There are four primary App categories. Each serves a particular purpose.

  • Time Entry
  • Absence Management
  • Schedule
  • Messaging

Each of the four categories has several Apps in its group. Each App is tailored towards solving particular workforce management situation.

Time Entry Apps include Time Clock, Crew Clock and Time Sheet. Time Clock works just like a regular clock. If you're using time sheets and want to collect detailed labor data, the Time Sheet App will enable you to automate this area. Lastly, due to variations in how organizations handle crews, there are three Crew Clock Apps.

Absence Reporting can be used to improve manufacturing production line productivity or enable your organization to better meet organized labor rules and regulations.

Scheduling functionality is both embedded within two primary Apps; Time Clock and Messaging, and also takes the form of a primary App itself, focused on Schedule tasks.

Finally, Messaging Apps enable your organization to interact with employees when they are using other Apps such as Time Clock, as well as on it's own such as for dynamic scheduling.

Time & Attendance Application Capabilities

Please note, certain Telliris features may not be supported by all time & attendance applications.


TIME ENTRY:

Time entry is sometimes called “"time collection"” or "“time & labor entry"”. Time entry has three application subcategories:

  • Time Clock
  • Time Sheet
  • Crew Clock


Time Clock:

This method acts like a punch clock. Transactions are received by the time & attendance system in the same way as those from traditional wall mounted time clocks and web time clocks. Time entry can be mixed such as clock-in / clock-out using a traditional clock and meal-start / meal-end “"on the go"” using Telliris while mobile.

This form of time collection is especially well suited for employees who work in different locations, outside their employer’s building, or in remote locations. Examples are service technicians, construction workers, health personnel, and retail employees working in kiosks.

Minimal or no training is needed. Employees follow prompts which request they enter their ID, clock code (such as by pressing “"1"” to "“clock-in"”), and labor data (if you want to collect cost center, position, location, job, department, etc.)

Time entry from start to end typically takes 30 seconds to 1 minute.


Time Sheet:

This method is less common than the time clock method. Organizations find it useful if they’'re required to post time to projects, jobs, and accounts for regulatory reasons, they desire to improve labor based billing, or want to improve productivity via workforce optimization.

Employees either enter their time at the end of each work day or at the end of each work week. Most often, they enter elapsed time along with several labor data elements such as project, job, and task. Macros can be assigned enabling employees to enter a “"quick code"” which expands to a combination of labor data elements. They repeat the time and labor data entry process for the various tasks performed during the day or week. All entries are 100% validated during entry. After they'’re done, they can review their entries and revise them if necessary.

To enable an organization to improve labor based billing, two data connections can be formed, one for payroll and a second for client accounting.

Organizations that have employees work on job sites, such as construction can get daily visibility on their workforce. With this visibility, employees can be reassigned from sites that are ahead of schedule to sites that are behind schedule.


Crew Clock:

This application has several forms, two that are used by supervisors and one used by a group of employees.

The applications for supervisors are similar to one another and primarily differ in how the supervisor selects each employee for time entry. One version presents the name of each person and the supervisor marks them as present or absent. This alleviates the supervisor from having to enter the ID of each employee. It requires the text to speech option which creates computer synthesized audio for each employee name. When an employee is marked absent, the application can be configured to request the supervisor provide additional information which can be used in the time & attendance systems “"attendance points"” module. The other form of the application necessitates the supervisor enter the ID for each member in their crew.

The application for groups of employees is a variation of the standard time clock application. It “"loops back"” to enable another employee to perform time entry. One employee starts the process, enters their time, and passes the phone to the next employee who enters their ID and clocks-in, the process repeats for each member in the group.


TIME ENTRY FEATURES:

Although it’'s not initially obvious, there are quite a few aspects and several forms of time entry.

Time Stamp vs. Employee Entry

Time entry can utilize a "“time stamp"” that is not alterable by the employee, similar to a punch clock, or it can prompt the employee to enter their time.

Most often, the time stamp method is used, which records time in the employee’'s local time, taking into account their time zone and observance of daylight saving time.

The scenario where the employee enters the time themselves is known as “"after the fact"” time collection. Often they enter it as elapsed time, such as 6 hours and 30 minutes. Elapsed time can be configured so it is entered in decimal format or clock format. For example 08.50 hours in decimal format or 8 hours 30 minutes in clock format. It can also be entered as start and end time, such as start at 7:30 AM and end at 11:00 AM. After the fact time entry almost always includes the entry of labor data such as job code, location, and so forth.

Labor Data Entry

Time entry may optionally include labor data such as department, job, cost center, position, docket, etc. Labor data is almost always validated upon entry by the employee to ensure the time & attendance system only receives transactions with legitimate data.

Time Entry for Meals and Breaks

The time stamp scenario always includes clock-in and clock-out. It may also include meal-start and meal-end as well as break-start and break-end.

Schedule Enforcement

Clock-in may be restricted and disallow an employee shift start if it’s excessively early. When used, an employee may only clock-in within a specified period such as "no earlier than 6 minutes from shift start).

Certain states mandate employees take a minimum break, such as 30 minutes. In this scenario, schedule enforcement can ensure the return from break does not occur if less than the minimum time.

Presentation of Previous Punch

The Time Clock App can present the previous time punch upon employee login. In this way, employees can be “"tipped off"” if their previous punch is missing.


ABSENCE MANAGEMENT:

Absence Management has two application subcategories:

  • Absence, Late Arrival, Early Departure Reporting
  • Time-off Request

It’'s important to understand the difference between absence and time-off request. An employee who calls in absent cannot work due to an unforeseen situation like illness or bereavement. Their request is automatically granted. Time-off request, on the other hand, is arranged weeks or months in advance. Both form the very beginning of the absence management workflow process.


Absence, Late Arrival, Early Departure

The simplest form consists of two main categories; absence and late. Upon login, an employee selects "“Absent”" or "“Late"” and their transaction is complete.

Each main category can include sub categories such as Bereavement, Car Trouble, Family Illness, FMLA, Injury, Personal, and Sick.

Date, time, expected time of arrival, and expected time of departure can be requested enabling employees to submit notification for a single or multiple days and indicate when they will arrive or depart. The time can be expressed in hours / minutes or a specific time of day (i.e. 1 1/2 hours late vs. arrive at 9:00 AM).

Upon completing entry, the employee can be presented with the proposed transaction for review along with an advisory message, such as a requesting they meet with their supervisor upon return to work. Lastly, they can be provided with a confirmation number as proof they properly reported their absence.

Organizations with multiple locations often have different rules governing absence. Often the difference is due to bargaining agreements, rules specific to each region, and employee groups. Upon login, the appropriate rules are determined and the transaction handled accordingly, including subtle aspects such as advisory messages.


Time-off Request

Time-off Request is commonly used in conjunction with time entry since mobile, field, and remote employees often cannot access web based employee self-service (ESS).

Most often accrued benefits balance information is provided as a preamble to time-off request. Upon entry of beginning and end date, a transaction is generated for review by the employee’'s supervisor.

Approval or denial of the request can be sent via the messaging method that is most appropriate for the employees working environment. If mobile messaging is best, then Telliris messaging can be used to inform the employee.


Unified Applications

If desirable, organizations can use a unified application for both absence and time-off request. The request can restrict the date range entry to a predefined maximum number of days in the future or past. Advisory messages can be presented to guide the employee in their request.


SCHEDULE:

Schedule has two application subcategories:

  • Upcoming Shift Review
  • Review of Past Hours Worked


Upcoming Shift Review

This application presents the start date / time and the end date / time for the employee’s next shift along with information such as department and job.

Several shifts in the future are typically presented such as the next shift, the shift after, and the shift after that. Most often the start date is the same as the end date. If the start date and end date are the same, the date is not repeated for shift end.

The information presented such as department and job are parallel to time entry. If an employee provides department and job information during time entry they often are presented with this information during upcoming shift review.


Review of Past Hours Worked

The information can be presented either as the number of hours / minutes worked or as clock-in and clock-out time stamp. Review of past hours worked can be for a single day or for the previous pay period.

If hours worked is in several categories, they are all presented including relevant information such as pay code.


MESSAGING:

There are two messaging directions:

  • Outbound
  • Inbound

When an employee receives a message as part of their normal work, such as during time entry, messaging is said to be "“inbound"”. When time & attendance automatically initiates sending a message to the employee, messaging is said to be “"outbound”".


Outbound Messaging

Outbound Messaging enables an organization to contact employees via outbound calls which deliver and optionally collect information.

The dialog can range from simple, such as a single informational message, to comprehensive where the employee contacted is presented with recipient-specific information and is requested to answer a series of questions.

The most common form of messaging is used for inviting employees to work an upcoming shift (dynamic scheduling). It is also commonly used for dispersing important company information and sending reminders.

The most minimalistic scenario is where all recipients receive the same message and are not expected to respond.

At the other end of the spectrum, the dialog requests the employee identify themselves, they receive information that is specific to them including information such as a date, time, name of a location, work type description, etc., and they are required to answer a series of questions acknowledging they understood the message.


Inbound Messaging

This form of messaging is often complementary to one or more of the other “"mobile enabling"” applications.

Time-off Request is often paired with inbound messaging. Employees are informed their request was approved or denied when they login to the system to clock-in / clock-out. Messaging is said to be one-on-one when used in this way.

Organizations can inform their employee population of important information upon login by deploying a system wide message. An example use is to inform the workforce of a plant closure such as for bad weather.

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