PeopleSoft 9.2 feature review - Timesheet sign-off message

A new feature in Time and Labor 9.2 is the ability to display a message to employees on submitting the timesheet. This can be utilised as a sign-off validation of the timesheet by the employee submitting the timesheet. This sign-off message is also printed in the output of the 'Print Timesheet' functionality.
Here is a screenshot of the message displayed to the employee on submitting the timesheet:

 

Where can this be configured?

This feature can be setup at the Workgroup setup component. The layout of the workgroup component has undergone a bit of change in 9.2. The relevant section where the Sign-Off message can be configured is shown below:

Here's more details on the functionality:

•  The 'Require Employee Sign-Off on Timesheet' checkbox can be used to display the sign-off message to the employee. If this checkbox is unselected, the sign-off message will not be displayed to the employee.
• Once the checkbox is selected, then the Message Catalog details that contain the text of the sign-off message will have to be given.
• The Signature Statement is a non-editable field and displays the detailed text of the message number entered.

Pointers on this functionality:

1. This message is also printed in the report produced by clicking on the 'Print Timesheet' link on the timesheet page.
2. This message is displayed only in ESS. If a manager/administrator submits time on behalf of the employee, this message will not be displayed.
3. Considering that this is intended to be a 'sign-off' message given to employees, I found it a bit strange that the message is displayed after the timesheet submission confirmation page is displayed. It would have been more appropriate if the sign-off message is shown prior to the final timesheet submission, so that employees have an opportunity to acknowledge the submission before the changes are saved in the system.

While we are staying on the workgroup setup page, I would also like to point out the new feature to control whether non-administrators can submit time on behalf of an employee. Notice the checkbox called 'Allow Others to Submit Time for Employee' in the screenshot. Unchecking this checkbox will prevent non-administrators from modifying the timesheet of the employee. This means that only employees and administrators can make changes to an employee's timesheet once this option is unchecked. Managers will still continue to have a read-only access to an employee's timesheet.

One theme that I am seeing in some of these changes in 9.2 Time and Labor -  is increasing time/wage hour compliance. Let it be the print timesheet functionality, timesheet sign-off feature or restricting non-administrators from modifying an employee's timesheet - they all add up to reducing the risk of time related litigations for an organisation. Should help the business case for a 9.2 upgrade!

PeopleSoft 9.2 feature review - Print Timesheet

The Timesheet page in 9.2 has got a significant facelift. A lot of very useful improvements like the ability to configure the sections/fields that should appear on the timesheet, control TRC display by role, Timesheet sign-off message, consolidated view of payable time, reported time and absences etc. have been introduced in 9.2. In this post, we want to take a look at the new option to save as PDF or print the timesheet.

From a compliance and operational perspective, this is an absolute requirement and has been achieved through customisations. In 9.2, the Time and Labor product team has delivered a 'Print Timesheet' functionality on the timesheet page. Shown below is an ESS Timesheet page from 9.2:

Clicking on the 'Print Timesheet' link on the page opens up a PDF file with details of punches for each day of the current timesheet as well as a summary of the total hours per day. A sample of the report generated from the punch timesheet is given below:

While it's excellent that Oracle has delivered this functionality out of the box, I can foresee possible improvements to this report:

a. It would be good to have an integrated report of both Elapsed and Punch time. We did some tests on the report where we reported both elapsed and punch time on the punch timesheet, for the same week and then printed the report from the punch timesheet. The report displayed only the punches in the expected fashion and the TRC reported was printed in the last column to the right of the report. For customers where a single employee uses both punch and elapsed time (this is a common scenario), I fear that the report may not give a complete and clear indication of the hours and codes reported.

b. For customers using Time and Labor and Absence Management, it would have been good to print hours from T&L and hours from Absence Management distinctly. In the current version, I see that the hours from T&L and AM are printed together and absence hours are not clearly identifiable on the report (absence hours are printed as normal elapsed time and has the formatting issue outlined in previous point).

c. A major flaw that I see with this report is that it prints whatever data entered (and not necessarily saved) in the timesheet page at the time of clicking the 'Print Timesheet' button and does not take final submitted data from the database. This means that an employee can 'fudge' the report if required, by just entering punches on the timesheet and printing the report before actually submitting the timesheet! If this report is used to sign-off time which has a financial or compliance implication, then this flaw in design will have to be addressed.

Some other remarks on this functionality:

1. You can control whether the 'Print Timesheet' link should appear in the Timesheet page or not in the Time Reporting template setup.

2. The above report is generated by the BI Publisher report - TL_PRNT_TMST. 

3. Need to verify whether this report is supported in non-English langauges.

Looking for more 9.2 feature reviews? Click here.

Have questions or want to discuss on this further?

We have a dedicated HR Tech lab researching the new features of 9.2 as well as developing innovative solutions utilising 9.2/8.53 features. If you want to discuss further on this new feature or on 9.2 in general, mail into jiju@hroiconsulting.com