Time Entry Rules

Time entry rules can be used to control how many hours an employee can enter on a timesheet, whether time entries are rounded or not, and many other options. If any rule is violated an error will appear on the timesheet, and the timesheet cannot be submitted for approval until the rule violation is corrected.

Hours Checks are rules that restrict how many hours employees may enter on their timesheet:

Rule	Description
Minimum hours per work day	The minimum number of hours that should be entered each work day. This rule is checked when the timesheet is submitted, and counts both work and leave hours in the day total. For example, if you enter 8.00 hours for this value then the employee must record 8 hours of work, sick, vacation, etc. for each day of the work week, or they will not be able to submit their timesheet. What is considered a work day is determined by the employee's Scheduled Work Days property on their employee properties page. See the Managing Employees topic for more information.
Maximum hours per day	The maximum number of hours (both work and leave) that can be entered per day.
Minimum hours per week	The minimum number of hours that can be entered per week. This rule is checked when the timesheet is submitted, and counts both work and leave hours in the week total.
Maximum hours per week	The maximum number of hours (both work and leave) that can be entered per week.
Minimum hours per period	The minimum number of hours that can be entered per period. This rule is only useful for timesheet periods that are longer than one week. This rule is checked when the timesheet is submitted, and counts both work and leave hours in the period total.
Maximum hours per period	The maximum number of hours (both work and leave) that can be entered per period. This rule is only useful for timesheet periods that are longer than one week.

Leave Checks are rules that restrict how many hours of leave employees may take on any given day:

Rule	Description
[Leave] minimum hours per day	If an employee puts non-zero [Leave] hours on their timesheet, this is the smallest amount that can be taken in one day. For instance, if the employee enters 2.00 hours of Vacation on their timesheet, and the minimum is set to 4.00, they will see an error message when saving the timesheet, and will need to fix the entry before they can submit the timesheet.
[Leave] maximum hours per day	The maximum [Leave] hours that can be taken in one day. For instance, if the employee enters 9.00 hours of Vacation on their timesheet, and the maximum is set to 8.00, they will see an error message when saving the timesheet, and will need to fix the entry before they can submit the timesheet.
[Leave] can't be taken until employed for	The probationary period or number of days an employee must be employed before they can take [Leave] hours. This rule requires that the employee's "First Day" property must be set in their employee profile. When this rule is enabled the employee will not be able to make [Leave] requests or enter [Leave] on their timesheet until after the specified number of days of employment.

In the above table [Leave] means any of your configured leave pay codes, e.g. Holiday, Vacation, etc. You will be able to configure each pay code separately.

Note that if you set the minimum and maximum hours described above to be the same value for a given pay code, this implies the employee cannot take a partial day of leave. When generating a leave request for the given pay code the employee will not see the "Partial Day" option.

Rounding rules allow you to control whether and how time entries are rounded:

Rule	Description
Round time entries to	The number of minutes to round time entries to, for example 15. If the timesheet template has the Start and Finish fields, then the start and finish times will be rounded. If the timesheet template has only the Hours field then the hours will be rounded. Note that if you want to keep track of the original or unrounded start and finish times you need to add the "Actual Start" and "Actual Finish" custom fields, as described in the note below. You can also add a "Disable Rounding" checkbox custom field to turn off rounding for an individual time entry.
Rounding Mode	How rounding is done, either Nearest, Round Up or Round Down. Nearest: The Nearest rounding mode will round the start and finish time of a punch to the nearest rounding increment. For example, if rounding is to 15 minutes then 8:07 will round to 8:00 and 8:08 will round to 8:15. For timesheets that are only recording hours (no start/finish times) then the hours entered will be rounded to the nearest rounding value, instead of the start and finish times. Round Up The Round Up rounding mode will round the start and finish time of a punch to the next rounding increment. For example, if rounding is to 15 minutes then 8:01 will round to 8:15 and 8:16 will round to 8:30. For timesheets that are only recording hours (no start/finish times) then the hours entered will be rounded to the next rounding increment, instead of the start and finish times. Round Down The Round Down rounding mode will round the start and finish time of a punch to the prior rounding increment. For example, if rounding is to 15 minutes then 8:14 will round to 8:00 and 8:16 will round to 8:15. For timesheets that are only recording hours (no start/finish times) then the hours entered will be rounded to the prior rounding increment, instead of the start and finish times.
Round punch-in to scheduled start time	Checking this option will round punch-ins to the employee's scheduled start time if the punch is within the specified minutes of the scheduled start time. For example, if you specify that punches 15 minutes or less before the scheduled start time be rounded to the start time, and the employee is scheduled to start at 9:00AM, then a punch of 8:50AM will be rounded to 9:00AM. However, a punch of 8:40AM will not be rounded. This rule is useful if you want to prevent employees from recording more than their scheduled number of hours, even if they come in a few minutes early. If the regular rounding rule is also enabled (for example, round punches to the nearest 15 minutes), then the regular rounding rule will only run if the punch does NOT fall within the specified minutes of the scheduled start time. The employee's scheduled start and finish times are specified in their profile. See the Managing Employees topic for more information.
Round punch-out to scheduled finish time	Checking this option will round punch-outs to the employee's scheduled finish time if the punch is within the specified minutes of the scheduled finish time. For example, if you specify that punches 15 minutes or less after the scheduled finish time be rounded to the finish time, and the employee is scheduled to finish at 5:00PM, then a punch of 5:10PM will be rounded to 5:00PM. However, a punch of 5:20PM will not be rounded. This rule is useful if you want to prevent employees from recording more than their scheduled number of hours, even if they leave a few minutes late. If the regular rounding rule is also enabled (for example, round punches to the nearest 15 minutes), then the regular rounding rule will only run if the punch does NOT fall within the specified minutes of the scheduled finish time. The employee's scheduled start and finish times are specified in their profile. See the Managing Employees topic for more information.

Note: If you want to preserve the original or unrounded start and finish times you need to add the following timesheet custom fields to Pacific Timesheet:

Custom Field	Type	Description
Actual Start	Time	This field holds the unrounded or original start time of day. Note that you must create this field exactly as named, "Actual Start", in order to create the expected underlying database field (t_timeentry.xactualstart). After creating the field you can then rename it as this will not affect the name of the underlying database field.
Actual Finish	Time	This field holds the unrounded or original finish time of day. Note that you must create this field exactly as named, "Actual Finish", in order to create the expected underlying database field (t_timeentry.xactualfinish). After creating the field you can then rename it as this will not affect the name of the underlying database field.
Disable Rounding	Checkbox	This is optional and is only needed if you want to be able to turn off rounding on a per-entry basis on a timesheet. After creating this custom field you can add the checkbox to the time entry details, giving you the option to turn off or disable rounding for an individual time entry. The "disable rounding" checkbox will only work if you also have the "Actual Start" and "Actual Finish" time fields, describe above. Note that you must create this field exactly as named, "Disable Rounding", in order to create the expected underlying database field (t_timeentry.xdisablerounding). After creating the field you can then rename it as this will not affect the name of the underlying database field.

Timesheet custom fields are configured from the System > Templates > Manage Custom Fields page. It is not required that you put these fields on the timesheet templates themselves - their value will still be filled in and you can report on them like any other timesheet field.

Meal Deduction rules allow you to automatically deduct meal time from punches:

Rule	Description
Automatic meal deduction	Check this option to automatically deduct the specified minutes from time entries. You might specify, for instance, that 30 minutes are deducted from time entries that are 8 or more hours. This is done by splitting the time entry into two parts, and taking the deduction from the middle of the time entry. In this way the employee's start and finish times, if entered, are always preserved.
Apply to entries at least	If automatic meal deduction is enabled then you need to specify the smallest punch that gets a meal deduction. For instance, you may only want a meal deduction for time entries that are 8 hours or larger.
Maximum deductions per day	You can limit how many automatically generated meal deductions an employee is allowed per day with this setting.

Note that the punch having the meal deducted will be split into two punches, with a meal break in the middle. In this way the punch in and out times are preserved. The meal will fall in the middle of the punch, starting at the nearest whole hour.

Splitting rules are sometimes needed for certain payroll applications:

Rule	Description
Automatic midnight split	Check this option if you want punches that span midnight to be split into two punches - one ending on midnight and one starting at midnight. This will prevent hours that are worked after midnight from being booked to the timesheet period in which the punch was started.

Default Timesheet rules control which timesheet period an employee is presented with when they log into Pacific Timesheet:

Rule	Description
Default Timesheet	Check this option if you want to change the default timesheet period that loads when an employee logs in. Normally the current timesheet is presented, but you can alternatively have the previous timesheet, if not submitted, be presented. The mandatory option is for cases where you want the employee to fill out and submit their previous timesheet before moving to a new one.

Miscellaneous rules:

Rule

Description

Don't allow submitting time for inactive Projects, Tasks etc.

Check this option to enable an additional check when the timesheet is submitted that prevents employees from submitting time for inactive items such as projects or tasks. Pacific Timesheetalready prevents users from choosing inactive items when adding new rows to their timesheet, and will not carry forward inactive rows if using the "timesheet memory" or "copy previous timesheet" features. However, this rule does an extra check to catch any items that might have been inactivated after any rows were added to the timesheet.

For objects such as Projects and Tasks that have Actual Start Date and Actual Finish Date properties, this rule will take those values into consideration. For instance, an error will be presented to a user if they try to save a time entry for a date that falls after a project's last day, regardless of whether the project's status property is currently set to active or inactive.

Note that this rule will only run for the previous and current timesheet periods to avoid difficulty if a manager retroactively edits an older timesheet.

Autofill

Autofill will automatically add work hours to a timesheet when it is submitted to make it match the employee's scheduled hours. For this to work the employee's scheduled hours per week property must be set in their profile. The adjustment work entry will be added to the last day of the timesheet period.

This setting is useful for salaried employees who may be only tracking leave, but the back-end payroll system requires their total hours total to, say, 40 each week.