One key question when setting up a timesheet system is determining how long a timesheet should be.  TimeControl not only lets you select, it let’s you manage multiple timesheet lengths for different people on your system all at the same time.

How often should you collect, approve and close timesheet periods?  Daily?  Weekly, Bi-Weekly?  When TimeControl was first designed, we created weekly timesheets.  It was the most common and most popular timesheet length and, while it wasn’t always the frequency that Payroll needed, it was by far the most common frequency that project managers wanted to update their projects on.

In later versions of TimeControl we made the timesheet length a system selectable length but then realized that larger organizations needed something more.  They needed multiple timesheet periods at the same time.

So now TimeControl allows you to create multiple periods for a timesheet.  You can select daily timesheets for some employees who are perhaps working on shift work, weekly timesheets for others.  You can select monthly timesheets perhaps for those who are contractors, bi-weekly for others.  TimeControl accomplishes this by storing the final timesheet data by day so it doesn’t matter so much what frequency it was collected on.  At the end of the timesheet period, the timesheet data will go through its own approval process and be stored in a way that it can be reported on or exported in whatever time buckets are needed.

There are several possible selections when creating timesheet period calendars:

Daily – one timesheet period per day
Weekly – one timesheet period per week
Bi-Weekly – one timesheet period is two weeks long
Bi-Monthly – one timesheet from the 1^st of the month until the 15^th, the next timesheet period is from the 16^th of the month to the end of the month, however long the month is
Monthly – one timesheet for the entire calendar month
Custom – This allows you to make virtually any selection of dates and durations so long as they don’t overlap.

On the employee record, the Administrator simply selects which generated calendar that employee will select time on.  This overcomes so many huge problems such as weekends being on different days in some part of the world for our users compared to others.

It is a remarkably flexible concept that we’re very proud of.  Timesheet periods that are flexibly generated which can then be then be applied to employees as they need.

This is explained in the TimeControl Reference Guide but existing and prospective clients who want to talk about how they can take advantage of TimeControl’s remarkable multi-timesheet-period structure can contact HMS and talk to one of our timesheet experts at info@hms.ca.