We 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:
We’ve been asked to talk about this topic numerous times since the mid 1990s when the first ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) packages were expanding at a rapid rate.
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