Introduction
The Mandatory Timesheet Policy section allows customers to define employees or groups of employees who are required to submit timesheets to be paid for those shifts.
To set up a Mandatory Timesheet Policy, navigate to Admin, Configuration, Organisation Settings, Time & Attendance Mandatory Timesheet Selection.
Creating a Mandatory Timesheet Policy
If your organisation has never had a policy, click the Assign button.
If you have an active policy, you can do one of the following;
Cease Date the current one before creating a new one; or
Copy a policy: In this scenario, Access Definitiv will automatically add the commencement date as of today. If the original version or any other version was still active, it would be updated to have a Cease Date of yesterday. These dates can be edited.
Note: If you do not have an active Mandatory Timesheet policy but have had one in the past, click on the “Show All” checkbox if you would like to copy from this version rather than starting from anew.
Once you have configured your Mandatory Timesheet policy, make sure to consider the commencement and cease dates before clicking on Save.
Mandatory Timesheet Policy Options
Once the Mandatory Timesheet Policy is up on screen, you have the ability to choose from the following categorisation options;
Employee and Primary Department
Employee and Pay Policy Type
Each rule can be configured as either of the following;
Mandatory for the listed only - Only the ones listed are required to submit timesheets
Mandatory for all except the listed - All but the ones listed are required to submit timesheets
We suggest choosing the option based on the least amount of setup and maintenance.
Important Note
As the Mandatory Timesheet Policy takes into consideration two rules, there may be times when a rule contradicts the other rule. To understand how the employee and the other selected categorisation rules work in partnership, please see the article here.
What is the Primary Department?
The Primary Department is the department on an employee’s master record with the Primary checkbox marked as true.
If an employee’s Primary Department is changed, the commencement and cease dates on the employee’s master record are taken into consideration within the Mandatory Timesheet Policy.
Example
Only employees with the Primary Department of “Warehouse” are required to submit timesheets under the current Mandatory Timesheet Policy.
Bob’s Primary Department is Warehouse until 31 August. From 1 September, Bob’s Primary Department changes to Corporate. From 1 September, Bob will no longer be required to submit timesheets and will be paid based on his work schedule.
What is Pay Policy Rate Type?
The Pay Policy Rate Type is the Base Rate Type set in a pay policy.
Example
Only employees with an hourly pay policy are required to submit timesheets under the current Mandatory Timesheet Policy.
Bob is paid an hourly rate based on the SCHADS award. His company has set up each pay level as a global pay policy. A global pay policy with an hourly rate is applied under the Pay Policy tab of Bob’s master record.
From 1 September, Bob is moving into a permanent salary role. He has been changed to a custom salary-based pay policy on his master record.
Bob would be required to submit timesheets up until 31 August. From 1 September, Bob will no longer be required to submit timesheets and will be paid based on his work schedule.
Payroll Outcome
An employee who is required to submit timesheets as per the Mandatory Timesheet Policy will only be paid for approved timesheets.
How a timesheet is interpreted, and what an employee is paid based on the hours they worked, depends on the award rules applied.
Visibility of Mandatory Timesheets
If an employee is required to submit timesheets, you can see helpful details to track this under the following reports;
Unsubmitted Timesheets
This screen is available under My Team/Employees, Unsubmitted Timesheets.
Unsubmitted timesheets are then shown for shifts that have been scheduled either through the work schedule or the roster, where no corresponding timesheet exists.
For more information on the Unsubmitted Timesheets report, please see the article here.
Variance Report
This report is available under Reporting, Time Attendance Reporting, Variance.
This report has a column called Mandatory Timesheets and shows whether an employee is required to submit timesheets or not.
Important Considerations
Policies are Date-Driven
As per the screenshot below, Mandatory Timesheet policies are date-driven, and any given version cannot overlap with another version.
A policy is applied inclusive of the Commencement and Cease Dates.
No Primary Department or Pay Policy
If there is no Primary Department or Pay Policy applied to the employee’s master record, then these employees will still be included/excluded based on the rules set in the policy.
E.g., if set as “Mandatory for all departments except listed departments" then if an employee did not have a primary department set on their master record, they would be required to submit timesheets.
No Primary Department means the following;
A department or departments exist on the master record, but none are marked as primary
No departments exist on the master record
Which Pay Policy Applies
There can be scenarios where an employee may be paid differently based on the role they are working or the job they are performing. For example, a part-time employee may be paid a salary for their normal contracted hours but then hourly for the extra shifts they pick up.
To understand what pay policy Access Definitiv considers under the Mandatory Timesheet policy feature, please see the article here.