General Q: To which employee groups will Employee Time Entry apply?

Transcription

1 General Q: To which employee groups will Employee Time Entry apply? A: All Trust and Operating Support Staff, both hourly and salaried, will be able to enter their time online. Smaller groups of hourly paid employees will also have access to enter time: Excluded and Casual Students (FT Student), Academic Hourly, ESL, etc. Vacation time tracking entry will be made available to all APOs, SOTS and Librarians; however vacation leave balances and banks will not be maintained for these groups. Q: Will Academic staff be asked to enter their time? A: No, Academic Staff will not be asked to enter their time. There are a small number of Academic Hourly employees that will have time entry available to them. Vacation time entry will be made available to all APOs, SOTS and Librarians; however vacation leave balances and banks will not be maintained for these groups. It will be at the discretion of the each Faculty/Department if this will be used or not. Q: Can Faculties/Departments opt out of having their staff enter time online? A: All Faculties/Departments are strongly encouraged to use the Time Entry functionality as it will streamline the time entry process and reduce overall administration time. Employee Time Entry will be available to all applicable staff, regardless of whether or not a particular Faculty/Department wishes to take advantage of its functionality. Faculties/Departments will need to manage internal business processes and communications accordingly. Q: What is a Time Manager? A: A Time Manager is a role defined within PeopleSoft that has access to run time-related reports. This role does not have access to enter, correct or approve time. The Time Manager role was designed to grant time reporting access to an employee who is not a Time Keeper or Approver. Employees identified as Time Keepers or Approvers will be granted access to all of the reporting tools available. February 1, 2016 Page 1

2 Entering Time Q: Will the system check the employee s leave balances to ensure they do not overtake their entitlements? A: The system will check the balances for Vacation, Casual Illness, and General Illness. While the system will not check individual balances for the different types of Special Leave (i.e. Moving Day, once per year), it will validate against the overall annual Special Leave limit (i.e., ten days). There will be additional discretionary leave transactions available for entry by Faculties / Departments that will not be tracked by leave balance. Where a check in place, the employee will receive an error message when the time is entered and the system will prevent the transaction from being submitted. The system will allow certain overages and entries in special situations: A new employee can enter sick time before their first pay cheque generates their sick balance January 1 to 15 th entries will be allowed until the annual leave balance refresh and rollover is completed Certain thresholds of negative balances apply to vacation plans. While these transactions will be allowed to be entered, it will result in exception errors until the balance exists. Q: Will Personal Leave Plan absences be managed through Employee Time Entry? A: No. PLP time taken will continue to be managed through internal business processes. Q: What are the deadlines for entering time? A: Hourly/Casual Support staff will enter their time semi-monthly, following a defined schedule. Salaried/Monthly Support staff will be encouraged to enter their absences every pay period, following the same defined schedule. Q: Who can override the chartfield combination code (Speed Code)? A: Employees override the default combination code, which the Approver can then approve, reject or update. An Approver or Time Keeper can also update transactions to override a combination code. NOTE: Speed codes will no longer being used. Chartfield combination codes will now be used. February 1, 2016 Page 2

3 Q: At what point during the current pay period can employees enter their time? A: Employees can enter their time at any point during the pay period. They can enter their time daily, if they wish. Q: Can time be entered outside the current pay period? Time can be entered outside the current pay period, based on the following: Time can be entered up to three months in advance by any role (Employee, Time Keeper or Approver). Employees can enter time for just over one month into the past (two semi-monthly pay periods plus the current period) Time Keepers/Approvers can enter time up to four months into the past Human Resource Services will be granted a larger window to enable administration tasks. Q: When an employee leaves the University, how can we ensure their final time worked or absences have been entered? A: As is the case today, this will need to be managed through internal business processes. Q: Will employees receive reminders to enter their time? A: Employees will not receive reminders from PeopleSoft. However, Faculties/Departments can implement a notification process outside of PeopleSoft. Q: Some Faculties/Departments use paper timesheets that include a check box for Salaried Employees to identify Nothing to Report? Is there a way for Salaried to set this up in PeopleSoft as well? A: No. Only exception time is entered for Salaried employees. If nothing is entered, it is assumed that there are no exceptions to report. If someone forgets to enter their exception time, they will have at least one full month to enter it. February 1, 2016 Page 3

4 Multiple Jobs Q: How will employees enter their time if they have a dual reporting relationship? A: If the employee has two or more Job records, they will enter their time for each job. Approval notifications will go to each of their Supervisors, as identified on their Job (or Position) record. If the employee has a single Job record, but has an informal reporting relationship with another Supervisor, approval notifications will only go to the Supervisor identified on their Job (or Position) record. Q: If a person has multiple jobs in different Faculties/Departments, can an Approver see time that was entered for all Jobs or only the one(s) in their Faculty/Department? A: Approvers will not be able to see the time an employee enters for jobs in other Faculties/Departments. This requirement will be addressed as part of additional reporting tools, to the extent possible, keeping in mind required access restrictions. Q: How will an approver avoid inadvertently approving overtime if an employee has multiple jobs? A: PeopleSoft will not automatically generate Overtime across multiple jobs; only time entered specifically as Overtime will be paid as Overtime by the system. Human Resource Services will continue to monitor employees with multiple jobs to address any overtime that should be paid. This requirement will be addressed as part of additional reporting tools to the extent possible, keeping in mind required access restrictions. Q: If an employee has multiple jobs, but not all of them require time to be entered, how will they know which job(s) to enter time against? A: This will be managed based on the properties of each Job. Only Jobs that are eligible to have time entered will be set up with the Time Workgroup that allows them to do so. If an employee does have multiple jobs that both require time to be entered, a selection box will be presented to them on the timesheet. Reviewing Time Entered Q: Can a Timekeeper correct an employee s time? A: Yes. NOTE: If a Time Keeper corrects the employee s time, it does not require a Supervisor s approval. February 1, 2016 Page 4

5 Q: Can a Supervisor correct an employee s time? A: Yes. NOTE: If a Supervisor corrects the employee s time, it does not require further approval. Approving Time Entered Q: Can approval of time be delegated from the employee s identified Supervisor to someone else? A: Yes. Q: For Research projects, can the Principal Investigator/Project Manager delegate time approvals? A: Approvals can be delegated to someone else, or time can be entered by a Time Keeper. Q: Will Time Keepers be included in the approval process within PeopleSoft? A: No. However, Time Keepers can review and, if necessary, correct the employee s time provided the Supervisor has not yet approved it. Q: Will Supervisors receive a reminder to approve time that has been entered? A: Human Resource Services will generate s to Approvers that have outstanding transactions according to the payroll schedule. The frequency of s will be determined as part of time entry cutoffs for payroll processing. Q: What is the difference between Deny and Push Back? February 1, 2016 Page 5

6 A: Deny - The system terminates the approval process. The originator of the time request (employee) receives a notification indicating that the time request has been denied. The transaction will not be processed by payroll and must either be deleted or updated by the employee. Denied transactions will never be removed or paid by the system. Push back - The originator (employee) of the time request receives a notification indicating that the time request needs their attention. The transaction will not be processed by payroll and must be updated by the employee. Q: What happens if the Approver denies the time entered? A: The system terminates the approval process. The originator of the time request (employee) receives a notification indicating that the time entered has been denied. The transaction will not be processed by payroll and must either be deleted or updated by the employee. Denied transactions will never be removed or paid by the system. Q: Regarding approvals, we have had issues with eform Approvers who attempt to provide their approval via a mobile device. Has this issued been addressed? A: The use of mobile devices for time approvals is not being implemented or supported at this time. Q: Bear Tracks currently shows the following message regarding the delay in leave balance updates: "The YTD values shown below are calculated from January 1 of the current year to the last pay period for which you have been paid and earned vacation. Your vacation balance includes all vacation carried forward, earned and taken up to the last pay period processed. The vacation year as defined in the NASA Agreement still remains as April 1 to March 31 and your entitlements under that agreement have not changed." Will this message be brought forward in the new version? A: Similar functionality and simplified messaging will exist in the new version. In addition, the bottom of the timesheet page will show the employee s current balance as of today, with a link to a more detailed leave display page that is similar to the current Bear Tracks balance page. Q: Will the Approver be able to make adjustments to the time as entered or will they be required to "Deny" or "Push Back"? A: Approvers can make adjustments without having to push back or deny the transaction. February 1, 2016 Page 6

7 Q: If the approver makes adjustments will the user be notified of the changes? A: The intent is to have these notifications for this situation; but only when the employee enters the original time that is being adjusted. Notifications to the employee would not occur if someone other than the employee entered the original time. February 1, 2016 Page 7