Making Corrections to Locked Timesheets
After a date has been locked on someone’s timesheet, it is no longer possible to make any changes to that person’s time entries for that day. Even the manager or substitute is not able to do this for locked dates. Dates are typically locked just before the invoices are generated, payroll reports are run, or before internal chargebacks are performed.
When it turns out that someone made a mistake and the dates with the incorrect time entries have already been locked, an administrator can still make the necessary corrections.
Exercise:
- Log in as howard.tanner@widget.com to the Widget International (directory) account. Go to the Analytics console and open the ‘Timesheets’ section.
- Select the organization Widget Europe, Information Technology
- Select the previous month
- Select the person, Jan King. His timesheet should be locked now for this month.
- Click on one of the dates for which you registered some time. Below the calendar, the locked time entries should be displayed.
- Click on one of these locked time entries to open it. You can immediately see that this time entry is locked because a padlock is presented in the top right corner and all field values are grey.
- Select the option ‘Make Correction’ at the bottom of the time entry.
After pressing this option, a special time entry is opened. By default, it is set to the same values as the incorrect time entry, except that the time spent value is negative and the date is set to the current date. It is possible to select a different date as long as this date is not locked. The time spent value can also be adjusted.
In the example above, when Howard Tanner saves the correction, a time entry will be created to subtract x hours . Typically these time entries are processed by an integration. According to the case description of this training an integration will most probably be setup with the payroll system. By registering this correction, the integration should trigger the payroll system to make a correction to the overtime that was incorrectly processed during last month.
This method of correcting time entries for dates that are already locked (i.e. for overtime that was already processed) ensures that the time entries for the locked dates do not change. Corrections can also be used to add time that someone forgot to register. Clicking on the minus sign turns it into a plus sign, which ensures that the correction adds time instead of subtracting it.
Question:
In the previous exercise Howard Tanner logged in to the directory account ‘Widget International’ and not to the support domain account ‘Widget Europe, Information Technology’ to lock the timesheets and to add corrections. However, the time entries of Jan King were probably registered when Jan was logged in to the support domain account. Why should you log in to the directory account to lock Jan’s timesheets and to add corrections to it?
Time entries are stored in the account of the organization of the user. Jan King belongs to the internal organization ‘Widget Europe, Information Technology’. That organization (in fact all internal organizations …) is defined in the directory account. This means that all the time entries of Jan King are stored in the directory account. When making corrections to time entries or creating an integration to get or update time entries you need to access the account in which the time entries are stored. For internal people this will be the directory account.
Can a specialist see the time entries registered by his colleagues?
Specialists who do not have the Administrator or Auditor role and who are not a manager or substitute manager for an organization can only see their own timesheets in the ‘Timesheets’ section of the Analytics console. On assignments (i.e. requests, problems, tasks and project tasks) a specialist can check the time spent by other specialists in the Time Entries section, but they are not able to see the cost related to the time spent. To see the cost of the time spent the Financial Manager role is required.
There are some reports available in 4me that allow a specialist to check the time spent for other specialists. But these time spent reports are disabled by default. It is up to each organization to decide whether to make this information transparent to its specialists.