Managing banked time, overtime and cost calculations – all with the Accruals Module

TimeControl’s Accruals functionality was designed to manage a tremendous range of business situations where calculations and management of timesheet data needs to be done once a timesheet is entered.  The Accruals module, despite its power, is almost never seen by individual users as it is configured by administrators usually when TimeControl is implemented and then only changed when there is a change in business practices.

The Accruals system is a part of every TimeControl version and has four categories of Processes that can be created:

  1. A rule based on the calendar based on a static value
  2. A rule based on the calendar but calculated on values in the timesheet
  3. A rule based on the Rate code
  4. And a rule based on the values in the hours on the timesheet

There is no limit to the number of rules that can be created and a rule can apply to everyone or just to some personnel or just for some timesheets under certain conditions.  Let’s think about a couple of business situations where the Accruals module is used:

  • We need to show the vacation, sick leave or personal time earned by an employee at the end of each month. Perhaps we have a rule where at the end of each month, regular salaried employees earn 1.25 days of time off to add up to 15 days of time off at the end of the year but earned only month by month.  In this case a “Calendar Rule based on a Static Value” works best and the rule can then put the 1.25 days of earned time off into each regular salaried employee’s bank for using in the future.
  • We need to calculate a set number of hours earned for vacation per employee each month based on the total number of hours accumulated during this period to their personal time off bank.  In this case the rule is applied at the end of every month, but the calculation must take into account the number of hours they have completed. If you had some employees who were part time or hourly pay this would be ideal as a “Calendar Rule based on timesheet values”.
  • We have a situation where we manage banked overtime. Employees can elect to bank their overtime as future vacation time at a 1:1 ratio or get paid for the overtime at a 1:1.5 ratio.  That’s a lot of potential calculating but the Accruals module handles that easily by checking the Rate code value and then the rate amounts and then entering the right amount of overtime to be paid or banked overtime into the appropriate bank for that employee.  A “Rule based on the Rate Code” is the appropriate type of Accrual for this situation.
  • We want to add to the employee’s overtime bank an amount calculated at 1.5 times the hours for any time spent over 40 total hours but below 50 total hours and 2 times the hours for any hours above 50. In this case a “Rule based on the values in the hours on the timesheet” is the best fit as these kinds of calculations based on values can be entered here.

All Accrual rules feed into the Employee Banked audit trail and the Employee Banks Detail Report can show the changes line-by-line.  You can see an example of these reports at: TimeControl.com/features/reporting.

You can find out more about TimeControl Accruals at: TimeControl.com/timesheet/accruals.