In the past, you only needed read-only permissions to view all timecards in project and company level Timesheets tools. Customers needed a way to prevent employees from seeing each others timecards. The private timecards setting in the Timesheets tool allows admins to set current and future timecards to private, making them visible to only relevant parties.
A private timecard is when a user with 'Admin' level permissions on the Company level Timesheets tool applies the "Make timecards private by default" setting at the Company level to make timecards private for users with Read-only and Standard permissions. Private timecards will only be visible to the creator of the timecard, the user the time is being tracked for, and admins of the Timesheets tool. If the privacy is enabled, the following will apply:
The privacy setting only affects the visibility of timecards in the Timesheets tools. It does not change the privacy of timecards in the company level Timecard tool and the Daily Log Timecard module.