What Project Server 2010 and 2013 make possible in terms of timesheeting, "freezing" timesheets and expenses.

Question

We have recently gone live on a Timesheeting system based on Project Server 2007.
I now want to know how the system could be improved using 2010 or 2013.
But first you would need to know our requirements and what we did in 2007 ...
We needed the GUI of My Timesheets and the Admin tasks but approvals based on what project/task it was. Ie PM approval not line management approval.
We managed it by entering timesheets in My Timesheets, importing to My Tasks and then regularly picking up published Task Updates in the Table EPMAssignmentByDay and capturing them in an added table in the Reporting database. We had a few key requirements
which required some customisation:
Need to capture the timestamp of when approved. to nearest hour. plus approver ID (ie status manager) and the cost centre at that time of the resource (they can move sometimes)
Need to be able to freeze approved records - so that after that point they can't be changed. And financial reports can run and know the data won't change.
2 - is a headache for us. There is no mechanism to stop a user from trying to update frozen records. We currently have to just ignore the updates
We also wanted expenses - but that wasn't possible in 2007.
The new "Single Entry" mode looks like it will make life easier for the users.
But:
Is there any concept of timestamping the approvals?
Is there any concept of freezing the approved data?
The new Timesheet user-defined fields. Could these be used to add an expense amount and comment?
I now know my way around the 2007 Reporting Database (at least parts of it) - but haven't found documentation to tell me what changed at the level need to answer the questions above.
Thank you
MikeCro
MikeCro

Answer 1

One of my colleagues pointed me to the MSFT paper "Managing timesheets in Microsoft Office Project Server 2007"
It tells me that there is a field called "Processed" in the timesheet tables in 2007.
It also says "This block is designed to indicate when a timesheet has been transferred to a third-party system. 
Customers may also use this field to block the timesheet from being recalled." - which feels like MSFT are trying to give the hooks I need. This could enable me to close off changes - at least at timesheet level if not timesheet line level.
But which field is it in which database table?
I also notice that there is a tantalising comment for one value of the enumeration TimesheetEnum.Status in EPM 2013:
PendingSubmit: Value=5. Pending submission; used when one or more timesheet lines are pending approval after a timesheet is submitted and project manager coordination is required.
This sounds very like it would support what we want: each of the lines in a timesheet week to be approved by the different approvers and then lock the timesheet.  (Even better would be to lock a row after PM has approved and a weekly processing
day reached)
Can anyone point me to this level of detail of what is in project Server 2013. or is this in 2010 as well.
MikeCro
MikeCro