Timesheets are available in Professional and above only

The purpose of this article is to explain the logic behind the timesheets module in the context of whether or not an employee is meant to be working on a given day and how we calculate the hours an employee should be working in a given week (this is needed for Time Off in Lieu).  

By default, the system it set up to only allow employees to enter timesheets for days on which they are meant to be working for example, - if they are only meant to work Monday to Friday then, as depicted in the below example, Saturday and Sunday are not shown.

If we then change the employee normal working days to Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday then their choice of days is reduced to just those days as you can see below:

Additionally, if the employee has booked time off on one of those days (06/06/2023 in this case) then that day would also be removed:

Optionally, you can choose to let your employees enter timesheets on non working days - to do so, go to:

Administration -> Company -> Settings -> Timesheets -> Timesheets Settings 

Under the 'Date Selection Settings' section set the "Timesheets - allow employees to choose non-working days" field to 'Yes'.

Once you do this, your employees will now be able to enter timesheets for any day and date.

In the below example, the employee is only meant to work Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday hence these are displayed with a green border.

The non-working days can still be selected by clicking on them:

Explanation of logic used

Is a given day a working day?

If an employee is not meant to be working on a given day, the day in question will be greyed out on their timesheet and they will be unable to enter times for that day.

To work out whether a day is a working day or not we look at a number of key components in the following order:

1. Employee working pattern
   
   If an employee has a value entered into Working Patterns for a day then we assume that day to be a working day.
   
   
2. Employee working hours
   
   If an employee works different hours each day (for example, 4 hours Monday, 4 hours Wednesday and 6 hours Wednesday) then they should have their working hours set under Employee Benefits to reflect this working pattern by entering their normal hours per day in the boxes for each workday* and this is the first check we make. If any day has a value attributed to it then we assume they are meant to be working on that day.
   
   
3. Employee working days
   
   If an employee works the same days each week (e.g Monday to Thursday) then this should be set under Employee Benefits by ticking the boxes for the relevant days.
   
   
4. Site working days and standard working days
   
   If neither of the above are set then the system will look at the site the employee is associated with and check if that has working days set and use those if so.
   
   
5. Company working days and standard working days
   
   If neither of the above are set then the system will revert to using the Company specified Working days under Time off Settings.
   
   
6. If none of the above are set then the system will use defaults of Monday to Friday for working days.
   
   
7. Company holidays
   
   Once the system has determined the employees standard working pattern it will then check for Mandatory Company Holidays. Please note: an entry under Holidays is not automatically set as mandatory - you can make Company Holidays Mandatory under Time off Settings.
   
   
8. Individual timeoff
   
   Finally, the system will then look at the individual employees time off and check if they are due to be working on that day.

If a given day is a normal working day for the employee (or company if employee values are not set) and there is no company holiday (or said holiday is not set to mandatory) and the employee has not booked timeoff then this date will be available to enter timesheets.

Working hours
(Required for Time off in Lieu - if you do not use Time off in Lieu then you do not need to read this section)

As above, the system looks at a number of elements to determine how many hours an employee should be working in a given week. The measures used are very similar to those to determine if a given day is a working day but, this time, we are also concerned with the hours they should be working in that week.

To work out whether a day is a working day or not we look at a number of key components in the following order:

1. Employee working pattern
   
   If an employee has a value entered into Working Patterns then this value will be used against the relevant date - for example if you enter 6 then we would take this to be 6 hours for that date.
   
   
2. Employee working hours
   
   If an employee works different hours each day (for example, 4 hours Monday, 4 hours Wednesday and 6 hours Wednesday) then they should have their working hours set under Employee Benefits to reflect this working pattern by entering their normal hours per day in the boxes for each workday* and this is the first check we make. If any day has a value attributed to it then we assume they are meant to be working on that day and we will use the total of those values to arrive at a total working week value.
   
   
3. Employee working days
   
   If an employee works the same days each week (e.g Monday to Thursday) then this should be set under Employee Benefits by ticking the boxes for the relevant days. Additionally, this also uses the company setting for standard working day (hours). If standard working day is not set then this will default to a value of 8 (hours per day).
   
   
4. Site working days and standard working day
   
   If neither of the above are set then the system will look at the site the employee is associated with and check if that has Working Days and a standard working day value set and use that if so.
   
   
5. Company working days and standard working day
   
   If neither of the above are set then the system will revert to using the Company specified Working days under Time off Settings as well as the standard working day value.
   
   
6. If none of the above are set then the system will use defaults of Monday to Friday for working days and 8 hours per day (i.e. 40 hours per week).
   
   
7. Company holidays
   1. Once the system has determined the employees standard working pattern it will then check for Mandatory Company Holidays. Please note: an entry under Holidays is not automatically set as mandatory - you can make Company Holidays Mandatory under Time off Settings.
      
      
   2. If a company holiday is set then, using the above logic in points 1 to 4, the system will not include the hours value for that day.
      
      
   3. For example, if you have set an individual employees hours as Monday 8, Tuesday 8, Wednesday 8, Thursday 8, Friday 4 and you mark Friday as a mandatory company holiday then the system will expect them to work 32 hours that week rather than 36.
      
      
   4. If, however, you have set an employee to work Monday to Friday and your normal working day is 7.5 hours then the system will expect the employee to work 30 hours that week rather than 37.5 hours and so on.
8. Individual timeoff
   1. Finally, the system will then look at the individual employees time off and check if they are due to be working on that day.
      
      
   2. When considering time off, the system only looks at those time off types which have been set to Authorised.
      1. The reasoning behind this is that if an employee has pre-booked Holiday/Leave/Time off (which should be set as Authorised in Time off Settings) then they will not be expected to make up that time.
         
         
      2. If, however, the employee was sick on a given day then the system will still expect them to work their normal hours as the time off was not authorised and they can make up those hours by working additional hours that week and others to reduce their liability.
   3. The same logic will be applied as per Company holidays above to determine the number hours on that day where timeoff has been booked.
      
      

Time off in lieu

Once the system has determined how many hours an employee should have worked in a given week (assuming you have set Accrue Time off in lieu to yes under Time off Settings AND Timesheets overtime auto accrue time off in lieu to YES under Timesheet settings) it will then calculate the time off in lieu value for that week based on the hours entered on the timesheet compared to the expected value.

If the employee is expected to work 40 hours and does so then no entry will be made in Time off in Lieu.

If the employee is expected to work 40 hours and works 38 then an entry for -2 hours will be made in Time off in Lieu - i.e. the employee owes you 2 hours.

If the employee is expected to work 40 hours and works 44 then an entry for +4 hours will be made in Time off in Lieu - i.e. you owe the employee 4 hours.

Please note: Time off in Lieu works cumulatively so, if we take the above example, as three consecutive weeks at the end of third week you would owe the employee 2 hours as the calculation looks at the rolling total as (0+(-2)+4)=2 hours.

You can check the Time off in Lieu values at any time using Time off Reports - Time off in Lieu Report.

* If you cannot see the boxes for hours per day then you need to change the employee's time off meter from DAYS to HOURS - as the employee is working on an hours basis then their time off will be accrued in the same way. Once you change the time off from DAYS to HOURS and click update, when the screen refreshes the new box for hours for each day will appear. Please note, this will over ride the previously entered value of hours per week.