Hour claims: letting people log their own hours
Overview
An hour claim is the person telling you what they worked, rather than a system watching them do it.
It is the right tool wherever there was nothing to check into: remote work, self-scheduled work, a task done on their own time, or a shift somebody covered without being on the list. This article is for administrators.
1. How is this different from check-in?
Check-in captures attendance as it happens, at a place, through a kiosk or a code. A claim captures it afterwards, from the person's own account of it.
Neither is better. They cover different work, and most organizations end up using both: check-in for anything that happens at a site, claims for everything else.
2. What are the three levels?
Hour claims are set per opportunity, and there are three settings:
- Claims for past reservations, and opportunity-level claims. People can log hours against a past shift they were assigned to, and generate a claim on the opportunity even if they were never scheduled onto a shift at all.
- Past reservations only. They can only claim against shifts they were actually assigned to. If it is not in their schedule, they cannot claim it.
- No claims. Neither route is available.
The distinction that matters is the middle one. Level 2 means you decide who was there, by scheduling them, and they only fill in the hours. Level 1 means somebody can report work you never scheduled.
3. Which level should I pick?
- Level 2 for most opportunities that have a real schedule. It keeps your roster as the source of truth.
- Level 1 where the work genuinely happens outside the schedule: a home-based task, an ad hoc collection, somebody who stepped in at short notice.
- Level 3 where hours are captured entirely by check-in or by you, and a claim would only create noise.
4. What actually happens when somebody claims?
Worth knowing, because it surprises people: an opportunity-level claim adds a new past shift to their schedule. It is not a note attached to nothing. It creates the record it is claiming for.
That has one practical consequence. If a past shift already exists in their schedule, they should claim against that shift rather than generating a new claim, or you end up with the same afternoon recorded twice.
Shifts created this way are labelled as generated via hour claim, and you can filter your schedule to show only those, which is the quickest way to review what has been self-reported.
5. Can I ask for context, not just a number?
Yes, through the note policy. You control whether people are prompted to add a note when claiming, and whether that note is required.
A number on its own is hard to sanity-check. A note saying what they did turns an unverifiable four hours into something you can recognise, and it is the same content you will want later when writing an impact report.
6. Can I require a form?
Yes. A form submission policy on hour claims requires a specific form to be completed when somebody claims through the opportunity-level flow.
This is how you attach a debrief, a safety declaration or an outcomes questionnaire to self-reported work, which is exactly the work you have least other evidence about.
7. Should I auto-approve claims?
Carefully.
Auto-approving turns off the setting that makes claims wait for you, so hours land in your totals the moment somebody enters them.
That is genuinely right for a trusted, established group. It is genuinely wrong if those hours go to a funder or a school, because a mistyped number is in your figures before anybody has looked at it. If you are unsure, start with approval on. You can switch it off later, and you cannot un-report a number you already sent.
8. Do I have to approve them one at a time?
No. You can approve or decline all pending hour claims for selected opportunities in one action, which is the sane way to handle a backlog after a busy month.
9. Somebody says they cannot claim. Why?
Almost always the opportunity's setting. If claims are off for that opportunity, they will be told the organization does not allow it there and asked to contact their coordinator.
The other common case is level 2 with no matching reservation: they were never scheduled onto the shift they are trying to claim, so there is nothing to claim against.
Summary
- A claim is self-reported hours, for work with nothing to check into.
- Three levels per opportunity: past reservations plus opportunity-level claims, past reservations only, or none.
- Level 2 keeps your schedule as the source of truth. Level 1 lets people report work you never scheduled.
- An opportunity-level claim creates a past shift. Claim against an existing shift instead, or the same work is recorded twice.
- Shifts from claims are labelled and filterable, which is the fastest way to review self-reported hours.
- Note and form policies let you ask for context and paperwork alongside the number.
- Auto-approve only where the hours are not reported onward. You cannot un-send a figure.