Building your Timesheet Template

Timesheets enable your employees to record their hours worked and submit them for approval by an Admin User. This can be done either by them entering their times directly into a Timesheet or by clocking in and out which adds a timestamp to a timesheet automatically. This article is for Admin Users who want to set up Timesheets within HR Partner; if you're an employee wondering how to fill out your timesheet, head over to this article.

Getting Started

To begin creating your timesheet, log into your Admin portal and in the main lefthand menu head to Timesheets > Configure > Templates and select the option to "Add Timesheet Template" on the top right:

The next page that opens up will be a blank template, ready for you to build out. The different fields within a timesheet template are explained here:

Name 

Think carefully about a naming convention if you plan to build multiple Timesheets. Many customers like to include details such as departments, locations or even the Approver's name for easier identification.

Notes 

In addition to a name, you can add notes to help you further identify a timesheet. This could be useful if you ever move away from one timesheet template to another, as you could explain the reasoning here to ensure your team is kept informed.

Frequency 

The frequency captures how many days are contained within one timesheet or how often you would like your employees to submit their hours worked. Best practice is usually to have this mirror your pay period. The options are: Weekly, Bi-Weekly (Fortnightly), Monthly or Bi-Monthly. The number of days for each frequency are:

• Weekly: 7 days
• Bi-Weekly: 14 days
• Monthly: 28, 29, 30 or 31 days (depending on the length of the month)
• Bi-Monthly: 60, 61 or 62 (depending on the length of the months)

Entry Method 

This is probably the most important setting for your template. This setting dictates how simple or complex the time entry method for your staff will be. Please see the section here entitles Timesheet Entry Methods to take a look at how each of the options here will look to you and your staff.  The three methods to choose from are: 

• Simple: Where your staff members only enter their total working hours per day
• Single: Where your staff enter their start time, stop time and total break time per day
• Multi: Where your staff can enter multiple start and end times throughout the day

Rounding Method 

Here you have the option to stipulate whether / how timesheet entries should be rounded. Some customers opt to do this for easier calculation or to match their payroll system or pay conditions. The options are: 

• No Rounding: Times entered will be left 'as is' 
• Round Up: The times will always be rounded UP to the next time segment you specify below
• Round Down: The times will always be rounded DOWN to the next time segment you specify below
• Round To Nearest: The times will be rounded up OR down to the nearest segment you specify below

Round to Nearest

If you chose to turn on rounding, here you may stipulate how you wish that to happen. You can choose to round to a 5, 10, 15, 30 or 60 minute mark.  Some examples below may explain more clearly: 

Example 1: You may always want your staff to record their times in 15 minute increments, and you might always want to round DOWN to the last 15 minute segment. To achieve this, you may set your 'Rounding Method' to 'Round Down' and set the 'Round To Nearest' to '15 Minutes'. Now, a time entry of 08:20 will be rounded down to 08:15. Even 08:29 will be rounded down to 08:15, but 08:31 will be rounded down to 08:30.

Example 2: If you want your staff times to be rounded to the nearest 30 minute mark, set the 'Rounding Method' to 'Nearest' and the 'Round To Nearest' field to '30 Minutes'. Now, any entries like 08:11 will be rounded DOWN to 08:00, but entries like 08:21 will be rounded UP to 08:30 which is the nearest 30 minute segment.

Unders / Overs Tracking

You can optionally track your employees' working hours, and add to a leave policy balance when they work more than their scheduled hours, or deduct from a leave policy balance if they work less than their allotted hours. This is useful if you want to track Overtime worked. Checking this box gives you more options as to which policy you would like to credit / deduct from and whether you'd like that process to be manual or automatic upon a timesheet sequence being locked. See this help article about Tracking Unders / Overs here.

Notifications

Timesheets can trigger email notifications to both Admin Users and Employees. This section allows you to choose when you would like automated emails to be sent, if at all.

Timesheet Approvals

This section allows you to nominate individuals who can view and /or approve timesheets belonging to this particular template.

Area (1) allows you to nominate one or more admin users who can approve, lock & unlock timesheets for this template. NOTE: You have to nominate at least one admin user in this field.

Area (2) allows you to enter one or more employees (non-Admin Users) who are allowed to Approve any timesheets belonging to this template from within their Employee Portal.

Area (3) allows you to nominate one or more employees who can view but not edit timesheets belonging to this template from within their Employee Portal.

The box in area (4) will automatically allow timesheet access to the direct managers of any employees using the template and in area (5) you stipulate whether these managers have viewing access or approval rights.

Export Format

Should you wish to export your timesheet data for payroll purposes, you have a range of export formats to choose from, the most common being CSV. 

Last Timesheet Period Ended On

This is the last day of your existing timesheet run. The date you select here is essentially the day before you want to start using your new timesheet within HR Partner. So, if you want your new timesheet to start on July 15th, then this should be entered as July 14th. 

Other Options

Template Active

This box must be checked for any timesheet you wish to use. If for some reason this template becomes obsolete or is replaced by another template later, you can uncheck this flag to ensure that no more sequences can be generated from it, and that it will not appear on any more reports.

Enable Project / Activity Tracking

If this is checked, your employees will be asked to nominate a project and activity against every timesheet entry. See more about Project / Activity Tracking here.

Enable Time Clocking

If this is checked your employees will have the ability to clock in and out via the Employee Portal or the HR Partner timeclock interface. See more about using Timeclocks here.

Auto Lock Sequences

If this is checked, then once the approver(s) have marked all timesheets in the sequence as Approved or Processed, the sequence will automatically lock.

Auto Create Sequences

If you would like the system to automatically generate your new timesheets and lock old ones so that you don't have to remember each week / month, checking this box will do that for you. You can then set the thresholds at which these events happen.

• Auto Generate New Sequences - specifies the number of days before the expected sequence start date that HR Partner will auto generate a new sequence.  '1' means it will generate 1 day before the sequence start date is due.
• Auto Close Old Sequences - specifies the number of days after the sequence end date that the sequence will be automatically locked. '7' means it will be locked a week after the sequence end date