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FieldTime uses a role-based access control (RBAC) model to make sure every user sees only the features and data that are relevant to their job. Your role is assigned by your FieldTime administrator and is visible in your profile. This page explains what each role can do, how roles interact with the approval workflow, and how your employment type affects the way you record time.

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The Five Roles

FieldTime defines five distinct roles. Four of them map to specific responsibilities in the timesheet workflow; the fifth — Admin — has unrestricted access across the entire system.

Employee

The baseline role for all field staff, technicians, designers, and anyone whose primary job is recording their own time. Employees clock in and out, enter hours manually (if exempt), and submit timesheets for approval.

Project Manager

Project managers are assigned to specific projects and review time entries recorded against those projects. PMs approve or request revisions on entries before they reach the supervisor stage.

Supervisor

Supervisors manage teams and have a higher level of oversight than project managers. They approve timesheets after PM review, manage team assignments, and can view time entries for any employee on their team.

Payroll

The Payroll role is granted to payroll processors and finance staff. Payroll users give final approval on fully reviewed timesheets and trigger the export to Deltek Vantagepoint. They can also view the premium-pay ledger and run payroll reports.

Admin

Administrators have full system access. The Admin role supersedes all other role checks — an admin can perform every action available to Employees, PMs, Supervisors, and Payroll users, plus exclusive administrative functions like configuring the Vantagepoint sync, managing employee profiles, and editing any time entry.

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Permissions by Role

The table below summarizes the key actions available to each role. A ✅ means the role can perform that action; a ❌ means it cannot.
ActionEmployeeProject ManagerSupervisorPayrollAdmin
Clock in / clock out (punch clock)✅✅✅✅✅
Enter hours manually✅✅✅✅✅
Submit own timesheet✅✅✅✅✅
View own time entries✅✅✅✅✅
Approve / reject time entries (PM level)❌✅✅❌✅
Approve / reject timesheets (supervisor level)❌❌✅❌✅
Request timesheet revisions❌✅✅❌✅
View team employee entries❌✅✅✅✅
View meal-waiver status for employees❌✅✅❌✅
Final payroll approval❌❌❌✅✅
Export timesheets to Vantagepoint❌❌❌✅✅
View premium-pay ledger❌❌❌✅✅
Edit-spot-check report❌❌✅✅✅
Manage employee profiles & roles❌❌❌❌✅
Create / edit any time entry❌❌❌❌✅
Manage project assignments❌❌❌❌✅
Configure Vantagepoint sync❌❌❌❌✅
Configure system-wide notification schedules❌❌❌❌✅
Configure new-employee auto-assignments❌❌❌❌✅
The Admin role is not hierarchically above Payroll in every sense — Payroll has exclusive payroll-approval and export capabilities that Supervisors and PMs do not. Admins can perform payroll actions, but a Payroll user cannot perform Admin-only administrative actions.
Every user — regardless of role — can manage their own personal notification preferences (browser, email, and mobile push) from their Settings page. The “Configure system-wide notification schedules” permission in the table above refers to Admin-only controls for organization-wide reminder timing, not individual user preferences.

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How the Approval Workflow Uses Roles

Timesheet approval follows a fixed multi-stage chain. Each stage is gated by role:
  1. Employee submits the timesheet.
  2. Project Manager reviews entries on their assigned projects and approves or requests a revision.
  3. Supervisor performs a second-level review and approves the entire timesheet.
  4. Payroll gives final approval and exports to Vantagepoint.
If any reviewer requests a revision, the timesheet returns to the Employee for correction. The employee must re-submit, which restarts the chain from the beginning.
Not every timesheet passes through a PM stage. If a project has no assigned PM, the timesheet moves directly to supervisor approval. Your administrator controls project–PM assignments from the Admin Panel.

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How Admins Assign Roles

Only users with the Admin role can change another employee’s role. To assign or update a role:
  1. Sign in as an Admin and navigate to Admin Panel → Employees (the Employee Directory tab).
  2. Search for the employee by name or employee ID and open their profile.
  3. In the employee’s profile, locate the Role field and select the new role from the dropdown.
  4. Save the changes. The employee’s new role takes effect on their next sign-in (or immediately if they refresh their session).
FieldTime also supports bulk role auto-assignment based on employee data synced from Vantagepoint. Admins can trigger this from Admin Panel → Employees → Auto-Assign Roles to quickly set roles for a large import of new staff.
Be deliberate when granting the Admin role. Admins can edit any time entry, reopen locked timesheets, and access all payroll data across the entire organization. Limit Admin accounts to IT administrators and senior operations staff who genuinely need that level of access.

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Employment Types: Exempt vs. Non-Exempt

In addition to their role, every FieldTime employee has an employment type that controls how they record time. Your administrator sets this field to match your firm’s payroll classification.
Employment TypeTime-Entry MethodOvertime Rules
Non-Exempt (Hourly)Punch clock (clock in / clock out with live timestamps)Subject to overtime, meal-break, and prevailing wage compliance rules
Exempt (Salaried)Manual hour entry (enter daily hours directly on the timesheet)Not subject to hourly overtime calculations in FieldTime
Non-exempt employees use the punch clock by default. FieldTime records their exact start and end times, calculates total hours, and automatically checks for compliance issues like missing meal breaks or daily overtime thresholds. Exempt employees (typically salaried professionals) see a manual entry form instead of the live punch timer. They enter the number of hours worked on each project per day for the week and submit the completed timesheet as normal.
Your employment type is set by your FieldTime administrator and mirrors your payroll classification in Vantagepoint. If you believe your employment type is incorrect — for example, you are seeing the punch clock when you should be entering hours manually — contact your FieldTime admin to have it corrected.