Hourly Tab (Settings for Payroll or Accountability)

To access company-wide account settings for hourly time tracking:

1. Click the gear wheel icon in the upper right to view Company Settings.
2. Navigate to the Hourly tab.

Below is a description of each of the global hourly settings and how they affect user accounts. (The numbering of the settings below corresponds to that of the Hourly tab of the Company Settings page.)

1. How often do you close your payroll?

Setting your payroll schedule speeds up the process of closing payroll and helps to avoid accidental overlap and incorrect payroll report dates. The system will calculate pay periods for you so you need only make a selection from a drop-down menu to choose the appropriate pay period. If you have staff members on separate payroll schedules, you may choose “Flexible Schedule” to manually set the pay period dates upon each payroll close.

1-1. What was the first day of your first payroll period this month?

Set the start date to the first day of the first complete pay period that occurred in the current month, according to your payroll schedule. (e.g. If you run payroll every two weeks and the first day of the new period is Monday the 4th, then set the date to the 4th.) 

2. Set the default overtime policy for new users.

This setting controls how overtime is calculated and is applied to new users as they are added into Timesheets.com. Changing this setting will not affect existing users in the account. (See the Overtime Settings section of the Profile tab on a user’s individual settings page to adjust existing users’ overtime policies.)

2-1. Set the start of your work week. (usually Sunday or Monday at 12:00 AM)

This is the default work week delineator for new users. Generally, it should be set to Sunday at 12:00 AM if your work week is from Sunday to Saturday, and Monday at 12:00 AM if your work week is from Monday to Sunday. If you have users who work overnight shifts, you may need to set this value to a different time so that those shifts do not get split between work days or pay periods.

For example, if you have employees who work night shifts from 10:00 PM to 6:00 AM, you could set the work day delineator to 12PM to ensure that time records are not split between calendar days. This would mean the entire shift is effectively worked on the same ‘work day’ even though the date changes at midnight during the shift. This can also be set on an individual user basis. (See Section 3 of the Options tab on a user’s individual settings page.)

3. Customize time-off categories

The Timesheets.com software has six built-in paid time off categories. The first three (labeled Sick, Vacation, and PTO by default) are designed to track accrued, or banked, time and the second three (labeled Holiday, Other1, and Other2 by default) are not able to accrue time balances. The names of these categories and their abbreviations can be customized on this page. You may enable/disable each of them independently. Note: If you are designating a time off category for use with our Comp Time Converter, it must be an accruable time off category.

3-1. Enable accrued time-off balances

Enabling this setting by selecting Enable accrued time-off balances will enable programmable accrual functions on each user’s account and allow you and your staff to monitor accrual rates and time-off balances. Set this to I plan to track time-off balances another way if you wish to accrued track time-off balances outside of Timesheets.com. 

4. Require supervisor authorization for all hourly timesheet edits?

Enabling this setting will require that all timesheet entries (using manual time entry) and edits be approved by a supervisor or administrator before they are closed for payroll or archived. This setting does not apply to time recorded using the real-time Clock In/Clock Out buttons. It is important to note that this is only the default setting for new users. Changing this setting will not affect existing users. To adjust this setting for existing users, you should visit the Options tab of each user’s settings page and adjust setting 7-A.

5. Allow users to edit their own hourly time?

• If this setting is enabled and setting number 4 above is disabled, newly created employees will be able to make edits to their timesheets without supervisor authorization.
• If this setting is enabled along with setting number 4 above, newly created employees will be able to request edits but those edits must be approved by a supervisor before archiving time or closing payroll.
• If this setting is disabled, newly created employees will not have access to edit or request edits to their timesheets.

6. Enable manual time entry?

This setting will enable access to the time entry form for inputting regular work hours. This gives users the option to either clock in in real-time or manually enter their hours for the day. If this setting is disabled, users will be forced to clock in and out in real-time. This is a company-wide setting; however, if you wish to give time entry form access to specific employees while restricting others to real-time clock punches, you may take the following steps:

1. Set this setting, Enable manual time entry, to “Yes,” and click Save. This gives everyone access to the form.
2. Click Dashboard in the left menu, and then click the gear wheel icon to the left of the name of the employee whom you wish to restrict to real-time clock punches.
3. Switch to the Options tab and select Security and Signatures, then scroll down to Section 4.
4. Set Hourly Time to Yes, limit to 0 hours. This setting restricts the individual user so they cannot enter any time using the time entry form, effectively limiting them to using the real-time clock in/out buttons. 
5. Repeat these steps for each hourly employee who should not have access to the time entry form.

Note: If setting number 4 is enabled, all manually entered hourly time entries will be marked pending on the user’s timesheet until approved by a supervisor or administrator.

7. Allow users to change their times when they clock in or out late?

This setting only applies to users who clock in and out in real-time. When enabled, users will have the option to make adjustments to their clock punches at the time of the punch. If setting number 4 is also enabled, the request will be marked pending until approved by a supervisor or administrator. 

8. Allow users to delete hourly time records from their timesheets?

When enabled, this setting allows users to delete records from their timesheets.

9. Allow users to record paid breaks?

This setting will enable the system’s built-in paid break feature. When enabled, a break button appears beneath the Clock Out button and allows a single paid break to be logged on the user’s timesheet for each time stamp. The preset break duration can be adjusted using setting 9-1.

10. Enable 16-hour automatic clock out?

If this feature is enabled, all users are automatically clocked out after 16 hours. An alert is generated any time a user is automatically clocked out. We recommend using this setting only if you want to force managers to manually adjust timesheets when a person forgets to clock out. Otherwise, it’s recommended that companies allow users to clock out at the time of their next scheduled punch and then complete an edit request via the normal clock-out process (enabling setting number 7 allows this). This way, the user’s audit trail will include the user’s request to edit the timestamp and the reason for the edit request.

11. Default Work Shift

This is the default shift for new users. (Changing this does not affect existing users. See setting 1 in the Overtime Controls section of the Profile tab of users’ individual settings page to adjust the work shift at the individual user level.) This is an optional setting that can be used for calculating tardy reports as well as configuring user-level security settings such as restrictions on clock-in access outside of regular work hours. (See our “User-Level Account Settings” article for more information.)

12. Round to nearest time interval for payroll?

This setting enables time rounding for hourly timesheets when closing payroll and generating a payroll report. To enable rounding, set the rounding interval in the drop-down menu to something other than ‘none’. Note that rounding does not take place in real time and you will not see rounded timestamps on the employee timesheets. Instead, you will see rounded values on payroll reports. Employee timesheets will always display the original timestamp values even when rounding is enabled. 

Timesheets.com follows standard rounding practices and will round down if a timestamp falls before the midpoint of the rounding period, and up if the timestamp comes after the midpoint. This means, for instance, that we comply with ‘the 7-minute rule’ when rounding to the nearest 15 minutes.