Tag Archives: HR

timecontrol

Managing Banked Time in TimeControl

banked_vacationMany 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.

timecontrol

Meeting your HR and Payroll requirements with TimeControl

Human ResourcesWe tend to talk so much about the project management aspects of TimeControl that we often overlook the much more common part of a business that is interested in timesheets and that’s Human Resources.

Unlike the timesheets that are included with many project management systems, TimeControl is designed to serve both Project Management and Human Resources at the same time.  Aside from project management needs, there are several aspects of the organization that will have a great interest in the timesheet data.  Some of those departments are combined and usually all of them will fall within the Finance group.

Human Resources

This department focuses on employee attendance and participation in HR related tasks such as training.  HR will usually manage statutory holidays, vacation approvals, sick leave and other benefits.  Their interest in timesheet data is usually the exceptions.  When did someone take the day off and was that associated to some bank of benefits to which the employee was entitled?  HR may also manage time employees are expected to take for training, certifications, safety briefings and other compliance time.  Data collected from the timesheet can be key for tracking this type of effort.

Payroll

Well, of course everyone wants to get paid and for some organizations this means collecting timesheets with each hour identified.  Payroll may have to collect timesheet data even if everyone is on a salary.  There are many exceptions for which Payroll must be able to identify whether someone worked overtime, was absent or worked in conditions that would affect their pay (such as while travelling).

Other Finance

There are other Finance areas outside of the interests of which may also have an interest in timesheet data for such things as including Billing, labor costs for R&D tax claims, and labor cost of assets that will appear on the balance sheet for Sarbanes-Oxley compliance and more.

What do these departments need?

One thing that is common to all the areas above is the level of data quality and control that they required.  Approvals for payroll will almost certainly be different and more stringent than the approvals for project management.  We often explain that if the budget vs. actual for project management is off by a hundred dollars, no one will get excited.  But, if someone’s paycheck is off by one single cent, they will feel compelled to complain.  The level of attention to the data is different from the HR perspective.

The TimeControl.com site has an area with numerous resources of interest to HR and Payroll departments.  These pages include webcasts, white papers slide shows and more.  Here are a few links that may be of interest:

If you need more help with determining how TimeControl can fulfill your HR and Payroll requirements, you can also contact HMS and we’ll set up a call with one of our implementation specalists.  Just go to TimeControl.com/contact and let us know you want to talk about your HR/Payroll needs.

 

autofill, timecontrol

Timesheets by exception

autofill1.pngNot every organization expects all their staff to fill in a timesheet every single week.  Instead, theses salaried staff are instructed to fill in a timesheet only “by exception” meaning only if they were not at their intended post for the entire pay period.  If the employee has an exception such as a sick day, vacation, a day when they left early, etc.  they must then enter only the exception.

TimeControl can be used like this of course because if that is what your payroll system expects, then TimeControl export to the payroll system will have only the expected exceptions.

Ah, but if life were only that easy.

Here’s a much more difficult scenario:  Imagine an organization where some of the staff who are project oriented must fill out timesheets to account for their entire week and other non-project personnel will be asked to only fill in timesheets by exception.  Must there then be two separate timesheet systems?

Not at all.

TimeControl’s AutoFill functionality is designed to fill in where the exception timesheet leaves off.  Here’s how it works.

First, define who will be entering timesheets by exception.

Next, create a process that allows people who have exceptions to enter them by a certain time in the timesheet period.  For example on a weekly timesheet perhaps exceptions must be entered by noon on Monday.

Now run the AutoFill functionality and have it “fill-up” the timesheets for the people defined to the total number of hours per day that you define.

In this manner TimeControl will create blank timesheets and automaticall fill them in or add to the exceptions that are already there to fill in a complete timesheet.  Now the project staff who enter a complete task-based timesheet every week and the non-project staff who enter a timesheet only by exception will end up with a completed timesheet that can be reported on together, exported or analyzed together and, if you still need to send only the exceptions to the payroll system, that too can be filtered to send only the appropriate data.

TimeControl’s AutoFill is one of the more popular features for HR and Payroll adminstrators for the enormous time it saves by automating a simple function and allowing a single timesheet to replace multiple timesheets.

You can see more HR related functions in the TimeControl and HR use-case area of the TimeControl.com website.