How to Set Up Worklog Approvals in Jira

Before You Start: Requirements

Worklog Approvals is a TimeEase Advanced feature. If you're on the Advanced edition, you're already set — every Jira admin has access to the tab by default. If you're on Free or Standard, you'll need to upgrade first.

Not every reviewer needs to be a Jira admin: from the tab's Manage access button, an admin can add specific people to the reviewer list. That list is shared with the Capacity settings in Settings → Rates & Capacity — add someone once and they can both set capacity baselines and review worklogs.

Step 1: Set Weekly Capacity Baselines

Everything starts in Settings → Rates & Capacity. Click the Capacity cell next to a teammate's name and enter their expected hours per week — 40, 32, whatever their normal week looks like. This is a one-time setup per person, not something you touch every review cycle.

It's optional per user — skip anyone you don't want to track this way, and their approvals still work fine, just without the Planned/Remaining/Utilisation comparison.

Step 2: Pick a Period and Apply Filters

Open the Worklog Approvals tab and choose a period — Today, Current Week, Current Month, Previous Month, Last 7 Days, or a custom range. This is the window everything else on the page is scoped to.

Filters matter here more than they might seem to: narrow by Project, User, Group, Label, or Custom Field to scope a review to exactly the team or engagement you're signing off on — a specific client's project before their invoice goes out, or one squad before a sprint retro. Reviewing everyone, always, tends to turn into reviewing no one, carefully.

Step 3: Read the Roster

Each row shows one teammate with six columns: Capacity, Planned, Logged, Remaining, Utilisation, and Status. Planned scales the weekly baseline to whatever period you picked — a 40h/week baseline over a 3-day range plans roughly 17h, not 40h — so Logged and Remaining are always compared against the right number for the window you're looking at.

Utilisation renders as a meter bar and turns pale red once someone crosses 100% — visible, not alarming. Status tells you at a glance whether there's anything to do: “No worklogs,” “All approved,” or “N Pending.”

No capacity baseline set for someone? Planned, Remaining, and Utilisation just show “—” for that row — their pending/approved status still works normally. Capacity is context, never a gate.

Step 4: Review and Approve

Click a row to expand it into that person's worklog queue for the period — date, issue, time logged, comment, and status. From here you can:

• Approve a single entry once you've checked it
• Approve all to clear every pending entry for that person in one action, when everything looks right
• Cancel approval on anything you approved too quickly — it reverts straight back to pending for another look, no confirmation needed either way

If a worklog changes after you've approved it — someone edits the hours or rewrites the comment — you'll see a “Modified since approval” flag next to its status the next time you look. Approving doesn't lock anything in Jira; it's a record of what you reviewed and when, not a restriction on what anyone can still edit.

Make It a Cadence, Not a Cleanup

This works best as a habit, not an occasional catch-up. Reviewing a small, filtered slice weekly — or right before a sprint closes or an invoice goes out — takes minutes and catches a miskeyed entry while it's still fresh. Letting weeks of unreviewed worklogs pile up turns the same task into an afternoon, and by then nobody remembers what actually happened on a Tuesday three weeks ago.

Common Questions

Does approving a worklog lock it in Jira?
No. Forge apps can't restrict native Jira edits, and TimeEase doesn't pretend otherwise. Approval is a record with a timestamp and a snapshot of what was reviewed — if the worklog changes afterward, you'll see the “Modified since approval” flag.

Can I reject a worklog?
There's no permanent “rejected” status with a reason attached. Instead, use Cancel approval to send an already-approved entry back to pending — useful when you want another pass, or you'll follow up with the person directly rather than leaving a note only you would ever read.

Who can review and approve?
Jira admins, by default, plus anyone an admin adds through Manage access — the same list used for Capacity settings.

What if someone doesn't have a capacity baseline set?
Their Planned/Remaining/Utilisation columns show “—,” but their worklogs are still fully reviewable — capacity is optional context, not a requirement for approvals to work.