Setup Attendance and Time Calculation Rules

Attendance Configuration allows users to create attendance rules to capture daily attendance of employees, calculate their regular work hours, overtime, under-time, weekend and holiday work, and perform shift based calculations.

The working hours of employees are typically linked with payroll. As per the company’s policy, employees are paid extra for overtime and deductions are made for under-time. Empxtrack automatically pulls employee data data during a payroll run and saves time and effort.

Watch this video to see how basic attendance rules are setup in Empxtrack free offering products.

Note: The steps mentioned below are for Empxtrack Enterprise product.

To setup attendance rule, you need to:

1.  Log into the system as HR Manager/ HR Admin.

2.  On the Homepage, click Product configurations tab. Under Self and Manager services section, click on the Attendance configuration link as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1

The Attendance Configuration: Manual settings page appears as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2  

There are four options available for attendance configuration:

  • Manual Settings: Allows users to mark the attendance manually.
  • File Upload Settings: Allows users to upload the attendance using a file.
  • Regularization Settings: Allows users to regularize attendance.
  • Specify Calculation Rule: Allows users to specify attendance calculation rules.

Manual Settings

To select the desired manual attendanc settings, you need to:

1.   Specify one of the given attendance capture modes (refer to Figure 2).

The available options are:

  • In-Out with breaks: Select this option to allow marking of In Out times including break times to the employees.
  • Mark Present: Select this option to allow marking of only present status to the employees.
  • Mark In-Out: Select this option to allow marking of In Out times to the employees.
  • Biometrics only: Select this option to integrate attendance through Biometric attendance machine only.

 

2.  Click Update Values

The manual settings that you have configured are saved successfully and a message suggesting the same appears, as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3

 File Upload Settings

The File Upload Settings page allows direct attendance upload of all employees in the system . This functionality is especially useful in situations when you integrate the Empxtrack system with any external attendance marking system such as punch card or biometric machines. In that case the data from the external system can be uploaded in the system through this functionality.

To upload attendance, you need to:

1.  Click File Upload Settings link. The page appears as shown in Figure 4.

2.  Select the fields that you want to upload in the file from File Format dropdown. The available options are:

  • Employee Identifier, Date, In-time, Out-time, Status (optional): This option allows you to capture Employee ID, Date, In-time, Out-time and optionally the Status of the employee attendance in separate columns. The Status options for the attendance can be configured in the system at the time of configuring shifts through Specify Calculation Rule tab. You can have different attendance statuses for half day, worked on weekend, and worked on holiday etc.
  • Employee Identifier, In-time, Out-time, Status (optional): This option allows you to capture all the fields except date in separate columns. The date is however captured automatically in the selected format with the In-time and Out-time fields.
  • Employee Identifier, Date, Time, Status (optional): This option allows you to capture all the fields except In- time and Out-time in separate columns. The Time field captures both the in-time and the out-time in the selected format.
  • Employee Identifier, Time, Status (optional): This option allows you to capture only the Employee ID and the status in separate columns.  The In-Time, Out-time, and the Date fields are shown in the Time column.

Figure 4

3.  Select the field separator to be used in the upload file from Field separator in file dropdown.

The file upload functionality allows you to upload the attendance of employees through a CSV (comma-separated values/ character Separated Values) file, which can be opened in MS Excel. A CSV file stores tabular data in plain text format. The data is separated with a field separator.

The Attendance upload functionality allows you to upload / download the attendance data with the selected field separator for the CSV file. The  functionality also allows you to download the file format in which you need to upload the attendance data in Empxtrack. The download file would use the separator you will select through this option. Later you can use the same file to add data and then upload the data.

As you will be opening the CSV file in MS Excel or any other spreadsheet application, there would be no errors in uploading data even if spaces are inserted before or after the field separator. To know more about opening CSV files, click here.

4.  Select the date and time format to be used from Date Column Format and Time Column Format fields respectively.

5. Select the options given in the dropdown for all the fields.

If you have chosen the File format that does not use separate columns for each field then you need not select any column for the missing field. For example, if you choose Employee Identifier, In-time, Out-time, Status (optional) option from File format dropdown, then you should not map any column to the Date field, which is missing from the option. The date field will automatically be merged with time fields.

Also, by default, the fields appear in their respective column positions. However, if for some reason you have changed the column positions then you need to map the fields with their actual column numbers. For example, the Employee Identifier is the first field by default and therefore it needs to be mapped with 1st column.

However, if your company puts Employee identifier on the 2nd position because you are using Serial number in your company as the first field. Then, in such a scenario, you need to map the Employee identifier to the 2nd column.

This option provides a flexibility to use different attendance formats used by companies to upload data in Empxtrack system without much difficulty by just mapping the desired fields with the correct column positions.

6.  Click Update Values. The configurations are saved successfully.

Regularization Settings

The attendance regularization settings configure rules to regularize missing or incorrect attendance. To configure attendance regularization settings, you need to:

1.  Click Regularization Settings link, as shown in Figure 4.

2.  Select Attendance regularization workflow for all the roles. Click on Edit icon to select a suitable workflow for a specific role as shown in Figure 5. Click Add to add new roles.

Figure 5

You can also specify Attendance regularization workflow for Special cases if required. Click on Add to add a special case in the system, as shown in Figure 6.

3.  Select the time period after which the attendance cannot be regularized from Can not be regularized after field. Select Payroll option if attendance can not be regularized after the payroll is processed, select Month or Day option, if attendance cannot be regularized after the current month or after a specified number of days.

4.  Specify the number of hours for which attendance regularization is allowed in the Maximum hours of a day field.

5.  Select Yes from Calculate overtime field if you want to calculate overtime of employees. Else select No.

6.  Select an option for Applicability for All employees or a specific Group of employees.

7.  Click Update Values.

 

Figure 6

 

Specify Calculation Rules

The Specify Calculation Rules functionality allows you to configure default work hours for default shift or create a new shift rule. In both the cases, you can follow the same steps to configure time calculation rules.

To create/modify default shift, you need to:

1.  Click More and then click Specify Calculation Rules link, as shown in Figure 2.

2.  Select the Default rule that you want to configure from Rules dropdown or click Add New Rule to create a new rule.

The shift mapped to the rule appears in the Mapped Shifts field, as shown in Figure 7. To view how to assign shift, go to step 16.

3.   Specify the relaxation time before the shift and after the shift in their respective boxes in the An employee is in their shift if they come before _minutes of shift start time and_minutes after shift start time field.

4.   Specify the Early In time before the shift and after the shift in their respective boxes in the An employee would be considered for early IN if they come before _minutes of shift start time and_minutes after shift start time field.

5.   Specify the Early Out time before the shift and after the shift in their respective boxes in the An employee would be considered for early OUT if they leave before _ minutes of shift end time and_ minutes after shift end time field.

 Figure 7

6.   Select Yes from Consider breaks for time calculation field if you want to consider the breaks taken by employees for calculating effective working hours of employees, as shown in Figure 8.

7.   Specify the number of breaks in the Reduce breaks beyond field, if you want to limit users to specified breaks. After the specified number of breaks the break time would be deducted from the working hours of the employees.

8.   Specify the break time in the Reduce breaks if break time beyond field, if you want to limit the break time of users to the specified amount of time. After the specified amount of time, the break time would be deducted from the working hours of the employees.

9.   Specify the total allowed break time in the Reduce breaks if total break time beyond field, if you want to limit the total break time of users to the specified amount of time. After the specified amount of time, the break time would be deducted from the working hours of the employees.

10.  Specify the full day present status code in the Status code for full day present field.

11.  Specify the less than shift hours status code in the Status code if an employee works less than shift hours field.

12.  Specify the greater than shift hours status code in the Status code if an employee works greater than shift hours field.

 Figure 8

13.   Select Default rule[HoursWorked/ShiftHours] option from the Calculation rule field if you want to use the default rule for the working hours.

Else, if you want to define custom range for under time calculation of the shift then select Time Range option and then specify the range of hours in From and To columns and the related percentage day worked for each range defined in %age day worked field.

For example, if you want to define < 2 hours worked to be considered as zero percentage worked then write 0 in From field 2 in To field and write 0 in %age day worked field. similarly define each range to be considered, as shown in Figure 9.

Figure 9

14.   Define Over Time Calculation Rule, Weekend Calculation Rule and Holiday Calculation Rule as shown in Figure 10.

The Over Time Calculation Rule defines the percentage of overtime an employee worked, the Weekend Calculation Rule defines the percentage of time an employee worked on weekend and Holiday Calculation Rule defines percentage of time an employee worked on a holiday.

 Figure 10

15. Define Leave day Calculation Rule. The rule defines the percentage of days an employee worked in a month, as shown in Figure 11.

Note: Some companies credit leave on the basis of his/ her previous month’s working days. The percentage of days worked in a month may be required to credit next month’s leave into employees’ account.

For example, if the employee has worked for 100% days then 1 leave would be credited to his/ her account. And if he/she has worked for 50% days then 0.5 days will be credited to his/ her account. If the employee has worked for  less than 50% days then no leave will be credited to his/ her account for the next month.

Figure 11

16.  Click Assign Shift to assign a shift to the rule, as shown in Figure 12.

Figure 12

 

The Assign Shift To Rule window appears, as shown in Figure 13.
17. Select the shift that you want to assign to the rule from Select Shift to assigne dropdown.

18. Click Assign Shift.

Figure 13

The shift is successfully assigned and appears in Mapped Shifts field, as shown in Figure 14.

 Figure 14

19.  Click Update Values button if you are modifying the default rule or click Save if you are creating a new calculation rule.

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