Payroll is ready. Three site approvals are not.
One cleaning supervisor is on leave. A guard covered another location overnight. A worker has reported a missing finish time, but nobody has taken responsibility for checking it. The office has a list of hours and a deadline, yet still cannot explain what should be paid.
A useful approval process gives each site manager a specific decision to make, a deadline and somewhere to send unresolved questions. It also gives payroll a clear record of what has been checked.
This guide provides a six-point checklist for cleaning and security managers. The workflow recommendations can be used across the UK. Legal sources are labelled where their geographic scope matters; this is a preparation process, not a complete payroll compliance assessment.
Decide who approves what before the deadline arrives
Name one person responsible for each site's hours and a deputy who can act when they are away. Make sure both can access the records they need. An approver should be able to check the work or obtain confirmation from someone who can.
Separate attendance confirmation from pay-rate authorisation. A supervisor may know that a cleaner stayed for an extra hour without having authority to agree a new hourly rate. A security manager may authorise cover while another supervisor confirms when the guard arrived and left.
Payroll needs those decisions together. Record the employee, assignment, dates, approved time, applicable rate information and reviewer. For cross-site work, make one person responsible for reconciling the employee's total so neither site loses or duplicates the hours.
The six-point timesheet approval checklist
1. Match the employee, site and dates
Check that the record belongs to the right employee and assignment. Compare actual attendance with the expected work, investigating differences instead of treating the rota as proof of attendance.
For overnight work, check both the start and finish date. For cover at another site, confirm who can verify that assignment. Keep a stable shift or record reference so a correction can be traced back to the same work.
2. Check actual time and breaks
Review start and finish times, breaks actually taken and additional work such as a required handover. A scheduled break is not enough evidence to deduct time if the person worked through it.
For minimum-wage purposes, qualifying working time can include travel between assignments and required training. Ordinary commuting and genuine rest breaks are treated differently. Follow GOV.UK's guidance on working time rather than assuming the visible shift total captures everything. Keep mileage expenses distinct from travel time.
3. Confirm the applicable rate and pay changes
Check which agreed rate applies to each assignment and whether authorised additional pay needs to reach payroll. Flag a missing rate decision to the person who can make it.
Approving hours should not silently authorise a new rate. Equally, a correct total of hours does not prove earnings are correct when an employee works at different rates. Keep the basis for cover rates or premiums with the handover information.
4. Resolve exceptions with supporting information
Check missing clockings, overlapping entries, reported extra time and unexplained differences. Ask the worker and relevant supervisor for the information needed to establish what happened.
Keep the original reference, the reason for any correction, the revised value and the reviewer. Make sure a corrected entry replaces the incorrect input rather than creating a second payment for the same work. Where a question remains open, record its owner and next action instead of marking it approved just to clear the list.
5. Record approval before the cut-off
Confirm who checked the record and when. Use an agreed deadline that leaves payroll time to review the inputs before payday. Your deputy should know when responsibility passes to them.
The deadline is an internal control. It is not permission to automatically omit earned wages because a supervisor has not clicked approval. Escalate unresolved records promptly to the payroll lead, establish what is owed and arrange the appropriate payment and correction process.
6. Reconcile the handover to payroll
Check that payroll receives the intended version of the approved records. Reconcile employee totals, assignment hours and relevant pay changes. Identify anything that changed after approval so payroll can check its effect before completing the run.
Agree who confirms receipt. The site manager's job ends with a clear handover, not merely a cleared approval queue. Payroll still needs to review earnings, deductions, minimum-wage considerations and the final pay result.
Worked example: an unresolved cleaning shift
Maya is a fictional cleaner paid £14 an hour for all work in this example. Site A has confirmed 12 hours. Site B initially has six complete hours and one shift with a missing finish time.
Maya reports that the incomplete shift lasted two hours. The deputy checks the account with the supervisor who was present and confirms the work. The corrected record is approved once, bringing Site B to eight hours.
| Item | Hours | Rate | Illustrative gross earnings |
|---|---|---|---|
| Site A | 12 | £14.00 | £168.00 |
| Site B, including the corrected shift | 8 | £14.00 | £112.00 |
| Approved total | 20 | — | £280.00 |
Before the missing shift was resolved, the complete records represented 18 hours and £252. The correction adds two hours and £28. Payroll should receive a total of £280, not £280 plus another £28 for the same correction.
This is an illustrative example of gross earnings before deductions, excluding travel, leave, premiums, expenses and employer costs. It is not a customer result or a demonstrated Workmax pay run. The correction illustrates the approval decision; your evidence and pay treatment must reflect the actual work.
For a security team, apply the same checks to a guard covering another post: verify both dates, actual breaks, the agreed cover rate and the supervisor who can confirm the work. Do not approve a record solely because the planned shift was eight hours long.
Set a cut-off with an escalation route
Here is an illustrative timetable for a Friday payday. Adapt it to your work periods, payroll processing and banking deadlines; these are not statutory cut-offs.
| Target | Owner | Required action |
|---|---|---|
| Monday 10:00 | Site managers | Review submitted records and identify missing information. |
| Tuesday 12:00 | Managers or deputies | Complete checks; send unresolved items to named owners. |
| Tuesday 15:00 | Payroll lead | Review outstanding questions and decide the action needed to pay correctly and on time. |
| Wednesday | Payroll team | Reconcile approved inputs, review earnings and investigate changes. |
Make the escalation useful: include the employee, affected work, known facts, missing information, owner and expected response time. A message saying “Site B still outstanding” is less actionable than identifying the specific shift and the person checking it.
When a question remains unresolved, communicate with the employee and take advice where necessary. In Great Britain, Acas explains employers' responsibilities when wages are unpaid. Northern Ireland employers should use the Labour Relations Agency for employment advice. An approval policy does not override contractual pay obligations or minimum-wage requirements.
Keep records that explain the decision
Retain enough information to trace the hours used, changes made and decisions taken. Keep access appropriate to the employee information involved. Avoid copying unrelated personal details into shared approval notes.
Retention periods depend on the record's purpose. PAYE records generally need keeping for three years from the end of the relevant tax year. Current minimum-wage records have a minimum six-year requirement, starting from the end of the pay reference period following the one covered. Do not assume the shorter PAYE period is sufficient for evidence that also supports minimum-wage compliance.
Using the checklist with Workmax
With Workmax Time Tracking and Payroll enabled, approved hours feed payroll preparation. Review the rates and earnings before completing the run. See Workmax Payroll for the connected workflow and module options.
Use this checklist to decide whether a timesheet is ready for approval, then follow the Workmax timesheet approval help page for the product steps. The help page describes manager or administrator approval and the correction route for an approved record. Confirm the appropriate process with support if the record has already entered payroll.
The timetable and deputy arrangements above are recommended operating practices. They are not claims that Workmax automatically routes every escalation, selects a site rate or resolves missing clockings. Bring an ordinary timesheet, a cross-site assignment and a corrected entry to a walkthrough to check how your team will handle each.
For related preparation, read the cleaning-company payroll guide and the payroll hub. If collecting approvals is delaying your pay run, book a walkthrough of your hours-to-payroll process. Start with who checks the work, then follow the approved record into payroll review.
