Time Clocks and Payroll Software

pTime and attendance software is perhaps one of the most misunderstood of the payroll family products. Often known as award interpretation software it is the glue between your electronic time clock and your payroll software./p
pIn a entirely manual system, workers fill out time sheets. Payroll staff calculate payroll hours based on their knowledge of the award rules and those hours are keyed into a payroll system and job done./p
p In an automated system, employees clock in and out using a electronic time clock, that data is electronically transferred into award the time and attendance systemnbsp;which has been configured with the award rules, the system automatically calculates the payroll hours and this can then be exported into your payroll and accounting and, again, job done but much more accurately and much quicker /p
p Unfortunately, the misapprehension in the general business community regarding this process is that electronic a href=http://www.timeandattendanceconsultant.com/ target=_blanktime clocks/a will be able to do the collection, interpretation and export to payroll steps which is exceptionally unlikely./p
p It is almost certain that electronic time clock or a href=http://www.timeandattendanceconsultant.com/ target=_blankbundy clock/a you own or purchase is unlikely to be able to perform any complex calculations. Some are reasonably clever and they may cope with simple rounding and overtime calculations but thats about their limit./p
p The process of translating an employees In and out clockings into the hours worked can get quite complex. It gets more complex when an electronic time clock is involved…take a look at these two examples and you will see why:/p
pstrongExample 1; The Time Sheet:/strong Joe fills in a time sheet for the week. His shift starts at 7.30 am and finishes at 4:00pm. He gets 30 minutes for lunch. On Monday he worked back for 3 hours and wrote 7:00pm on the time sheet. Pretty simple calculations here. 8 hours normal time and 3 hours overtime./p
pstrongExample 2: The Electronic Bundy Clock/strong: Fred clocks in on the electronic bundy clocknbsp; when he gets to work at 7:15 am. He clocks out at 7:07pm. The reports on the time clock calculate that he has been at work for 11 hours and 52 minutes. This is clearly not correct so there needs to be some manual intervention to round the in and out times to the start and the end of the shift. Lunch has to be deducted and the split of overtime categories must be taken into consideration./p
pThis is a relatively simple example. Some electronic time clocks can cope with this however it gets a whole lot more complex. For example, these are some of the manual calculations done by payroll staff that will challenge the very best time clock./p
pstrongMultiple rounding scenarios/strong – Rounding to the shift start time when an employee clocks late or early while not rounding for timed lunch breaks and rounding to the nearest 15 minutes on clock out/p
pstrongDaily Balancing – /strongTaking time from an overtime category and placing it into the normal time category if the normal hours are short of the nominal shift hours./p
pstrongPayroll Balancing/strong – As above but on a payroll period./p
pstrongAutomatic breaks – /strongAuto deduct lunch breaks or not deduct taken breaks under a length/p
pstrongLeave entry – /strongBecome important when you want to export to payroll and save data entry time/p
pstrongFlextime Accrual/strong – Bank time, flextime, rostered days off are all examples of the need to accrue special leave for time worked./p
p Again, these are common requirements when calculating payroll and they are, ostensibly, outside the capability of electronic bundy clocks./p
p The final nail in the coffin for most time clocks is they simply cannot interface with a payroll system and if they do,the records they export is likely to be an inaccurate calculation of payroll hours unless your awards or pay rules are very very simple./p
p a href=http://www.timeandattendanceconsultant.com/ target=_blankTime and attendance software/a (award interpretation software)will almost certainly be required if you want to automated the accurate calculation of employee payroll hours and export that into your payroll system. If you are a small enterprise with less than 30 employees the required investment may not justify the time saving. However, if you have more than 30 employees the return on investment becomes more appealing.nbsp;/p
pJames Bell/p
pTime and Attendance Consultant/p
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