Many organizations start using TimeControl because of its tremendous power as a project tracking tool.  But, TimeControl has been designed from its inception to serve many purposes at once.  For HR departments, one of the areas of functionality that is often asked about is how TimeControl manages “banked time”.

“How much time is in my vacation bank?” is a common question for many of us.  TimeControl can tell how much time is left in the vacation bank as well as how much time was earned, how much time was taken and audit that information for each transaction.  But the Banks functionality of TimeControl goes quite a bit further.  For those who much track not only project time, but also time spent on non-project tasks, TimeControl includes a number of abilities that will be of interest.

Bank values in employee table

The results of transactions for Banks end up in the Banks Tab of the Employee Table.  This area of the product is typically viewed and managed by someone from the HR department though there are many ways this element of TimeControl would be of interest to others.  At first glance, it is apparent that there are a total of twenty different Banks available by default for each employee.  When delivered, TimeControl includes banks for Vacation, Sick Leave and Personal Time off but these banks can be re-named and re-purposed to leave many different places that banked time can be stored and spent.  For some organizations, they will want to store banked overtime in one of the banks.  Other organizations will want to see how much training time was banked or certain kinds of training like safety training for each person.  There may be requirements for each employee to spend a certain amount of time on these kinds of activities.

In each bank, there is the concept of Starting Balance, Amount Earned, Amount Spent and Ending Balance or Amount Remaining.  For smaller organizations, the banks can be set manually with amounts per year input for each person.  For other organizations, the banks can gradually earn time in the banks through several methods.  The TimeControl Accrual module can help earn time into areas like Vacation or Sick Leave by calculating either just on time-served or by calculating the amount of time in each timesheet and then placing that new time earned into the proper bank.  For some organizations, they might already do those calculations externally, perhaps in the Payroll system.  For those organizations, simply importing the new values is most effective.  Regardless of how new entries into the bank are created, TimeControl creates an audit trail of them which is visible in the Employee Banks Report.

When an employee takes time in their timesheet, the charge code they use can be flagged as time that is counted against one of the banks.  This configuration is visible in the Charge Table screen.  For example, a Vacation Charge, would typically be flagged against the Vacation Bank.  This means that any time that is posted against that charge code, will remove time from that bank.  This flexibility also allows you to create other types of charges such as “remove time from my overtime bank” or to use vacation time from any other bank that you’ve created.

Employee Banks Report in Report Menu

This dynamic view looks at the banks records from the audit trail of time entered and time taken in each bank for each person.  The view is hierarchical to keep it uncluttered but you can quickly find the employee that is of interest to you and then display all details for all banks for that person including each hour put in and each our taken out of any bank.  This view is one of the most popular with HR personnel.

Employee Banks Detail Report in Report List

The Employee Banks Detail Report in the Report List gives a more static printable view of the details of each employees transacations in each bank.  Just like all other TimeControl reports, this report can be scheduled to be emailed to certain people based on changing conditions and the report’s results can be saved in Excel, CSV, Word, or image formats.

Accruals earns values into banks

TimeControl’s Accrual Module allows you to create earning formulas in four different ways.  Each formula can focus its earning rules to work for only certain employees or only certain employees under certain conditions.  There is no limit to the total number of accrual rules created.  The four methods are:

• Calendar Accrual Based on Static Values
  This method is designed for a set number of hours to be posted in a bank based on just the passage of time. For example, 1.25 vacation days are earned each month.
• Calendar Accrual Based on Posted Time Values
  This method depends on the values within the timesheet that is being posted. This might be more appropriate for a wage employee who earns a certain amount of vacation time for every certain number of hours they’ve worked.
• Calendar Accrual Based on Rates Codes
  This method is designed to be activated when certain Rate Codes are used. For example, using an Overtime Rate banks 1.5 times the hours into a Banked Overtime Bank.
• Timesheet Accrual based on Timesheet Hours
  This method looks at the total number of hours in the timesheet. It would be an excellent choice to tackle a rule where any hours over 40 per week is banked at 1.5 times into a Banked Overtime Bank and any hours over 60 per week are banked at 2 times the hours into the Banked Overtime Bank.

The Accrual Rules follow the TimeControl philosophy of being tremendously flexible and there can be rules for some groups that are different from others.

End of year procedures

At the end of each year, most HR departments do a review of the status of bank values and make sure that any adjustments are made at that time.  TimeControl banks can be configured to zero themselves at the end of your fiscal year or to just keep running year after year.  Some banks will be better with one configuration, others not.

Validation Rules

All other elements of TimeControl are “bank-aware” so if you need to make Validation Rule Warnings or Errors or Workflow emails, all of this can be done while using the values in the banks.  For example, you might make a Validation Rule that says that employees cannot book more time on vacation than they have in their vacation bank.  Or, perhaps you have a rule that says that employees can use up to one week of next year’s vacation in advance.

All of this and much, much more is possible with TimeControl’s banks functionality.  For more information on getting the most out of TimeControl’s Banked Time functionality, consult your TimeControl account manager at info@hms.ca.