How do I configure approval rules to run when time cards are submitted?

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When a worker submits a time card, it might need to be approved before the time data is transferred to payroll. The approval might be for any absence entries, the time card itself, or a combination. You configure the approval rules to use and the actions that start the approval work flow when you create time consumer sets and link them to workers using time processing profiles. Let’s see how that works.

I’m signed in as a time and labor administrator who has access to the Workforce offering. I navigate to the Time Consumer Sets task.

Click Settings and Actions.

Click Setup and Maintenance.

In the Offering list, select Workforce Deployment.

In the Functional Areas section, click Time and Labor.

In the Task list, click Time Consumer Sets.

I start by creating a time consumer set and give it an appropriate name and description. Your first step is to select a Time Consumer; that is, the application or applications that will be using this set. Notice that if I select all three, the settings for Project Costing and Payroll are the same, while the settings for Project Execution Management are preset and can’t be changed. For simplicity, I’ll review the settings for Payroll.

Click the Create icon.

In the Name field, enter Approval Set.

In the Description field, enter A time consumer set for triggering payroll approvals.

In the Time Consumer field, select the Project Costing, Project Execution Management, and Payroll check boxes.

Scroll down to review the settings.

Scroll up.

In the Time Consumer field, deselect Project Costing and Project Execution Management check boxes.

The next three settings are independent of the time consumer. Set Enable Informational Workflow for Bulk Time Card Submission to Yes if you’d like to inform workers when their managers or administrators mass submit or approve time cards. Set Enable Approval Workflow for Workers to Yes to have workers to review and approve their own time cards before submitting them to their managers. Finally, specify how absences will be approved. If you set Absence Approval Routing to Absence approval rules, absences need to be approved by the separate absence approval workflow before the time card can be approved. If you set it to Time approval rules, approving the time card also approves any included absence entries. Any notifications normally generated by the absence approval workflow are skipped.

For the Set Enable Informational Workflow for Bulk Time Card Submission list, select Yes.

For the Set Enable Approval Workflow for Workers list, select No.

For the Absence Approval Routing list, select Time approval rules.

Now we review the Payroll-specific settings. The Time Category determines the time data sent to the time consumer. For example, you probably don’t want to send project time data to payroll. For this example I’ll select All Payroll Entries. All time data is validated when the time card is submitted. To also validate when people click Save, Save and Close, or Next, set Validate on Time Card Actions to Submit and save. If you want to report on missing time cards for people linked to this consumer set, set Required Time Card Status to Yes. Finally, note that time card data is available for payroll administrators to transfer only after approval.

For the Time Category list, select All Payroll Entries.

For the Validate on Time Card Actions list, select Submit and save.

For the Set Required Time Card Status list, select Yes.

The Approval period must match the time card period for the time processing profile that contains this consumer set. By default, approvers see all time card entries. If you want them to see only required entries and do line-by-line approvals, select Entry-level approval. Similarly, by default the time data that approval rules evaluate is the reported time. Set Time Data for Approval Rules to Evaluate to Calculated time with reported absences if the approval rules should use that data instead. Note that if you’re using entry-level approval, you must use reported time.

If you have multiple time consumers, select the Approval Required check box for the consumer that must approve the time card before this consumer can process it. Since we have only one consumer we won’t change this setting. Save and close your time consumer set and your time card approval rules are set to trigger appropriately. You’ve configured a time consumer set to run approval rules when time cards are submitted.

For the Approval list, select Payroll Weekly Starting Monday.

For the Time Data for Approval Rules to Evaluate list, select Reported time.

Scroll up.

Click Save and Close.

At the Confirmation message, click OK.

For more information on this topic, you can view the courses on Oracle University or reference the available guides on Oracle Help Center.

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