Timesheets Are Approved Hours; Apply Actuals Posts Them

What a planner means

A labor resource with Uses Timesheets records hours in P6 Team Member (or the older Progress Reporter path) against a timesheet period. Someone approves the sheet (unless Application Settings auto-submit or auto-approve). Apply Actuals then posts those approved hours onto the assignment and moves the Data Date. See Apply Actuals Posts Progress and Moves the Data Date.

This is not typing Actual Start on the Status tab, not Store Period Performance, and not a financial period.

Timesheet periods (admin)

Oracle: Application Settings / Timesheet Periods. Add one period or Generate a batch. Cycle: every week, every two weeks, every four weeks, or every month. Periods must be unique and must not overlap. After you set Start and End you cannot edit those dates (you can delete unused ones).

Oracle Apply Actuals example: if the period is two weeks and someone enters five weeks of hours, week 5 waits for the next period. Only approved sheets whose period is ≤ the New Data Date post.

Timesheet periods are not FINDATES. See Financial Periods Are Named Buckets, Not the Data Date.

Approval (EPPM Application Settings)

Oracle Timesheets page:

• Auto Submission — no submit or approve
• Auto Approval — approved on submit
• One approval level — resource manager
• Two approval levels — project manager and resource manager (optional: PM first)

Default Timesheet Approval Manager is assigned when you create a resource that uses timesheets. RSRC.ts_approve_user_id is that manager.

Unapproved sheets: Professional can prompt and you can skip them. They are not live actuals until approved and applied.

Resource flags (mutually exclusive)

Oracle: Uses Timesheets is not available if Auto Compute Actuals is selected on the resource, and the reverse. If you later turn Auto Compute on for a resource that already has timesheet actuals, Apply Actuals recalculates from the plan. Oracle: original timesheet actuals remain in the database.

Do not Auto Compute the activity if you collect timesheets: that overwrites all assignment actuals. See Apply Actuals Posts Progress and Moves the Data Date.

Team Member can also send remaining units, or actual and percent complete, depending on what the sheet is allowed to update. Duration-type rules then drive remaining duration.

Non-labor cannot enter daily hours. Oracle: a designated user types a lump Prior Actuals for the period; Apply Actuals copies that into Actual Units.

XER

Oracle's project XER data map lists flags on the resource, not a timesheet-hours table:

Posted hours land on TASKRSRC actual/remaining units after Apply Actuals. The job is not an XER table.

A TIMESHT / TSDATES / RSRCHOUR table exists in the enterprise schema (Oracle Data Services / migration lists). It is not on the project XER map. Do not invent TIMESHT rows in a Viewer parse of a project XER.

Microsoft Project

Desktop Project has no Team Member timesheet Apply Actuals job. Project Server / Online timesheets are a different product. Do not map timesheet_flag to MSP Actual Work and call them the same object.

Don't

• Treat unapproved timesheet hours as posted actuals.
• Treat timesheet periods as financial periods (FINDATES) or as the Data Date.
• Treat timesheet_flag as "this resource has hours this period."
• Turn Auto Compute on for a timesheet resource or activity and expect the sheet to survive on the assignment.
• Invent a TIMESHT table in a project XER parse.
• Map P6 timesheets to desktop MSP Actual Work or to Store Period.