Smarter Time Approvals in Salesforce

🔄 Time Approvals in Salesforce + PSA: Protect Margins Without Slowing Delivery

When every logged hour impacts margin and revenue, even small approval blind spots can cause big financial problems.

One of our clients — a growing services firm using Salesforce and Kantata — faced a critical issue: Project Managers were approving their own time adjustments even after month or quarter end. Quietly, margins shifted, revenue moved, and risks grew — without anyone catching it.

We built a smart, scalable solution to eliminate self-approval risks without slowing down delivery. If you’re using Salesforce + Kantata (or any PSA), we can do the same for you.

🧩 The Real Problem: Self-Approval in Closed Periods

Most services orgs follow a familiar time approval structure:

• Consultants submit weekly timesheets
• Project Managers review and approve them
• Adjustments are sometimes made to fix errors or reallocate time
  The problem?

When Project Managers submit their own adjustments after the financial period has closed, it introduces governance risks you can’t easily see — until margins shift or audit red flags appear.

🚧 Why It Matters

This isn’t just a workflow issue — it’s a governance and financial control risk:

🔍 Audit concerns: How do you justify revenue changes post-close?

📉 Financial distortion: Margins can quietly inflate or deflate.

⚠️ No second set of eyes: Approvers become their own auditors.

For our client, fixing this wasn’t optional — it was essential.

✅ The Solution: Scenario-Based Approval Framework

We designed a smarter time approval framework, combining Salesforce Approval Processes with Kantata’s contextual data:

• Current Week/Month (Open Periods): Project Managers approve time as usual — except their own.
• Past Week/Month (Closed Periods): Any adjustment by a Project Manager auto-escalates to an Engagement Operations Owner. No self-approval allowed.
• Special cases: When another approver (finance or delivery lead) is already assigned, dual-layer oversight still applies.
• Internal activities: Time logged to non-project work follows a separate, streamlined approval flow.

Result: Approval remains fast for low-risk entries — and rock-solid where it matters most.

🎯 Business Impact

This wasn’t just a process tweak — it was a safeguard for financial health.
The client achieved:

🔒 Tighter margin protection — no stealth adjustments after close

🧾 Cleaner audit trails — structured, traceable approvals

🚀 Faster day-to-day approvals — no unnecessary bottlenecks

💬 Want to Fix This Too?

If you’re using Salesforce + PSA — and worried about self-approval, period integrity, or margin control — we can help.

✅ Replicable across orgs and PSA platforms
✅ Tailored to your processes
✅ Fast to implement

Chat with Solvit to transform your time approvals and protect your margins.