Category Archives: human resources

Why is TimeControl so popular with the Payroll Department?

TimeControl Payday, Chris Vandersluis, Christopher Vandersluis, Christopher Peter VandersluisWe often talk about TimeControl in association with project management tools but, because it is a multi-function timesheet system, TimeControl is often managed by the Payroll department.  What is it about TimeControl that makes it so popular with Payroll Departments?

First of all, let’s acknowledge that virtually every Payroll system has some kind of timesheet attached to it. We have nothing bad to say about any of them.  But Payroll timesheets are single purpose.  They’re designed to give that particular Payroll system what it needs to process employee pay.  The attractiveness of TimeControl is that it can be used not only for Payroll but also for updating Project Management, Human Resources, Billing, Job Costing and other internal systems and processes.  The benefit for Payroll is, that if the timesheet can do what they need, then everyone in the organization can be using one timesheet instead of several and that will create huge efficiencies in reducing reconciliation between disparate systems.  TimeControl was designed from its inception to meet the needs of Payroll.

So, what are some aspects of TimeControl that make Payroll happy?

It’s Auditable

If a project finance report is off by a hundred dollars or more, no one gets too excited.  But, if a paycheck is off by a single penny, there is all kinds of upset.  So, all entries, changes and approvals of time in the TimeControl timesheet is tracked and is completely auditable.  Even post posting changes are traced on a line-by-line basis.  This is an essential element of a Payroll system.  If the numbers are questioned, they can be recovered from the original entry and any changes will be immediately visible.

Approvals

If your timesheet is going to Payroll, then it almost certainly has to go through some level of approval.  It might be very simple or have multiple levels but knowing that the data that arrives into the Payroll system has passed the approvals required is a must.

Automated Validation Rules

When we explain this to prospective clients, the eyes of the Payroll staff light up.  TimeControl can have as many automated Validation Rules as desired.  A rule might be simple like “for salaried staff, no timesheet should be more than 24 hours a day” or “no salaried person can book more than 40 hours of regular (meaning paid-for) time in a week. Or a rule could be complex like “your timesheet cannot have more than 8 hours of sick leave on a weekday and no sick leave at all on a weekend”.  You get the idea.  Some clients have a handful of validation rules.  Some clients have dozens or more.  It’s all about catching potential and obvious errors at the point of entry rather than in a long cycle where someone has to start communicating from Payroll back to an employee about timesheet problems affecting their pay.

Validation Rules can be errors which must be corrected before the timesheet is released or they might just be a warning like “Be advised you have now used all of your paid-for sick leave.”  It’s up to the client to determine what rules are important to create in TimeControl.

Accommodating both Wage and Salary staff at the same time

Rules for Payroll for salaried employees and wage employees are often quite different.  Salary employees, for example, rarely are paid overtime.  Wage employees are often paid for overtime.  Some organizations want to pay overtime at different rates.  “Time-and-a-half” or “Double-time” are common requests.  Some organizations want to give employees an option to book their overtime into a bank to be used to take time off later.  All of these options and more are a part of TimeControl.  This means that both Wage and Salary staff are easily managed within the same system even if the calculations and rules are different.  Vacation time for example might be calculated at the end of each month as a number of days of vacation earned for the last 30 days for salaried staff.  Wage staff might have vacation accrued automatically by TimeControl also but calculated based on the number of hours worked that week.  Two different calculations, both handled in the same system.

Rates for Payroll, Billing and Project Management at the same time

Payroll’s perspective on rates is what will result in an employee’s paycheck.  But the Billing department looks at Rates differently.  First of all, the values of what we bill at vs. what we pay are almost always different and secondly, there will be hours counted for Payroll that might not be counted for Billing.  Project Management usually uses an aggregate or average rate to keep their reporting simpler.  TimeControl handles all of this and much, much more by allowing distinct values for each rate code.  So, for a particular employee, TimeControl might record their pay rate as $40, their billing rate at $60 and their project rate at $50.  Plus, security in TimeControl goes all the way to the field level.  Employees are almost never shown the values associated to their timesheet and individual pay rates are almost always restricted to only the limited number of Payroll staff who are allowed to see them.

Batch Transfer

Once the timesheets are complete in TimeControl, the data usually needs to go somewhere else; sometimes to several somewhere else’s.  TimeControl’s export mechanisms can track the batch of exported records so that a timesheet line is never accidentally sent twice.  Even after adjustments and corrections, only the new changed records are sent.  Batch Transfers are kept in TimeControl so a batch could be recreated if necessary.  The ability to know what was sent to the Payroll system and when and know that those records won’t ever be sent twice to inadvertently doubling someone’s pay is a favorite with Payroll.

What about Contractors?

As we’ve described in recent blog posts, TimeControl can accommodate both employees and contractors within the same time.  These records can be flagged distinctly so the contractor hours don’t go to Payroll, but rather to Accounts Payable and the hours of both employees and contractors can go to Billing.  Sound confusing?  It’s nothing compared to keeping separate systems and then trying to reconcile them later.  TimeControl was built for this.

What about timesheets that are only by exception?

Some employees do the same thing every day and are not tracked by Project Management, or Billing.  Imagine a receptionist for example.  They don’t even really need to do a timesheet except when there’s an exception such as a vacation day or a sick leave day.  TimeControl handles this with a function called Autofill.  If there are no exceptions, TimeControl will created an fill in an automatic timesheet for that employee with the appropriate number of hours per day.  If someone took a half-day of personal time off, then they can enter that and Autofill will just “top-up” the hours to the expected total for the day.  It can save enormous amounts of time making sure we have complete records for all the staff but not make people do work that creates no value to the company.

Is that it?

Goodness no.  There’s lots more in the TimeControl functionality that Payroll will find of interest.  Here are a couple of areas of the TimeControl website that will have more information that includes webcasts, white papers, slide shows and more:

Managing Holidays with TimeControl

The holidays are upon us and here at HMS when we think of Holidays, we think of what Payroll and Human Resources people need to do to properly account for them in the TimeControl timesheet. TimeControl includes functionality that is perfect for managing holidays that will be taken by many staff people and assisting those personnel with entering the appropriate line item in their timesheet.

TimeRequest Wizardclip_image002
The TimeRequest Wizard is a great function which is typically made available only to Administrators. It to add entries into future timesheets and approve those entries in advance. The function is extremely simple to use. Administrators select a date in the future and then enter the description, number of hours and the charge and rate code that are appropriate for the upcoming holiday. Then the Administrator selects which users should get this timesheet entry. Once the Administrator confirms the entry, TimeControl creates a pre-approved TimeRequest which will automatically create an entry for each of those users in the future timesheet with the properly entered number of hours and charge code already done.

TimeControl Administrators often enter the entire year’s holidays in advance for the entire staff early in the year. Using the TimeRequest Wizard means fewer errors in entry during holidays for those who are entitled to the time off.

Some of the challenges which the TimeRequest Wizard’s functionally overcomes include:

How to manage different holidays for different groups?
The TimeRequest Wizard can create future entries for any filtered or selected group of employees. Perhaps you have US Thanksgiving for the American staff and Canadian Thanksgiving for those in Canada. No problem. The Administrator simply selects different filters for different groups.

What if someone unexpectedly works on the holiday?
No problem. The TimeRequest has been pre-approved and will pre-load into the employee’s timesheet but the employee can overwrite or delete that line should they wish. The TimeRequest entry simply provides them an entry that is pre-made for them, not something that they can’t undo when the time to do their timesheet comes along.

Other functionality that is important for HR and Payroll managers at this time of year includes:

Managing vacation and Personal-time-off (PTO) banks
Around the holidays it’s quite common for some staff people to want to take additional time off from their vacation or Personal-time-off banks. TimeControl supports up to 9 separate banks of time by default. In an employee wants to put additional time on their timesheet for vacation or personal time, they can make a TimeRequest to get approval and then TimeControl’s Validation Rules can check to make sure the employee still has enough time in their time-off bank.

Links to external systems
TimeControl has been designed to link to external systems such as HR and Payroll systems or services so your Holiday and time-off data can get to the right place without having to retype.

Powerful reporting and dashboarding
TimeControl’s reporting and dashboarding options lets us show summary and detailed reports for holidays booked, holidays taken as well as any additional time taken.

clip_image003TimeControl Human Resources Solution Portal
To find out more about TimeControl and how it can help with your Human Resources (HR) requirements as well as other business challenges, visit the TimeControl HR Solution Portal at www.timecontrol.com/solutions/hr. You’ll find a webcast, and screen shots and you can even see a webcast of the TimeRequest Wizard in action.

Manage your vacations with TimeControl

It’s summer time and the vacation schedules are just about to get underway. Here at HMS we thought it would be a good time to share with you a free guide on how to use TimeControl to better manage vacations in your organization. TimeControl is one of the most recognized timesheet systems for organizations who need a single timesheet interface to fulfill the multiple requirements of payroll, human resources, project management and finance.

vacations webcast 2 We’ve created a free webcast narrated by HMS Software’s President, Chris Vandersluis. It’s only a few minutes long and you can see some key functionality demonstrated that helps organizations manage vacations whether from an end-user or administrator perspective. Included in the webcast are discussions on:

The TimeControl Dashboard
The TimeControl dashboard includes a module by default which shows Vacation, Sick Leave and Personal time banks with indicators of how much time the employee has available in each bank, how much they’ve taken and how much is remaining. Just knowing how much time is left available to them lets employees plan their vacations better.

Managing Banked Time
TimeControl can also control banked time in a number of ways. TimeControl can be configured to accrue vacation as its earned so the bank of time increases each month. You can also track banked overtime if your organization has such a policy and track deposits of overtime into the bank and withdrawals of time off from the bank.

Vacation Approvals with TimeRequest™
TimeControl’s TimeRequest feature let’s the employee request approval for vacation right inside the timesheet itself. Then, once approved, the vacation is automatically inserted into the employee’s future timesheet.

Validation Rules
TimeControl’s Validation Rules let administrators determine what vacation rules are acceptable. You can restrict an employee from taking time that they’re not entitled to or, if you allow it, permitting time to be taken before it’s earned. These business rules have everyone who enters their vacation timesheet already complying with the organization’s policies.

Alternate User Functionality
We’ve thought of supervisors also. After all, managers and supervisors take vacation too! TimeControl’s Alternate User function lets a supervisor delegate their approval responsibilities to someone else while they’re away. (TimeControl still tracks who has actually done the approvals for proper auditing.)

TimeControl Mobile
Finally, if the vacation is going so well that you’d like to keep it going for another week, TimeControl Mobile is a part of every TimeControl implementation. Use your Smartphone to log into TimeControl from wherever you are and add a week’s vacation in your timesheet!

To see the free webcast, visit the TimeControl HR Solutions page at http://www.timecontrol.com/solutions/hr/. The webcast is available in the Webcasts area at the bottom of the page.

TimeControl’s new Timesheet AutoFill

TimeControl 5.1.5 has a new feature that we think will be a hit with Human Resources Departments. We all know about TimeControl’s strength as a task-based timesheet system and its links to project management but not all personnel in an organization are project personnel. Many organizations use TimeControl to track the entire staff including those employees who only need their time and attendance tracked. For these users we are often asked if timesheets can be added only “by exception”.

By exception timesheet entry means entering a timesheet only when your weekly timesheet won’t be a complete week of working as per your salaried schedule. So, if you have vacation, sick leave, personal time off or some other exception, you’ll enter only those hours. But what about the rest of the hours that make up your complete week? That’s what AutoFill is for.
TimeControl’s Timesheet AutoFill allows an administrator to create or fill-up timesheets for a selected group of employees. It’s not for all staff. The project personnel should be filling out their timesheets with all their hours per task. Timesheet AutoFill is for those people who only need to track time and attendance.

The Timesheet AutoFill command is in the Tools menu and, when selected, lets the Administrator decide whether to Create timesheets, add to existing unposted timesheets or to already posted timesheets. The Administrator uses the options that are appropriate to their timesheet process.

Then they can determine what to fill the timesheet with, a preset list, a list that comes only from the Employee defaults or a list that comes from Employee defaults when available and Administrator selections when not. Finally, the Administrator chooses which group or filtered group of employees to include in the AutoFill and starts the process. A log identifies exactly what timesheet data was added.

We’re conscious of TimeControl’s auditability so, we have, of course identified the hours that have been entered through AutoFill in both the Timesheet Detail and Posted Lines tables.

If you’d like to see the new function in action, take a look at the TimeControl Timesheet AutoFill webcast.

Linking TimeControl with other corporate systems

A question that is asked quite frequently is how to link TimeControl to external corporate systems. Some clients request links to move corporate data into TimeControl, some want to move data from TimeControl to another system.
One type of connection is a transfer of data into the TimeControl tables to create timesheets. Another example would be using a corporate HR system to feed new employee data to TimeControl’s employee table or a work order system to feed tasks and assignments to TimeControl’s charge tables.
It is very common for organizations to wish to transfer time and cost data from TimeControl to a corporate system for Payroll, HR or Financial uses. These links are beyond the connections to project management systems such as MS Project, Deltek or Primavera which are pre-configured in TimeControl.

There are two main methods to set up links to corporate systems. The preferred method depends on the specific requirements:

Batch Transfer:
TimeControl contains an Integration Wizard that allows the client to create a custom import or export batch file in order to link to their corporate systems. The definition of this transfer can include predefined or user-defined fields and data including data that might be required to link to the external application such as employee codes or work order numbers. The resulting file is in a CSV or XML format which allows for connection to a wide variety of applications. The data is exported against a selection filter providing data for a specific period, employee, project, business or other criteria. This is the most common way HMS clients link TimeControl to external systems such as payroll, finance, HR or ERP systems. It is easy to set up and to administer and Finance personnel are usually more comfortable with a transaction file of data that is at arm’s length from the corporate Finance system. This allows the Finance system administrators to use the Finance system’s business rules to check data on its way into their system. TimeControl supports multiple transfer templates to server multiple export requirements. If required, exported data may be batch tracked to avoid inadvertently exporting the same record twice.

This method allows transfer of data to be set up quickly and easily and allows for a final review of the data prior to being imported into the corporate system.

Direct Database Connection:
A more sophisticated connection but less commonly used method is to use direct connections at the data- base level with SQL scripts, stored procedures and triggers. Because the TimeControl data resides on a host client server database, direct data transfers are relatively simple to establish. This type of connection typically provides transparent, real time data synchronization. Setup using this method requires an internal SQL expert or an HMS consultant and the effort may vary from a few days to several weeks, depending on the complexity of the connection that is required.

This method provides a dynamic instant transfer of data which is not always required.

Manipulation of data with SQL Scripts

In some cases TimeControl clients have a requirement to manipulate the raw data that has been captured in TimeControl to support a specific requirement. It is possible to use SQL scripts and stored procedures within the TimeControl data structure to perform calculations, summarizations and other types of data manipulations. The results of this type of calculation are typically written to custom fields or tables within the TimeControl host database. This flexibility allows TimeControl to meet a great variety of client-specific requirements.

An example of this type of data processing would be multi-currency calculations done when there are several currencies in the rate table and where the costs must be reconciled to a single currency for reporting purposes.