What this covers
Once people are punching on the time clock, their hours
roll up into pay periods. This article covers setting up pay periods,
overtime and rounding, reviewing the team's hours, fixing a punch, approving
a period, and getting approved hours into payroll.
PortaPro records and classifies hours. It never applies a pay rate.
Wages and overtime multipliers belong to your payroll system.
Pay periods, overtime and rounding
Set these in Settings → Time Clock, on the Pay periods and
Overtime cards. Click the pencil on a card, make your changes, and click
Save.
Pay period choices:
| Choice | How it works |
|---|---|
| Weekly | Seven days, starting on the Week starts on day. |
| Every two weeks | Fourteen days. Needs First day of a pay period: any period's first day, and the cadence counts from there. |
| Twice a month (1st and 16th) | The 1st to the 15th, then the 16th to the end of the month. |
| Monthly | The calendar month. |
Round daily hours rounds each day's total to the nearest 5, 6 (a
tenth of an hour), 10 or 15 minutes, or No rounding (exact). It is applied
to the day, not to each punch, so the error doesn't add up.
Overtime has two settings:
overtime. Leave it empty for no weekly overtime.
Leave it empty unless yours does.
PortaPro applies daily overtime first, then weekly overtime to what's left,
so no hour is counted as overtime twice. Example: with daily overtime after 8
and weekly after 40, five 12-hour days are 60 hours: 4 overtime hours a day
(20 total) and 40 regular. The weekly limit resets at the start of each
workweek, even inside a longer pay period.
Two more rules:
the viewer's.
entirely on the first day, and in that day's pay period.
The Overtime card reminds you that setting these values doesn't make your
company compliant with labor law. That stays your responsibility.
Reviewing the team's hours
Go to Team Management → Timesheets. The Team tab shows the whole
team; My time is your own clock.
Needs attention, with "N of N approved" underneath.
Break and Total. People with no punches still appear, with zeros,
so nobody's missing week goes unnoticed.
where the person clocked in and out when the phone shared it.
Status badges:
| Badge | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Still clocked in | No clock-out yet. Their total keeps growing. |
| Auto-closed | They forgot to clock out and PortaPro closed the shift. The end time is a placeholder. |
| Zero length | Clocked in and out at the same moment, usually a mis-tap. |
| Edited | Someone in the office corrected or added this punch. |
| Approved | The period is approved and locked for this person. |
Still clocked in, Auto-closed and Zero length count toward
Needs attention. Fix them before approving.
Correcting a punch
they never punched (Add punch when the period is empty).
company time zone. Leave Clock out empty to keep a shift open.
example "Driver forgot to clock out; confirmed 4:30pm departure with
dispatch".
To remove a punch, open it and click Delete punch. A reason is required
there too.
Every correction, deletion, approval and un-approval is saved with who did
it, the reason, and the before and after values. There is no screen for that
history yet; contact PortaPro Support if you need it.
A punch can't overlap another shift for the same person. Shorten or delete
the other one first.
Approving a period: approval is the lock
When the period's hours look right, approve them:
out; close their punch first. A single row's Approve button stays disabled
with "Close the open punch before approving" until you do.
Approving does two things at once. It saves that person's totals as they
are now, and it locks their punches for that period, so nobody can edit,
add or delete them, from the office or from the phone. There is no separate
lock step. Approval is per person, so you can approve and export one
person's hours while you're still fixing someone else's.
Approve a period after it ends. A person can't punch into a period that is
already approved for them.
If an approved person's total changes later (for example after you change
the overtime or rounding settings), their row shows the approved total next
to the current one.
Un-approving
To fix a period that's already approved, click Un-approve on the row.
PortaPro asks "Un-approve this timesheet?" and requires a Reason. That
reopens the punches for editing. Correct them, then approve again.
Owners, admins and dispatchers can approve, un-approve and correct punches.
Exporting to payroll
Click Export CSV on the Timesheets page. You get one row per approved
person for the period you're viewing, with these columns: Employee, Email,
Period Start, Period End, Regular Hours, Overtime Hours, Total Hours, Break
Hours, Status. Hours are decimals, rounded to two places.
People who aren't approved yet are left out on purpose, so unchecked hours
never reach payroll. The file is named for the period, for example
`PortaPro_Timesheets_2026-08-03_to_2026-08-09.csv`.
The file holds hours only, so you can import it into most payroll services
or open it in a spreadsheet.
Sending hours to Gusto
If you pay your team in your own Gusto account, connect it in
Settings → Gusto and match your people. A Send to Gusto button then
appears on the Timesheets page. It sends approved hours for matched people;
open shifts are never sent. See
Connect your Gusto.
QuickBooks
PortaPro doesn't send timesheets to QuickBooks yet. To get hours into
QuickBooks payroll, use Export CSV and import the file there.