Timesheet Rules

Timesheet rules are a way of putting policy around timesheet submissions. There are a number of Submission rules you can activate. These are:

Minimum number of hours required on the timesheet
Maximum number of hours allowed on the timesheet
Minimum number of hours per day required on the timesheet
Maximum number of hours per day allowed on the timesheet
Minimum leave accrual balance, and Exclude weekends from the daily rules

The first four of these require you to select whether to choose fixed hours or a percentage of the work schedule as the base for the rule. Selecting the percentage of the work schedule is helpful when you are establishing a policy that spans full-time and part-time employees.

You also need to specify the value for the item as well as the Action (Warn or Error) when the rule is violated. For the Minimum leave accrual balance, you need to select the minimum value and the Action to be sent to the employee.

Other options include:

Require a time entry every day, independent of workschedule — enables you to require employees to enter time on Saturday and Sunday, for example.
Exclude weekends from the daily rules — permits weekends on timesheets to pass through timesheet validation without triggering an exception for either the minimum number of hours per day required on the timesheet or maximum number of hours per day allowed on the timesheet rules.
Exclude hours associated with cost centers from the daily rules — If you are using the timesheet rules to monitor minimum and maximum hours per day and cost centers are used to classify employees, this option lets you filter the timesheet daily rule for only those cost centers where the rules apply. For example, you may want to not apply the rules to the sales cost center.
Exclude days with no hours from the daily rules — permits blank days (i.e., days with no hours) on timesheets to pass through timesheet validation without triggering an exception for either the minimum number of hours per day required on the timesheet or maximum number of hours per day allowed on the timesheet rules.
Require project selection for the following time types — permits time types to control whether a project is required for timesheet submission. For example, you may have a time type called internal that, when selected, will not require a project selection for time entry. Recording time at the time type level only will not provide a service or task breakdown; therefore, a high level single time type value will have limited reporting capabilities. A good example of a time type that would be useful on its own would be bench time. Please note that this feature is only applicable if you do not require a project selection on all time entries, and it is not commonly used.

Note:

The timesheet rules applied in your environment do not execute until the timesheet is submitted for review. Up until the point of submission, timesheet entries saved on a timesheet are not checked against the rule. Therefore, employees may think they have a valid timesheet while it is still in the open timesheet stage.

To create or modify the Timesheet Rules:

Go to Administration > Application Settings > Timesheets > Timesheet rules.
The Messages area provides a standard message to the employee when time entries for leave exceed the minimum balance specified in the Minimum leave accrual balance in the section above. Fields identified with %% are standard OpenAir database fields. Additional fields may be added by looking up the field format. Email templates provide an user unterface to help interpret the field format. See Email Templates.
An option to Create a new timesheet when a timesheet is submitted is also available. The options accompanying this feature are the same provided to employees when they choose to copy a timesheet. You should select the option most aligned with your business. For example, Clear the hours is a popular selection.
There is also a check box that controls whether or not an alert for rejected timesheets is included in the late timesheet alert notifications.