Expected Hours

Required Level : Standard
Required Version : 3.06c or later

It can be useful to keep track of the time that an employee is Expected to work. This amount may be variable, depending on the shift schedule for that week or month.

The most common use for this feature is where an employee will be paid, not according to the hours worked, but according to the deviation from those hours. For example it is common to try an smooth out salaries across all 12 months of the year. However each month will have quite different hours of work, depending on the number of working days in the month. Thus Expected time can help you to adjust salaries up, or down, if the right number of hours for a particular month are not worked.

This document describes how Expected hours can be configured, and checked in the TNA 4 system.

Concepts

Every day the employee is processed according to the shift rules. The rules applied depend on the Daily Shift set for that day. This shift might be fixed (via the Payroll Shift or via Daily Rostering) or it might be variable (according to the options set in the Payroll shift.)

It should be noted that Expected time only exists for Payroll hours.

Expected Time can include any category of time. When comparing the time worked against what was expected, then the Total column is the one used for the comparison. ie All categories are taken into account, and their Effect on the Total is applied.

Shift Level Configuration

In the Configuration module, go to the Shift Setup menu, to the Payroll Shifts option. Highlight the shift which requires the Expected Time feature then click on the Change button. On the form go to the Advanced Tab. The form looks something like this;



You can set the Expected Time to be either equal to the Standard Time, or you can set the Expected time to be a specific amount.

If you expect the employee to work a fixed, or minimum number of hours in the week, then enter an exact amount. This works well for people who are working on a fixed cycle, and where the number of hours expected is the same for each cycle.

If the person is on a cycle where there are a variable number of working days (like a month) then set the Expected Time to be the same as the Standard Time.

Caveat : When the Processor module processes the employee, if a number of Daily Shifts are possible for that day, then it chooses the Daily Shift that fits closest to the clockings that the employee made. The Standard Time for that Daily Shift will become the Expected Time for that day. If for example there is a shift which allows there to be no clockings, and the employee is absent, then he will be processed according to that shift. In other words his Expected Time will be set to the Standard Time, which is 0. And this would be 100% correct.

If however you had expected him to work on that day (and he didn't) this would not be reflected in his Expected Time. In this situation you may want to consider using the Rostering module to enforce the roster for one or more employees.

If you've set the Expected Hours to match the Standard Hours, then you will need to check that the Daily Shifts have their Standard Hours set correctly. If you created the shifts via the Jump-Start (with version 3.06c or later) then the Standard Hours will automatically be set for you. Otherwise you will need to visit each of the Day Shifts and make sure the Standard Hours are set correctly.

Tip : The Standard Hours are set on the Options settings option when editing the Daily Shift. 

Tip : Remember the Standard Hours is the total amount of time that you expect your employee to work that day. This can include any category of time, i.e. it can include Normal Time, or Overtime or whatever.

Employee Level Configuration

There are cases where the techniques used above are simply not going to work. In that case you can set the Expected hours for an employee directly. If you do this then this will override any Expected settings, set on the shift, for that employee.

To add Expected Hours, for an employee, for a specific pay period, go to the User module. Then go to the Query or Edit menu, to the Expected Employee Hours option.

You can also Bulk add Expected Hours via the Bulk menu, Expected Employee Hours option.

Results

Tip : If you have changed the Shift Configuration then you may want to go back and reprocess the employees. You can do this using the Process option in the Bulk menu in the User module.

When viewing the employee's payroll hours, then the Expected time is displayed in the column just prior to the total. If the total is less than the Expected time then the Total is coloured Red.