Understanding Self-Service Timecard Review and Approval
After employees enter self-service timecards into the system, managers must review those timecards. Using the Manager Review and Approval program (P051129), managers can review, change, reject, and approve employee timecards. Along with reviewing and approving timecards, managers can use this program to view a list of employees who are missing timecards for the specified period. You can also set up the review and approval process to be completed by manager delegates.
Managers or their delegates can review the timecards for a group of employees and approve or reject all of the timecards at once, or timecards can be approved, changed, or rejected individually. Managers can also select multiple timecards or employees to approve or reject at one time.
In addition to approving and rejecting timecards, managers also can assign the Paid - Not Approved status to timecards. This status is used for informational purposes, and the timecards that are assigned this status are processed in the same way that approved timecards are processed. Managers might use this status if a timecard is incorrect, but the approval deadline does not allow for the timecard to be changed and re-entered by the employee. Assigning the Paid - Not Approved status allows the system to pay the employee for the timecard. The manager would then need to follow up with the employee to ensure that the timecard information is corrected during a future pay period.
Managers also can enter comments and send email messages to employees in the review process. To add comments, a manager enters text into the Comments field. The system saves comments in the Leave Messaging and Audit table (F07630). You can review the comments by clicking a link in the Leave Comments Review field. A manager can use the Send E-Mail to Employee link on Self Service Manager Review and Approval to send a message to an employee. Managers might use this function to notify employees of the reason that a timecard was changed or rejected, or to remind employees who have not entered timecards for the period to enter their timecards before the deadline.
The system stores timecards that employees enter into the system in a temporary workfile called the Employee Transactions - Batch File table (F06116Z1). After the timecards are reviewed and approved or rejected, the Time Entry Batch Processor program (R05116Z1I) moves all of the timecards with an Approved or Paid Not Approved status into the Employee Transaction Detail File table (F06116). When timecards are in the Employee Transaction Detail File table, they can be processed in a payroll cycle.
To use the missing timecards option during the review and approval process, you must set the processing options for the Time Entry Self Service Director program (P051125) to enable that feature. To display a list of employees who have not entered timecards for the pay period, the system must search through the entire employee database to find all of the employees that report to the specified manager; therefore, this process might take a significant amount of processing time.
When processing options for the Time Entry MBF Processing Options program are set appropriately, administrators can designate timecards as public or private. When public timecards exist for employees, the system displays them for review. Managers and employees can click a link on the director form that displays the public timecard. Neither managers nor employees can modify a public timecard. Because the system supports multiple timecards for a work date, employees can enter an additional timecard for the same work date.