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Time entry Record stage = Pending

Hi All.

I have a problem, I have some users who have submitted their timesheets for the month last, but when I check the approver, it's blank. I have run the advanced find only to see the time entry record stage sitting in Pending. how do I fix this ? is it possible to change it and send it through for approval.

This error seems to happen every month to different users and it time consuming to try figure it every month as its different users every month

is there a way to fix this or set an approver to get these timesheets processed

Hi Ramon,

Thank you for your question.

When an approval record fails to be approved, the approval stays in the state "Pending". Also during "Bulk Approval" if any approval fails, all approvals will stay in the Pending state.

So the questions now will be:
1- Why can an approval fail to be approved
2- How to avoid this situation in the future
3- How to handle the existing approvals in "Pending state"

Why can approval records fail to be approved:
This can happen due to multiple reasons, one of them can be that the Approver is not a valid approver, another reason could be out of the box or custom plugins that are failing upon approval, or it can be a timeout that occurs in the background.

How to avoid this situation in the future?
In case of invalid approvers, make sure that your approvers are using the out-of-the-box views for approvals to prevent chances of an invalid approver attempting to approve.
In case of plugin errors, custom plugins will need to be investigated by the developers, or in case of out of the box plugins you can always reach out to Microsoft support for assistance.
In case of timeouts, it's recommended to approve time entries in smaller batches, also you can avoid approving many records for the same project at one time. You can use a project set up that does not result in many time entries filed against the same project for an approval period.

How to handle the existing approvals in "Pending state":
You can reject these approval records to that they are in "Returned" state, then you can submit them again and approve with valid approver.

In case you face any issues, please feel free to raise a support ticket for additional investigation.

Hope this helps

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