- Wizer and Wizest Version only -

The purpose of this 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 is 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 highlighted:

If we then change the employee's normal working days to Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 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 (24/11/2016 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 to Wednesday hence these are displayed with a green border, but the additional days are still shown and can still be chosen by clicking on them:

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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, 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), 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), 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 is set, then the system will look at the site the employee is associated 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 is set, the system will revert to using the Company specified Working days under Timeoff Settings;
6. If none of the above are set, then the system will use defaults from Monday to Friday for working days.
7. Company holidays - Once the system has determined the employee's standard working pattern, it will then check for Mandatory Company Holidays. Please note that entry under Holidays is not automatically set as mandatory. You can make Company Holidays Mandatory under Time off Settings;
8. Individual time off - 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 time off, this date will be available to enter timesheets.

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Working Hours - Required for Time off in Lieu

If you do not use Time off in Lieu, 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 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), 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 set for the standard working day (hours). If the 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 days - If neither of the above is set, the system will look at the site the employee is associated 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 is set, then the system will revert to using the Company specified Working days under Timeoff Settings;
6. If none of the above are set, then the system will use defaults of Monday to Friday for working days - I.e.: 40 hours per week;
7. Company holidays
   • Once the system has determined the employee's standard working pattern, it will then check for Mandatory Company Holidays. Please note that entry under Holidays is not automatically set as mandatory. You can make Company Holidays mandatory under Time off Settings.
   • If a company holiday is set using the above logic in points 1 to 4, the system will not include the hours' value for that day. For example, if you have set individual employee hours as of Monday 8, Tuesday 8, Wednesday 8, Thursday 8, Friday 4 and you mark Friday as a mandatory company holiday, the system will expect them to work 32 hours that week rather than 36.
   • 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 time off - The system will then look at the individual employee's time off and check if they are due to be working on that day. When considering time off, the system only looks at those time off types that have been set to Authorized.
   • The reasoning behind this is that if an employee has pre-booked Holiday/Leave/Time off (which should be set as Authorized in Timeoff Settings), they will not be expected to make up that time.
   • If, however, the employee was sick on a given day, the system will still expect them to work their normal hours as the time off was not authorized and they can make up those hours by working additional hours that week and others to reduce their liability.
   • The same logic will be applied as per Company holidays above to determine the number of hours on that day where time off has been booked.

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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"), it will 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, 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 the third week you would owe the employee 2 hours, 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 from DAYS to HOURS - as the employee is working on an hourly basis, then their time off will be accrued in the same way hence this change needs to be made. Once you change the time off from DAYS to HOURS and click update, the new box for hours for each day will appear. Please note that this will override the previously entered value of hours per week.