Timesheet Approval Queue
Roll raw punches into per-employee timesheets for the pay period, flag the weird stuff, let managers fix it with a logged reason, then lock the period with one approval so payroll pulls clean numbers.
A manager dashboard that turns raw punches into reviewed, reason-coded, approved-and-locked timesheets and exports a payroll-ready hours CSV in your provider's exact columns.
Before you start
- A punch/hours export for the pay period (CSV or Google Sheet)
- Your roster with pay rates and overtime rules
- Free accounts on Vercel, Supabase, and Resend
The problem this kills
Every pay period the same ritual: someone exports a pile of punches, pastes them into a spreadsheet, eyeballs the totals, fixes a couple of obvious mistakes in place, and emails payroll "looks good." There's no record of what was changed or why. A missed punch becomes a guess. Overtime gets miscounted because nobody re-checks the workweek math. And when a paycheck is wrong two weeks later, there's no trail to walk back.
This tool replaces the squint-and-email approval with a real review queue: raw punches stay untouched, every adjustment is logged with a reason, the period locks the moment a manager approves it, and payroll gets clean numbers in the exact format their system wants.
What you'll build
A private web app for managers and payroll admins that:
- Imports a punch/hours export for the pay period and rolls it up into per-employee totals.
- Splits regular vs overtime using your workweek and OT rules - not a generic guess.
- Highlights exceptions automatically: missing punches, impossible shifts, overlaps, suspiciously long days, and anyone over the OT threshold.
- Lets the manager adjust an entry with a required reason code, while keeping the original raw punch immutable right beside the edit.
- Locks the period on approval with one click - after that, only an admin can reopen it, and only with a reason and a fresh re-approval.
- Exports a payroll-ready hours CSV in the exact columns your payroll provider expects.
What's inside the Implementation Plan
- A copy-paste runbook you drop into Claude Code that builds the whole thing step by step - no prior coding needed.
- It opens by interviewing you about your business - your pay period, workweek, OT rules, the shape of your punch export, your roster fields, and your messy edge cases - then tailors the data model, the exception checks, and the export columns to your setup instead of a generic template.
- Every build step ends with a ready-to-paste prompt, so you're never staring at a blank screen.
- A "No API yet?" fallback so you can build and use the whole tool today from a CSV or Google Sheet, with no integration to your timeclock or payroll system required.
The governance it includes (this is the point)
- Login so only your team can open the tool.
- Row-level security so a manager only ever sees their own organization's (and department's) employees.
- A complete audit trail - who imported, who edited what, what the value was before, the reason code, who approved, who reopened, and when.
- A hard human-in-the-loop gate: the tool drafts the totals and flags the exceptions, but nothing is "payroll-ready" until a manager reviews and approves. Approval locks the period.
- Duplicate guards so the same employee-period can't be imported or approved twice, and reopening a locked period demands a reason and re-approval.
- Raw punches stay immutable - edits live alongside the originals, never on top of them.
Who it's for
Department managers and payroll admins who today approve hours by squinting at a spreadsheet and emailing "looks good" - and who want a defensible, logged, lockable approval instead. If you can fill in a form and paste a prompt, you can build this.
You've got this - paste the first prompt and let the agent interview you.