Content
- Description
- Time tracking options
- Work hour balance calculation
- Work hour approval
- Workweek
- Activity types
- Holidays
Description
Advanced time tracking is a tool to help you manage work hours. It allows you to identify public holidays, create paid leave activities, close work hour entries, specify the work hour entry format, calculate work hour balances, approve work hours and define the workweek. The Activity management add-on is required in order to use with advanced time tracking add-on and it might cause extra costs to your company(depend on version of Visma Severa).
Time tracking options
After advanced time tracking add-on is activated time tracking settings need to be checked. Check employee work contracts, public holidays, activity types and also access right profiles. Note, when making settings you need to have administration access rights.
Close period
Define a work hour closing date to prevent employees from entering work hours to past dates. For example it is common to close the previous month allowing employees to enter work hours for current month only. If you also have travel reimbursement add-on, you can define a separate closing date for travel entries.
- Open Tools > Settings
- Select Time tracking options
- Enter a work hour entry closing date to close entries for this date and all prior dates. Note! The Travel entry closing date will override the work hour closing date for Travel expense entries
- Save settings
Work hour entry format
The work hour entry format allows you to decide how work hours are entered, either as the total number of hours or the start and end time.
- Total numbers of hour, f.e. 7.5 h or 7:30 (7 h 30 min)
- Start and end time, f.e. 8:00 - 15:30
By default, the total number of hours is selected but the format can be changed as necessary through
- Open Tools > Settings
- Select Time tracking options
- Define work hour entry format (The selected format is applicable for all entries by all employees on the work hour entry form and stopwatch.)
- Save settings
Work hour balance calculation
Work hour balance calculation starts after starting date is defined. If date is not entered the balance will not be calculated. Before calculation is started, make sure that employees has work contract entered. Calculation of the balance also takes into account public holidays, out of office -activities and overtimes if specified.
- Check employees work contracts. Note! If a new work contract is created, flextime calculation is reset to zero so on the first day of the contract flextime shows 0 hours. If an employee doesn't have a contract or the end date on the contract is in the past, the balance won't be calculated.
- Set work hour balance if needed
- Open Tools > Settings
- Select Time tracking options
- Enter the work hour calculation starting date to calculate the work hour balance from that date on for all employees.
- Define maximum work hour balance if needed. The maximum work hour balance is a limit on the number of positive work hours employees are allowed to accumulate. Once the maximum number of hours has been reached, additional hours entered are available for billing to the customer but aren't counted toward the employee's balance
- Save changes
- Recalculate work hour balance.
The balance and absences is displayed on the work hour entry page (New - Work hour).
Recalculate balance for all employees
Recalculate the work hour balance after making changes to settings or contracts that affect the work hour balance.
- Open Tools > Settings
- Select time tracking options
- Click Recalculate balance
- When work hour balance is calculated, you get information "Information has been updated" at the bottom of the page.
Recalculate balance for one user
Work hour balance is possible to recalculate for user basis through user management.
- Open Tools > User management
- Select user and open user information
- Open work contract -section
- Select Recalculate balance -button
Work hour approval
Enable work hour approval.
- Go to Tools - Settings
- Open Time tracking options
- Select work hour approval
- Not in use: Work hours that are invoiced become automatically approved
- Approval is required before hours can be invoiced: Work hours that doesn't have status "Approved" cannot be invoiced
- Approval is required, but work hours can be invoiced before they are approved: All billable hours, that have not been marked as "not approved", can be invoiced regardless of their approval status.
Editing of work hours when work hour approval is in use:
- If work hours haven't been approved and haven't been invoiced, work hours can be edited freely.
- If work hours have been approved, they can't be edited.
- If work hours have been invoiced but not approved, it is possible to edit the hours only on some parts:
- Description: Work hour description is editable, change doesn't affect invoice row if work hour is already invoiced
- Quantity or start and end time of hour entry are editable, change doesn't affect invoice row if work hour is already invoiced
Access rights to approve work hours
- Go to Tools > Settings
- Select Access rights profiles
- Add access rights for work hour approval. Note: Access rights can also be managed directly in user's details.
There are separate access rights for users who are managing users (such as supervisors or head of departments) and for users who are managing projects. Each access right is explained below. It is possible to give access right combinations of these, for example access rights to own employees and access rights to own cases.
Work hour approval
- None: No rights to work hour approval
- Own employees: View and approve work hours of own employees
- Self and own employees: View and approve own work hours and work hours of own employees
- Own unit: View and approve work hours of own unit's employees
- All: Rights to view and approve all work hours
Case owner work hour approval
- No rights: No ability to approve work hours of cases the user has case owner access to
- Own cases: Ability to approve work hours of all cases the user has case owner access to
Review and approve work hours
Work hours are approved using Work hour list -report or Work hour approval report. Reports can be accessed from various places:
- By clicking the linked number of work hours on case Overview -section
- Tools > Work hour approval (list)
- Tools > Work hour approval (grouped)
- Browse > Work hours last 30 days
- New > Report > Content: Work hour list
- New > Report > Content: Work hour approval
Work hour approval (grouped)
Work hour approval report shows number of hours and is used to approve quantity of hours rather than content. You are able to see the amount of not reviewed, approved, not approved and total hours with selected grouping. Grouping can be for example "Case, phase, person" or "Business unit (user), person".
Approval is done to the "Not reviewed" column only, other columns are only for reviewing purposes. Each column has a drill down option to work hour list -report in case there is a need to review the content of entries.
Notice that the report has a column on the left with a checkbox for results that are available for approval. Work hour approval is limited by access rights, and the hours of people belonging to other cases, teams or business units may or may not be available for your approval.
By default all checkboxes are marked and that means all not reviewed work hours on the page are selected. Click the checkbox at the top to deselect or reselect all not reviewed hours on the page. Or click the checkbox on a row to deselect or reselect not reviewed work hour entries on that row.
If you have selected multiple time frames, such as "Last week" and "This week", approval is done to both time frames, in case there are not reviewed hours for those periods.
To approve the hours, open the New status drop-down menu and select one of the following functions:
- For Approved, click Update and confirm the change on the pop-up.
- For Not approved, click to Notify person(s) by email if desired and enter a message. Then click Update and confirm the change on the pop-up.
Work hour approval (list)
Work hour list report is used to approve individual hour entries when there is a need to review the entry details. When approving using this report, you can change the report columns and filters to suite your needs to see for example description or price of hour entry. Editing of report is done by clicking "Show criteria".
Notice that the report has a column on the left with a checkbox for results that are available for approval. Work hour approval is limited by access rights, and the hours of people belonging to other cases, teams or business units may or may not be available for your approval.
By default all checkboxes are marked and that means all work hours on the page are selected. Click the checkbox at the top to deselect or reselect all work hours on the page. Or click the checkbox on a row to deselect or reselect individual work hour entries.
Selected work hours (limited to 20 entries as default) will be processed according to the action chosen below the report.
To approve the hours, open the New status drop-down menu and select one of the following functions:
- For Approved, click Update and confirm the change on the pop-up.
- For Not approved, click to Notify person(s) by email if desired and enter a message. Then click Update and confirm the change on the pop-up.
- For Not reviewed, click Update and confirm the change on the pop-up.
Workweek
The workweek is simply a way to indicate which days of the week are considered regular workdays at your company.
- Select Tools > Settings
- Open Time tracking options
- Click to select or deselect days as necessary.
- At the bottom of the page, click save
- Recalculate the balance.
Activity types
When advanced time tracking is activated, it's possible to mark activity types as Paid leave. Time attributed to a paid leave activity, such as sick leave or vacation, is automatically considered in the work hour balance and need not be added through work hour entries. And, a summation of time spent on paid leave activities is included in the work hour summary report.
- Select Tools > Settings
- Open activity types
- Click to edit an activity and click to mark the paid leave checkbox.
- Save changes
- Recalculate the balance
Holidays
Holidays are days when employees aren't expected to work. Usually, holidays are nationally recognized, paid days off for all employees. However holidays can also be company specific.
Holidays are used for calculating flextime of employees and they are visible in the mini calendar on work hours page. Holidays can be entered for various countries and for the period of many years.
Did you find it helpful? Yes No
Send feedback