Publishing Estimated and Actual Payable Time

This section discusses how to:

  • Publish payable time with estimated costs.

  • Publish payable time with actual costs.

Each entry of payable time can have both an estimated and actual cost associated with it. If you've selected the Calculate Estimated Gross option on the Time and Labor Installation page, Time and Labor calculates the estimated cost of payable time when you run the Time Administration process. At the same time, it assigns the entry a payable status of Estimated or Needs Approval.

Estimated payable time is available to any system that wants an early estimate of costs. Time and Labor publishes, on request, all payable time that has not had actual costs applied, including payable time with a status of Estimated, Needs Approval, Approved, Sent to Payroll, Rejected by Payroll, and Taken by Payroll. It does not include payable time in a Closed, Diluted, or Distributed statuses.

Receiving systems should replace any previously collected estimates with the data from Time and Labor and not try to reconcile old and new estimates. Whatever comes from Time and Labor for a given time reporter on a given date should replace all other entries for that time reporter and date.

Note: Estimated payable time is not the same as forecasted payable time. Forecasted payable time is stored in a separate table and does not go through the stages associated with payable time.

If you integrate Time and Labor with your payroll system, the payroll system can calculate actual costs associated with payable time entries and send them back to Time and Labor. Closed, Distributed, and Diluted payable time entries reflect actual costs. Time and Labor automatically publishes payable time with these statuses after actual costs have been applied and after labor dilution.

If the payroll system must recalculate paychecks after the pay period is closed, it can send Time and Labor new actual costs. Time and Labor then updates the payable time, publishes a message reversing the original amounts, and publishes the new actual costs. Labor Distribution can be rerun; Time and Labor publishes the difference between the original and new costs to Project Costing.

Currency Codes in the Payable Time Table

The Payable Time Table (TL_PAYABLE_TIME), includes two fields for currency codes: Currency Code and Currency Code 2.

  • Currency Code reflects the currency used to calculate the estimated gross costs.

  • Currency Code 2 reflects the currency the payroll application used to calculate actual costs when payable time has a Closed status. Because it does not go to a payroll system, or does not get labor-distributed, the Currency Code 2 field is the same as Currency Code.