Time Cards

To assist you with efficient billing, calculation of payroll, and estimation of project costs, MYOB Advanced provides the time card functionality. A time card is a weekly report on the time you have spent on each activity.

By using the Employee Time Card (EP305000) form, employees can enter new time cards or view, edit, or release existing time cards.

Enabling Time Cards

Time cards are available in MYOB Advanced only if the Advanced Financials check box is selected on the Enable/Disable Features (CS100000) form.

By default, employees are not required to fill in time cards. However, if time cards are mandatory in your company, you can make them required on a per-employee basis by selecting the Time Card is Required check box on the Employees (EP203000) form.

Time cards are always generated successively, which means that you cannot generate a successive time card for a particular week if no time card has been generated for the preceding week.

Note: Suppose that the latest time card was generated for an employee a considerable time ago, and now you want to resume the generation of time cards for this employee, but you do not need any time cards for the intervening time interval. To generate multiple empty time cards for the intervening time interval, you select the employee on the Employees (EP203000) form and then click Generate Time Cards on the More menu of the form.

Accessing Time Cards

If your username you are signed in with is associated with an employee—that is, the employee has the username specified in the Employee Login box on the General tab of the Employees (EP203000), on the Employee Time Card (EP305000) form, you can create, view, or adjust any of the following time cards:

  • Your time cards
  • Time cards of the employees for whom you are an appointed delegate
  • Time cards of the employees who report to you
  • Time cards of employees in the workgroups at lower levels in the company tree than your workgroup
Note: If you create a time card for an employee that differs from the one that associated with your username you are signed in with, this employee also must have a username specified in the Employee Login box on the General tab of the Employees form.

On the Approvals (EP503010) form, you can access the following time cards:

  • Those assigned to you
    Note: You will be able to approve or reject these time cards but you will not be able to open them on the Employee Time Card form.
  • Those assigned to other users in your workgroup
  • Those escalated from users in workgroups at a lower level in the company tree but in your workgroup's node
Note: For more information about the company tree, see Company Tree and Workgroups.

Processing Time Cards

As a rule, each time card passes through several stages, which might include preparation, approval, and release. The processing stage of a time card is indicated by its status.

Preparing Time Cards

When preparing a time card, an employee reports work time by creating separate detail records for the following types of activities:

  • Those associated with different projects or project tasks
  • Those related to different earning types
  • Those that are billable and those that are non-billable

Assigning Time Cards for Approval

Depending on the company policy, time cards may need to be approved by authorized employees before they can be released. The time card approval functionality is available if the Approval Workflow feature is enabled on the Enable/Disable Features (CS100000) form.

Time cards are assigned for approval automatically according to the assignment rules that are included in the assignment map, which you create on the Assignment and Approval Maps (EP205500) form. To apply these rules, you need to specify the created map as the time card approval map by using the Time and Expenses Preferences (EP101000) form; if no assignment map has been specified there or if a time card meets none of the specified map's conditions, the time card automatically becomes approved.

The system assigns a time card for approval when the time card is completed and the employee changes its status from On Hold to Open. For more information, see Managing Assignment and Approval Maps.

Approving Time Cards

A time card cannot be released until it has been approved (if approval is required). If you are an approver, you can approve time cards in bulk by using the Approvals (EP503010) form, or you can approve time cards one at a time by using the Employee Time Card (EP305000) form.

Note: If the Time Management feature is enabled on the Enable/Disable Features form, you cannot approve or release a time card unless all the activities included in the time card have been approved (if required). For more information, see Time Activities.

Using Corrective Time Cards

If a released time card does not reflect the actual time that the employee spent on activities during the week (for example, if the employee reported 40 hours instead of actual 45 hours), the employee can create a corrective time card by opening the released time card on the Employee Time Card (EP305000) form and clicking Correct on the More menu.

As a result, a new time card is created, with Correction specified in the Type box and with the reference number of the original time card in the Orig. Reg. Nbr. box. The data from the original time card is copied to this new time card. By using the Summary tab, the employee can adjust the data of the corrective time card as needed before submitting it for approval (if required). After that, the original time card, because it has been replaced by the corrective time card, is no longer listed on the Employee Time Cards (EP406000) inquiry form.

When the corrective time card is released, new transactions are generated for only the difference in the reported hours on this card as compared to the original time card.

A released corrective time card can also be corrected.

Note: You can correct equipment time cards in a similar way by using the Equipment Time Card (EP308000) form.

Combining Time Cards and Time Activities

In MYOB Advanced, an employee can report working hours by using time cards in combination with time activities. The reported data from a time activity instantly becomes available in one of the employee's time cards. On the Employee Time Card form, the employee can view details of all time activities associated with a particular time card.

A time card can be approved only if all the activities associated with the time card have been approved. When the time card is released, the associated activities are released automatically. An activity cannot be released on its own if it is associated with a time card.

A project transaction may be created during time card release if any of the activities included in the time card is associated with a project. (Alternatively, the same project transaction may be generated if the activity is associated with a billable case, and the case is billed directly to the customer before the time card is released. For details about direct case billing, see Managing Cases.) Such transactions can be used for tracking the project costs.

Using Equipment Time Cards

By using the Equipment Time Card (EP308000) form, employees can enter equipment time cards or update existing ones, which gives them the ability to report the time they spend using particular equipment. The processing of equipment time cards is similar to the processing of employee time cards, including the usage of corrective time cards.

Equipment time cards can be associated with specific projects and project tasks. Also, you can use the approval functionality to make sure that before they are released, equipment time cards are approved by the authorized approvers. You can specify the approval map for equipment time cards on the Time and Expenses Preferences (EP101000) form; however, if you have not specified the assignment map or if a time card meets none of the specified map's conditions, the time card automatically becomes approved.