Time Periods

You can define five types of periods in Time and Labor: daily, weekly, monthly, complex, and repeating. Although all period types are defined using the same set of pages, not all period types are used in the same way. For example, daily, weekly and monthly period types are used to create time reporting periods, but complex and repeating periods have no application to time reporting—their only purpose is to define periods for rules processing. This section discusses the different uses of periods in the system, and contains important information on when you can use each period type. Periods have the following uses in the Time and Labor system:

Time Reporting

Define periods for time reporting purposes; for example, employees in your company might report time for a day, a week, or a month at a time. Align these time periods to your pay period, billing cycle, or fiscal period. Although you can define as many as five different types of periods using the Time Period pages, only three types of periods are for time reporting purposes: daily, weekly, and monthly. Two additional periods' types—complex and repeating—are for rules creation. These time periods can be associated on the Maintain Time Reporter Data page, or the Workgroup page to derive the time period display on the Timesheet page.

Determining Periods to Process

Time and Labor uses time periods, identified by the time period ID on each time reporter's workgroup, to help determine the correct time periods to process (and pass to Payable Time) when you run the Time Administration process. To determine the correct weekly periods to process, Time and Labor looks to the period ID associated with the time reporter's workgroup.

Determining Rule Application

Time periods determine the range of dates to which a rule applies. For example, for a rule program containing a daily, weekly, and monthly rule, build a calendar containing the periods to which each of these rules applies. For each rule period (daily, weekly, and monthly), define the corresponding calendar period containing the data needed to process the rule.

When defining calendar periods to correspond to rule periods, use the same period types used in time reporting (daily, weekly, monthly). In addition, define repeating and complex period types to use in connection with complex and repeating rule periods. For example, consider the following complex rule that looks at time reported on the last Sunday in April.

Example: If a time reporter works on the last Sunday in April, the employee will automatically receive four hours plus the time he or she actually reports for the day.

For this rule to work, identify the last Sunday in April by creating a complex period. Otherwise, the system will not know which day to look at.

Tracking Attendance

For attendance tracking in Time and Labor, specify the time periods for which to track absences, late punches, early departures, and so forth (for example, late punches in a day, absences per week). Use the three time-reporting period types for tracking attendance.

Determining Overtime Limits

For evaluating overtime balances, specify the time periods to track if time reporters are exceeding the amount of overtime that can be taken within a given period. Use the three time-reporting period types for tracking overtime balances.

Determining Current and Prior Period Time

Periods help the system distinguish between prior, current and future time (time entered for periods that have been processed as opposed to time for the current period). To determine whether time reporters are entering time for the current period or a prior one, the system looks at the current date for which time reporters report time and compares this date to the current period start and end dates on the time period calendar. The system first looks for a time period on the Maintain Time Reporter Data page for the time reporter and, if one is not defined there, uses the time period on the workgroup to distinguish current from prior period time.