If your employees are clocking in/out via the WorkZone app or Clock Me In, it's unlikely they'll be able to clock in and out at exactly the right time each day and if this is the case then their actual start and stop times are probably producing "untidy" timesheets, eg. 7hrs 58mins.
If you're happy to pay "exact" hours then that's all well and good but if you want your employees to clock in and out but expect to pay a standard eg. 8 hour day then you will be happy to hear we can help you with this, on the Timesheet Rounding page giving you the option to round up or to round down.
Rounding up or down refers to movement on the clock. Meaning:
- if you round up you're moving the start/end time forward on the clock
- if you round down you're moving the start/end time backward on the clock
Timesheet rounding settings can be found on the Payroll settings > Timesheet Rounding page.
A short video on this setup can be found here.
There are two sections on the Timesheet Rounding page, 'Shifts', and 'Rostered shifts':
Section 1: Shifts
This section covers general rounding rules. Here you can set in place rounding rules that will be applied to any timesheet, no matter how it's generated:
- Your employee could be clocking in and out via Clock Me In; or
- Your employee could be logging into the Employee Self Service Portal to create and submit their timesheets; or
- The payroll administrator or employee manager could be creating timesheets on behalf of the employees.
You will notice that there are rounding settings available for both the shift start/end and break start/end and you have the option to either round up or to round down or to not round.
Both fields have identical settings that consist of the following options:
- Don't Round: no rounding is applied
-
Round Up: to round up to the nearest 'x' minutes. Using the example setting below, this would result in any timesheet created with a start time between:
- 9.01am to 9.14am - start time would adjust to 9.15am
- 9.16am to 9.29am- start time would adjust to 9.30am
- 9.31am to 9.44am - start time would adjust to 9.45am
- 9.46am to 9.59am- start time would adjust to 10.00am
-
Round Down: to round down to the nearest 'x' minutes. Using the example setting below, this would result in any timesheet created with a start time between:
- 9.01am to 9.09am - start time would adjust to 9.00am
- 9.11am to 9.19am - start time would adjust to 9.10am
- 9.21am to 9.29am - start time would adjust to 9.20am
- 9.31am to 9.39am- start time would adjust to 9.30am
- and so forth...
To further illustrate rounding up and down - these rounding settings...
would result in these clock in times...
being adjusted to these on the timesheet...
-
Round to the Nearest: to round to the nearest 'x' minutes. Using the example setting below, this would result in any timesheet created with a start time between:
- 9.01am to 9.14am - start time would adjust to 9.00am
- 9.15am to 9.44am - start time would adjust to 9.30am
- 9.46am to 9.59am- start time would adjust to 10.00am
The Break section is where you're offered the same sort of rounding options, as above, for any break start and stop times entered by employees.
Section 2: Rostered Shifts
This section offers you the option to adjust the start and end times of a timesheet created via clock in/out (be that on the WorkZone app or Clock Me In) to match the rostered shift/end time. start and/or end times.
N.B. If you do not use the rostering feature then this section is not relevant to you.
If you choose to round up then any clock on times within the threshold period entered will be rounded up/forward to the rostered shift time (you'll be reducing the employee's actual worked time. The opposite is the case with finish times, rounding up adds to the employee's actual worked time).
If you set your start time to round down, then any clock on times within the threshold period entered will be rounded down/backward to the rostered shift time (you'll be increasing the employee's actual worked time. The opposite is the case with finish times, rounding down reduces the employee's actual worked time).
Here are some examples that explain:
If an employee's rostered shift was set to start at 8.30am you can either round up or round down,
- and if you choose to round up within 30 minutes, this setting would result in any clock in event between 8am and 8.29am on that day to have an adjusted timesheet start time of 8.30am
- and if you choose to round down within 30 minutes, this setting would result in any clock in event between 8.31am and 9am on that day to have an adjusted timesheet start time of 8.30am
If an employee's rostered shift was set to end at 4.30pm you can either round up or round down,
- and if you choose to round up within 30 minutes, this setting would result in any clock out event between 4pm and 4.29pm on that day to have an adjusted timesheet end time of 4.30pm
- and if you choose to round down within 30 minutes, this setting would result in any clock out event between 4.31pm and 5pm on that day to have an adjusted timesheet end time of 4.30pm
To further illustrate - let's say your rostered shift is 9am to 5pm and your rounding settings are set up as follows:
The employee actually clocks in at 8.48am and clocks out at 5.18pm:
- the clock on time will be adjusted to 9am
- the clock off time will be adjusted to 5pm
Another employee clocks in at 9.06am and clocks out at 4.23pm:
- the clock in time will not be adjusted because it's after the rostered start time (and there is no round down setting for start time)
- the clock out time will not be adjusted because it's before the rostered finish time (and there is no round up for finish time)
Clock in/out times outside the specified period will not be rounded at all.
Relationship between rounding rules and timesheets submitted via leave requests
When timesheets are created by the employee via their employee portal or by a payroll administrator/employee manager via the Timesheet Management screen, approved leave requests can be used to generate timesheets. You will be able to do this when you see the following option on the timesheet screen:
When timesheets are created in this manner, they will NOT be subject to the timesheet rounding rules. This is because part of generating the timesheet requires the user to add a start and finish time for the leave day(s) and as it is not time actually worked it should not be subject to any rounding.
Viewing 'actual' start and finish times
OK, now you've set up your rounding rules and they are working a treat in the pay run but there might be occasions when you wouldn't mind seeing your employees' actual clock in / out times. We've got that covered too.
- The start / finish times displayed on the Attendance Report are "actual".
- The Timesheet Report gives you the option to also view actual times by ticking the checkbox "Include actual times".