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Time Tracking Settings

The following settings can be used to configure your time tracking module and can be accessed via:

Administration > Company > Settings > Time tracking settings

Please Note - Except where specified, all of the durations/thresholds, etc. on this screen are recorded in minutes.

Breaks

  • Minimum breaks duration – The minimum duration of breaks in minutes will automatically be deducted from every employee’s working day once they have met the day length threshold.
  • Breaks day length threshold – The time in which an employee must have worked before the minimum break’s duration Is applied.
    • For example, if employees must take a 30-minute break after working 4 hours, set the “Minimum breaks duration to “30” and the breaks day length threshold to 240 (Four Hours).

Thresholds

  • Clock in/out threshold – A period around the times employees are due to clock in and out.
    • For example, if employees were due to start and 9:00 AM but you were happy for them to clock in at 9:10 AM, you may apply a 15-minute threshold; if employees did clock in at 9:10 AM their clock in time would be counted as 9:00 AM for the purposes of the calculation of the duration of the time worked.

Exceptions

  • Exception rules – Determines how any exceptions are treated in relation to your clock in/out threshold.
    • For example, if your threshold is set to 10 minutes and the employee was due to start at 09:00. 
    • Only outside of threshold = If an employee clocks in at 09:13 AM (three minutes outside of the threshold) then this would cause an exception but if they clocked in at 09.09 this would not.
    • All = All-time passed the scheduled time (regardless of the threshold) is treated as an exception hence could trigger an email below, for example.
  • Email on exception – If set to 'Yes', any time exceptions will cause a system email to be sent to the employee-manager notifying them of this.

Working patterns

  • Link to working patterns – Links the Time tracking module to the variable working patterns module allowing you to compare the amount of time that the employee “should” be working alongside their “Actual” time through time tracking and show both in the time tracking module.
  • Working patterns match threshold - Determines a threshold in minutes during which the system will match a working pattern entry against a time tracking entry.  This is useful for employees on split shifts who may have more than one-time tracking entries in a single day.  For example, if set to 60 minutes, the system will look for a working pattern entry within 60 minutes of the time tracking entry and match accordingly.

Rules

  • Allow clock in early - Determines if employees are able to clock in before their scheduled start time and for this time to be counted for the purposes of calculating the duration.
  • Allow clock out late – Determines if employees are able to clock out after their scheduled finish time and for this time to be counted for the purposes of calculating the duration.
  • Allow clock out post midnight – Determines if the time tracking record can pass midnight.
    • For example, if an employee’s shift starts at 10:00 PM and finishes at 2:00 AM the following morning, the post-midnight setting will need to be enabled so the error message of start time must be before the end time does not then occur.
  • Allow clock in exceptions – Determines if the employees are able to clock in if they have failed to clock out previously. If this is set to 'No', the employee will get an error message and will need to have their prior record closed off before they can clock in again.
  • Allow clock in when time off booked - Determines whether users can clock in even if they have time off booked for the current date.

General Settings

  • Require approval?  - Determines if time tracking records require approval. This requires a custom workflow of type Timeoff - Approval to be set up for this purpose.
  • Bulk approve - If you choose 'Yes', managers and approvers will be able to bulk approve time tracking from the list of time tracking entries. Please note that this means it is possible for them to approve time tracking entries without ever actually viewing them.
  • Preventing editing of clock in/out time - Prevents the editing of the clock in/out time for time tracking records. The total duration can still be edited.
  • Use Geolocation for web clock in/out - This allows the use of Geolocation to record the location at which a clock in/out occurs. This is dependent on the data available from the device used to clock in/out. The user will be asked by their browser or operating system for permission to share location information and, if they decline, no location will be recorded.
  • Valid IP addresses – Restricts clock in access so that they can only be created if an employee is connected to an approved network; this removes the ability for employees to clock in remotely from a non-valid IP address such as a mobile device.
  • Auto logout (hours) – If an employee fails to clock out, they will be clocked out "by default" after this number of hours.
  • Auto archive (days) – The number of days after which time tracking records will be automatically moved to archive.
  • Alert email - This setting is reserved for future use and currently has no effect.

Calculation of duration from time tracking

The settings above, when combined with the employee clock in/out times and scheduled working times can be used to work out the total duration of a time record.  When doing so a number of factors are taken into account.  In ALL cases the actual clock time in and clock time out will be the time recorded during clock in/out.

Below are eight different scenarios and how the various options impact the total time calculation.

  • Early clock in - no threshold allowed - If allowed to clock in early, paid time is set to actual clock in time. If not allowed to clock in early, paid time is set to the scheduled start time and this causes an exception to be raised.
  • Late clock in - no threshold allowed - The paid time is set to actual clock in time and this causes an exception to be raised.
  • Early clock out - no threshold allowed - The paid time is set to actual clock out time and this causes an exception to be raised.
  • Late clock out - no threshold allowed - If allowed to clock out late, paid time is set to actual clock out time. If not allowed to clock out late, paid time is set to scheduled end time and this causes an exception to be raised.
  • Early clock in - threshold is set and clocked time is within the threshold - If allowed to clock in early, paid time is set to actual clock in time. If not allowed to clock in early, paid time is set to scheduled start time - if exception rules are set to All exceptions then this will cause an exception to be raised.
  • Late clock in - threshold is set and clocked time is within the threshold - The paid time is set to scheduled start time. If exception rules are set to All exceptions, this will cause an exception to be raised.
  • Early clock out - threshold is set and clocked time is within the threshold - The paid time is set to actual clock out time. If exception rules are set to All exceptions, this will cause an exception to be raised.
  • Late clock out - threshold is set and clocked time is within the threshold - If allowed to clock out late then paid time is set to actual clock out time. If not allowed to clock out late then paid time is set to scheduled end time. If exception rules are set to All exceptions, this will cause an exception to be raised.

Email when the clock in fails to occur

When you have linked time tracking with working patterns and enabled email manager on exception, the system will send an automated email when an employee is scheduled to clock in but does not do so.

At 00 and 30 minutes past every hour, the system looks for all working pattern records where the employee was due to clock in during the previous hour - for example, at 0800 we would look for those who were due to clock in from 0700.

As it is possible that someone may have been due to clock in at 7.55, we only look for those records where they were not due to clock in the previous 15 minutes so the actual range is 0700 to  0745 to prevent a premature alert for those whose scheduled time is close to the time of the check.

We then look to see if that employee has clocked in the previous one hour - if they have not then this will send an email to the employee manager.

For example, if the employee was due to clock in at 0730 and we check at 0800 and they have not yet clocked in that would cause an alert to be sent.

If they had clocked in at 0720 that would NOT send an alert as we would assume they clocked in early for their scheduled time - if, however, they had clocked in at 0645 which is more than 15 minutes before their start time we would ignore this and still send the alert.

This does mean that, in certain limited circumstances, a manager may get an alert where the employee has clocked in more than 15 minutes early telling them the employee has failed to clock in but this is unavoidable. The only solution to this is to ensure the working pattern is always accurate.

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