We have had timesheet Business Validation Rules since the first version of TimeControl but did you know that you can apply the same kind of logic to table entries?

All TimeControl tables include an option called Table Validations.  These rules are defined by you and determine what makes an accurate entry into that table.  Think that doesn’t matter much?  You’d be surprised.  The number one issue reported by TimeControl Administrators is caused by inaccurate or incomplete entries in one of TimeControl’s tables.  Let’s imagine that you have a timesheet Charge Code filter that is defined by the department an employee is in.  That’s great unless someone forgot to enter a value for that employee’s department.

Table Validations can catch all of that.  You can make a rule that says that a particular field cannot be blank or a field is dependent on another field or that the value must fall into a particular range or even that the range is dependent on the value of some other field.  A rule can have several arguments within it and you can have multiple rules for each table.

When combined with TimeControl’s Pop-up selection functionality, this rule structure has data in the all-important TimeControl tables be of very high quality.  The rules are also respected when using an API or the TimeControl imports to load a table.  If an import doesn’t conform to the table’s rules, it will be rejected.

Table Validations are easy to create but you should strategize about what rules you want to create and follow to make sure you don’t make rules that contradict each other.  HMS Technical Services can always help.  You’ll find more information about Table Rules in the TimeControl Reference Guide.