Timesheet approval
Timesheet approval is the client confirming that a contractor worked the hours or days claimed for a period, usually a week. It triggers both the client invoice and the contractor's payment, so a late approval delays cash on both sides of the contract.
The usual cycle is weekly. The contractor submits their time, a named approver at the client approves it or raises a query, and the agency does a final check before invoicing the client and paying or self-billing the contractor. Approval can come through a portal, an emailed link, a signed paper sheet or a reply to an email. What matters later is evidence: who approved which week, when, and against which hours.
There is a legal limit on how far an agency can lean on approval. Regulation 12 of the Conduct Regulations stops an employment business withholding pay for work done because the work-seeker has not produced a timesheet authenticated by the client, though the agency may satisfy itself by other means that the work was done. The same regulation stops it withholding pay because the client has not paid. These protections apply to a limited company contractor unless their company has opted out. Terms that make client sign-off a condition of paying a contractor who is in scope are not enforceable on that point.
Here is the common failure. A contractor submits five days on Friday. The approver is on leave the following week and no deputy is named. The agency will not invoice without approval under its terms of business, and if the contractor has not opted out, it cannot refuse to pay for that reason either. It pays £2,750 on its normal cycle and waits an extra fortnight for the £3,300 it bills. Naming a deputy approver in the assignment schedule costs nothing and prevents most of these.
Other problems come from informality: approvals by forwarded email that nobody can find at audit, hours amended after approval without a fresh approval, an approver who has no authority over the budget the invoice is charged to, and whole months approved in one batch at month end.
How Vayora handles it
When a contractor submits a timesheet, Vayora emails the client's billing or primary contact a single-purpose approval link that opens the week's hours, without a login and without rates, with Approve and Query. A query sends the week back to the contractor with the client's comment. The agency's final approval then raises the client invoice and the contractor's self-bill together. For clients who do not approve themselves, the agency can approve a submitted week directly, and the record then carries no client approval stamp. Kit drafts a chase when a week sits unapproved, and nothing sends until a recruiter clicks Send.
Timesheet to paidThe longer answer: How does the timesheet to invoice cycle work on a contract desk?