Clashes and approvals: the gate before hours go live
5 min read · Updated 3 Jun 2026
The four states of a labour entry
Every entry — whether a foreman typed it into the crew log or a clock-in pushed it through the API — moves through the same lifecycle. Only approved hours change your % complete, S/E or CPI.
Who can approve
Approval is payroll-grade, so it's gated on the labour.approve permission. Out of the box that's held by Owners and Admins and by anyone whose role is PM, Supervisor or Foreman. One rule always holds: you can't approve your own entry — the submitter and approver must be different people (superusers aside). It's separation of duties, baked in.
What a clash is
When two facts about the same worker on the same day don't line up, WBSync raises a clash and freezes approval for those entries until someone decides what's right. There are two kinds:
- Duplicate submitter — the same operative was logged for the same date by two different people (e.g. two foremen both claimed the same gang member, or a manual entry overlaps a clock-in feed).
- Hours over daily cap — the operative's total across all entries for the day exceeds 16 hours. That's almost always a typo (80 instead of 8) or a missed clock-out — the cap catches it before it inflates your earned hours.
Resolve a clash
Try to approve a clashing entry and WBSync stops you with the reason and a link to the clash. Open it.
Tick the entries that are correct and keep them open. Choose whether to reject the rest in the same action, and add a one-line reason so the audit trail explains the call.
With the clash resolved, the kept entries go back through the standard approval gate. The resolution — who, when, and the note — is stamped on the clash row.
Approve a whole crew-day at once
You rarely approve one row at a time. Bulk-approve takes a whole crew-day in one tap. It's race-safe and forgiving: any row that's already approved, still has an unresolved clash, or has no cost code yet is quietly skipped and reported back, rather than failing the whole batch. Bulk-reject works the same way and auto-clears any clash whose condition no longer holds.
What next?
Approved hours feed the numbers. See what they build: Reports & dashboards →
Frequently asked
Why can't I approve my own hours?
Separation of duties. The submitter and the approver must be different people, so a single person can't both log and sign off the same hours. Superusers (our support staff) are the only exception.
What exactly triggers a clash?
Two things: the same operative logged for the same day by two different people (duplicate submitter), or an operative's total hours for a day going over 16 (the daily cap). Both freeze approval until resolved.
What happens to hours that are never approved?
Nothing — they sit as draft or submitted and never affect your dashboard, % complete or KPIs. Only approved hours change the live WBS.
Can I undo an approval?
Open the entry and reject it; it returns to the queue with your note, and the original is preserved in the audit log. Editing an already-approved entry is restricted to Owners and Admins.