtime, break premiums, and holiday hours as calculated by the assigned rules.
• Employees who were unapproved at sync time are not in the pay run. Approve them, then sync the period again.
• Un-synced hours are invisible to payroll. The paycheck simply omits them.

What happens when an employee is terminated

When an employee is terminated in UZIO, the system closes out their time tracking automatically at the time the termination is processed:

• Any running time entry is clocked out by the system.
• Any pending employee change request on their entries is rejected with the reason "Employee Termination". No rejection email is sent.
• Every unapproved pay period for that employee is approved as the system user. These approvals appear in the entry history with System as the source.

Approval is not sync. The terminated employee's approved hours still reach payroll only when you sync the pay period. Review their final period before you do, and run a special payroll if the final pay date has already passed. See Running a Special Payroll.

Common problems

Why can't I approve an employee's time card?

Three different causes, each with its own hover text on the disabled toggle:

• Your role lacks the permission. The toggle reads "You do not have access to this feature." An administrator grants it under Manage Users, in the role's Employee Access > Additional Information > Employee Timesheet setting.
• The employee has unresolved exceptions. The toggle reads "The hours cannot be approved as the employee has some exceptions to be reviewed before approval." Clear the missing clock-out, running entry, or pending change first (Understanding Time Entry Exceptions and What Blocks Approval).
• The pay period is too old to change. The toggle reads "This action cannot be performed because the pay period is older than 30 days." See the DSP note below.

Approve All didn't approve everyone

Approve All skips employees with blocking exceptions and lists them: "These employees have pending exceptions to review or an active running time entry." Everyone else is approved. Fix the listed employees and approve them individually, or run Approve All again.

Why aren't time cards syncing to payroll?

Work down the list:

1. The period was never synced. Approval alone does nothing for payroll. Click Sync Hours to Payroll.
2. The employee was unapproved when you synced. They were excluded (the Unapproved Hours Found popup told you how many). Approve them and sync the period again.
3. You do not have access to every employee in the pay frequency. The sync fails with "You do not have timesheet access for all the employees of the selected pay frequency, so you can't sync hours to payroll." An Employer Admin with full timesheet access must run the sync.
4. Payroll is not set up on your account. The Sync button's hover text reads "Seems like your company hasn't opted for payroll module or setup yet not done..." Time tracking hours can only sync to UZIO Payroll. If you run payroll elsewhere, use the Time Tracking Reports to export hours instead.

Why is everything locked after payroll ran?

The timesheet has three tightening locks. The message tells you which one you hit:

1. Synced. "You cannot make any changes once your hours have been synced with payroll. Please unsync hours from payroll for this pay period if you wish to make the change." Un-sync, correct, re-approve, and sync again.
2. Payroll initiated or processed. "You cannot make a change as the payroll is already initiated or processed." You may also see "You cannot make any changes once payroll has been initiated. Please cancel the payroll for this pay period" followed by the un-sync instruction. Once a pay run has been drafted, un-syncing is not enough. The pay run must be cancelled in Payroll first (Processing a Regular Payroll). Once payroll has been processed, do not unwind it; see the next item.
3. Pay date passed. "You cannot make a change as the pay date for this pay period has passed." The period cannot be reopened on the timesheet.

A related message appears when you add or edit an entry whose hours fall into a locked period: "The duration of this entry falls into a pay period for whom the hours are either approved or synced to payroll." Un-approve or un-sync that period first.

Reporting Managers who hit a synced period see a different message: "You cannot make a change as hours for this pay period have already been synced with payroll. Please reach out to your employer for more information." Only an Employer Admin can un-sync.

The pay run already went out with wrong hours

Do not fight the locks. Fix the pay itself with a special (off-cycle) payroll: Running a Special Payroll. If the correction involves PTO, the time-off request must be approved before it can flow into the off-cycle run.

What is "Manager Approval Pending"?

An employee's manual entry or edit is waiting for a reviewer's decision. It blocks approval of that employee's hours until someone accepts or rejects it. How to act on it is covered in Reviewing and Correcting Your Team's Timesheets.

Related articles

• Reviewing and Correcting Your Team's Timesheets
• Understanding Time Entry Exceptions and What Blocks Approval
• Controlling How Employees Clock In and Out
• Processing a Regular Payroll
• Running a Special Payroll
• Time Tracking Reports