Available for the following payroll plan: Free Payroll, Core Payroll
Available for the following user access levels: Admin
If your employees are clocking in and out via the WorkZone app or Clock Me In app (downloadable for iPad users on Apple's App Store), it is unlikely they can clock in and out at exactly the right time every day. If this is the case, then their actual start and stop times are probably producing untidy timesheets (for example, 7hrs 58mins).
If you want to pay for standard hours, for example, an eight hour day, but you also want your employees to clock in and out, then you can utilise the Timesheet Rounding feature. Rounding up or down refers to movement on the clock, i.e., if you round up, you are moving the start and end time forward on the clock, or if you round down; you are moving the start or end time backwards on the clock.
Important
The timesheet rounding feature only works when an employee uses the payroll platform WorkZone or Clock-Me In apps to submit their time worked and therefore, does not flow through to your HR platform. This means that, for any employee timesheets submitted via the HR platform, the rounding settings you select using this feature will not apply to their timesheet submissions.
Getting started
The below premise will walk you through how to configure your timesheet rounding settings.
- Log into your Employment Hero platform.
- Click the Business Settings menu.
- Click the Payroll Settings submenu.
- Click the Timesheet Rounding button.
- Complete the following fields in the Shift section:
- Start time.
- End time.
- Complete the following fields in the Breaks section:
- Start time.
- End time.
- Complete the following fields in the Rotated Shifts section:
- Round up to rota start time within x minutes.
- Round down to rota start time within x minutes.
- Round up to rota end time within x minutes.
- Round down to rota end time within x minutes.
- Click the Save button.
Further information
The Shift Rounding section is where you can set in place rounding rules that will apply to any timesheet, no matter how you create the entry:
- Your employee could be clocking in and out via Clock Me In; or
- Your employee could be logging into the Employee Self Service Portal to create and submit their timesheets; or
- The payroll administrator or employee manager could be creating timesheets for the employee.
You will notice that there are rounding settings available for both the shift start/end and break start/end. Both fields have identical settings that consist of the following options:
- Do not Round: No rounding applies
-
Round Up: To round up to the nearest x minutes. For example, any timesheet created with a start time between:
- 9.01am to 9.14am: Start time adjusts to 9.15am.
- 9.16am to 9.29am: Start time adjusts to 9.30am.
- 9.31am to 9.44am: Start time adjusts to 9.45am.
- 9.46am to 9.59am: Start time adjusts to 10.00am.
-
Round Down: To round down to the nearest x minutes. Using the example setting below, this would result in any timesheet created with a start time between:
- 9.01am to 9.09am: Start time adjusts to 9.00am.
- 9.11am to 9.19am: Start time adjusts to 9.10am.
- 9.21am to 9.29am: Start time adjusts to 9.20am.
- 9.31am to 9.39am: Start time adjusts to 9.30am.
This section offers you the option to adjust the start and end times of a timesheet created via clock in/out, be that on the WorkZone app or Clock Me In, to match the rota shift/end time. If you do not use the rota feature then this section is not relevant to you.
If you choose to round up, then any clock-on times within the threshold period entered will be rounded up/forward to the rota shift time and you will reduce the employee's actual time worked. The opposite is the case with finish times, rounding up adds to the employee's actual time worked.
If you set your start time to round down, then any clock on times within the threshold period entered will round down/backward to the rota shift time and you will be increasing the employee's actual time worked. The opposite is the case with finish times; rounding down reduces the employee's actual worked time. Here are some examples that explain:
If an employee's rota shift was set to start at 8.30am:
- If you choose to round up within 30 minutes; this setting will result in any clock in event between 8am and 8.29am on that day to have an adjusted timesheet start time of 8.30am.
- If you choose to round down within 30 minutes, this setting will result in any clock in event between 8.31am and 9am on that day to have an adjusted timesheet start time of 8.30am.
If an employee's rota shift was set to end at 4.30pm:
- If you choose to round up within 30 minutes, this setting will result in any clock-out event between 4pm and 4.29pm on that day to have an adjusted timesheet end time of 4.30pm.
- If you choose to round down within 30 minutes, this setting would result in any clock-out event between 4.31pm and 5pm on that day to have an adjusted timesheet end time of 4.30pm
When you create a timesheet via the employee portal or via the Timesheet Management page, you can use approved leave requests to generate a timesheet. When you create timesheets in this manner, they will not be subject to the timesheet rounding rules. The reason for this is part of the process of generating the timesheet requires the user to add a start and finish time for the leave days and as it is not time worked it should not be subject to any rounding.