Saturday, September 24, 2016

PeopleSoft Time and Labor Setup Architecture

Lets first have a look at this image:


Time and Labor Setup, Time and Labor Architecture

The image shows how all the elements in Time and Labor setup are related.

Holiday Schedule

They contain the calendar for public holidays which can be defined for a country, region within the country or at business unit level etc... It’s a very vital element because when the time is reported for a period through the timesheet page, system must know if there is any public holiday in that period.

Related Articles:
How COBRA Act works in USRecruitment Process Life Cycle

Work Schedule

This represents the working pattern of employees for example an employee’s work patter could be any of these:

  1. Monday to Friday 8 hours each day with Saturday and Sunday weekly offs
  2. Monday to Wednesday 8 hours each day, Thursday to Friday 10 hours each with Saturday and Sunday weekly offs
  3. Tuesday to Saturday 4 hours each day with Sunday and Monday weekly offs

Having work pattern details in Time and Labour is very important because according to this only employees will report their time.  Work Schedules are grouped together to form Schedule Groups.

Time Period

It’s the date range for which employees will report their time for example Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Bi-Weekly etc...

Time Reporting Code(TRC)

These are used to just track employee’s time for administrative or compensation needs. 
For example:
We can define a TRC as REGLR for reporting regular weekly time
We can define a TRC as PAIDLV for reporting paid leave
We can define a TRC as OVRTME for reporting over time.

For instance, if an employee who is supposed to work 40 hours a week, works for 35 hours in which 3 hours of overtime on Friday is included and takes 1 leave then this is how the time will be reported against corresponding TRCs:

Mon  Tue  Wed  Thu  Fri   Sat  Sun   TRC
 8     8      8      8                         REGLR
                              8               PAIDLV
                           3                  OVRTME


Similar TRCs are grouped together to form TRC Program.

Compensatory Time Plan

These are used to administer compensatory time for employees. The system maintains
each instance of a time reporter's earned compensatory time and the quantity and date earned.
Example:
Employee works on two holidays falling in a time period and on Saturday so when they report time for that period, this is how they would do (Here COMPH and COMPW are the TRCs defined for Comp Time):

Mon  Tue  Wed  Thu  Fri   Sat  Sun   TRC
 8       8     8                                 REGLR
                       8     8                 COMPH
                                   8           COMPW

Since, employee isn’t supposed to work on holidays or weekly offs but even then they worked in this period, the hours worked in these days get added as Compensation Earnings. So now employees can avail these earned hours just as paid leaves.

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How COBRA Act works in USRecruitment Process Life Cycle

Workgroup

Similar to Paygroup in Payroll module.  All the employees in a workgroup share identical compensation requirement. All the previous elements are mapped to the workgroup.
All the workgroup members share:

  • Same reporting type: exception or positive
  • Same holiday schedule
  • Same TRC program
  • Same compensation rules
  • Same needs for time approval
  • Same association to a comp. Off plan
  • Same day breaker
  • Similar rounding rules

Taskgroup

A taskgroup is a group of employees who have similar work or task – reporting requirements
Taskgroups identify the default time reporting template, task template, and task profiles that are valid for members of the taskgroup.
Some organizations refer to taskgroups as labor classes or labor class rate groups.
Task: attributes of reported time such as department, product or project – that defines how or where time was spent
Task template you specify which task entities you want members of a taskgroup to report their time to (i.E. Company , department , project)
Task profile “fill in the blanks “ for a task template. If used, a time reporter task related fields will be completed automatically with the values in the task profile

Time Collection Devices(TCD)

Used to collect and report the time that is recorded through a third party time clock tool. TCD interface provides packaged integration points to:
  • Collect clock and elapsed time from any TCD
  • Send necessary setup data to these devices for reporting
System supports scheduling, reporting, managing and applying rules to TCD time. You can create a separate group for TCD time reporters
How COBRA Act works in US Recruitment Process Life Cycle

Wednesday, September 7, 2016

How the Time is Processed in PeopleSoft Time and Labor

There are different stages in the time processing right from the stage when the time is reported till the stage when the time is ready to be picked up by payroll. Lets discuss those stages in the same sequence the time goes through when its processed.

Stage 1 - Time Reporting

This is the stage where employees report their time based on the work schedule assigned to them. There are broadly two ways to report the time:

Online

The time is directly entered into Time and Labor system through online pages and it can be done by one of the following ways:


Timesheet page for employees (ESS  – Time Reporting – Report Time – Timesheet)
Used by employees to report their time for a particular period.

Mass Time page for employees (ESS  – Time Reporting – Report Time – Mass Time)
Used by employees to report their time for a date range and can include multiple periods.

Timesheet page for managers (MSS – Time Management – Report Time – Timesheet)
Used by managers to report time for their direct reports for a particular period.

Mass Time page for managers (MSS – Time Management – Report Time – Mass Time)
Used by managers to report time for their direct reports for a date range and can include multiple periods.

Rapid Time page for Time Admins (Time and Labor – Report Time – Rapid Time)
Used by administrators to quickly report time for group of employees. No up-front validations are done when the time is submitted here and rules are applied during the time admin process run.

Using Time Collection Devices (TCDs)

In many organizations, employees have to punch in/out to record the working hours based on which they are paid. The difference between Punch In time and Punch Out time is then sent to PeopleSoft Time and Labor through interface file which is then captured in PeopleSoft by TCDs (Time Collection Devices)

Stage 2 - Reported Time

Time reported through either of the methods is called reported time and is brought in the table TL_RPTD_TIME where it awaits for approval if the approval is setup to be required which is optional though. There are three possibilities if approval is required:

Manager approves the time

Once approved, the time is now considered as final reported time. 

Manager pushed it back

The time is sent back to employee for correction and to submit back again. 

Manager denies the time

If it’s denied then employee can’t take any further actions on this time but manager can still make corrections individually and submit back again for approval which has to be approved by N+2 and then the Time Admin process TL_TIMEADMIN will pick it up again. After that it will be converted into Payable time which again has to be approved by N+2.

After approval, its fully considered the reported time and stays in the table TL_RPRTD_TIME with Reported Time status as ‘Approved’ and its ready for being processed by Time Admin process.



Stage 3 - Processing the Reported Time(Time Administration)


In this stage we run the approved reported time lying in the table TL_RPTD_TIME table using the time admin process TL_TIMEADMIN (Navigation: Time and Labour –  Process Time – Request Time Administration).
On a very high level, following tasks are performed in this stage:

1) Time admin process TL_TIMEADMIN collects eligible employees based on the Group ID supplied in run control page.

2) It picks the reported time for all those employees, process the time based on the rules defined and generate exceptions for issues. The exceptions have to be addressed and the process should be run again.
3) Finally, this process generates payable time which is brought in to the table TL_PAYABLE_TIME.
4) All the exceptions generated in this step are stored in the table TL_EXCEPTION.


Stage 4 - Payable Time


The payable time generated in the previous step and lying on the table TL_PAYABLE_TIME awaits for approval if the approval is setup to be required which is optional though. There are three possibilities if approval is required:


Manager approves the time

Once approved, the time is now considered as final payable time and is ready to be sent to payroll.

Manager pushed it back

The time is sent back to employee or originator for correction and submit back again in which case the time will have to go through all the stages again.

Manager denies the time

If it’s denied then employee can’t take any further actions on this time but manager can still make corrections individually and submit back again for approval. Even in this case, when the time is submitted again, it will be treated as reported time which has to be approved by N+2 and then the Time Admin process TL_TIMEADMIN will pick it up again. After that it will be converted into Payable time again which again has to be approved by N+2. 





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