Time Registration Approval Fundamentals in Dynamics 365
Today’s blog post goes over Time and Attendance Registration approvals for Production in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain.
What is Time and Attendance Registration?
Workers can record time (clock in, start time, end time, and clock-out), attendance, feedback, and absences on production jobs. This allows companies to track labor costs, payroll activities, etc.
A side note … companies can also utilize this feature in Dynamics 365 for simply tracking their attendance unrelated to production (as in the time employees arrive and leave work).
Today we will go through a simple example to review the basic functionality. The business case we will be using today is a paper manufacturing company that produces containerboard and corrugated packaging. The company utilizes the Time and Attendance module in Dynamics 365. On the production floor, they have kiosk terminals installed where hourly team members report their time, attendance, absences and feedback (good & error quantities) on production orders. However, before the hours are finalized, the worker registrations can be formally calculated, approved, and transferred. The bottom line is the out of the box process can be setup for three layers of approvers through these three functions.
Using the example above, we will go through a day in the life of a Supervisor in Dynamics 365 before leaving for the day. The Supervisor will be known as “Chad”.
It’s the end of the shift and Chad is ready to approve his worker’s time and attendance registrations. Chad goes to Dynamics 365 and clicks on Time and attendance > Review and approve > Approve. The company has a policy that registrations must be approved before the supervisor leaves for the day/night, and this includes any required corrections.
Please note that the same functionality is also available in Dynamics AX 2012.
Dynamics 365 provides real time feedback from time registrations and clock in/out from an HR perspective. All workers are members of an approval group and this should preferably be grouped at a department or management level. For example, an approval group could be named “Assembly”, “Machining”, “Inspection”, and so on.
To approve registrations for all workers in an approval group, click Update > Approve All. If some lines are not calculated the calculation action is automatically performed.
To approve registrations for a single worker, click the Approved checkbox on the time registration journal line. If some lines are not calculated the calculation action is automatically performed.
After the Approved action is performed, Chad can filter out the journals with errors in them to by clicking Display errors in the top menu.
To reverse an approval, select the worker in the upper pane and clear the Approved checkbox. Approved registrations can be reversed until the payroll information has been exported to the payroll system.
If one made several corrections and need to restore the lines to the original values, delete all lines and then click Restore lines.
Time to Transfer
After time registration journals are approved, the next step is to transfer.
To transfer for one worker at a time, Chad can click the Transferred check box. If journals are not calculated or approved yet, these actions will be performed as well.
To transfer for all workers in the approval group, you can click Update > Transfer All in the top menu. If journals are not calculated or approved yet, these actions will be performed as well.
Note: Clicking the transfer check box (or the calculate or approval check box) after it has been checked will reverse the previous actions.
When a transfer is performed, the lines of the journal disappear from the form. To view the transferred registrations, click Inquiry > Transferred registrations in the top menu.
Time and Attendance registrations can also be enhanced through the use of workflows.