Managersoften ask whythey can’t immediately approve time after an employee enters it in HR Direct. If you are a manager and want to know more, please continue reading.

The short answer is a process called Time Administration.

Before a manager can approve any reported time, a PeopleSoft process called Time Administration needs to run to completion. Time Administration takes the”reported time” and processes it through a rules engine and turns it into “payable time”. If there are any errors, they will be stored as exceptions — those need to be fixed before the employee can be paid for those hours in error.

Example (Student Hourly Employee) – if person reported 9 hours worked ina day, the time administration would convert that to 8 hours at straight time & 1 hour of overtime

Example (Salaried Professional) – if a person reported 4.0 hours Vacation and nothing else, then time administration would move the day into error (exception) as there needs to be an off-setting 3.5 hours of Regular time to make the employee day whole.

UMass managers are only approving time that has been successfully processed by Time Administration and turned into “Payable Time”. This process is usually run a couple times per day (See below).

When should I approve time?

The suggested best time to approve is on “Approval Monday”. Employees should have reported time by the Sunday following the close of the pay period. Then time administration would have run and is available for the managers to approve all day Monday. Early approval is possible once you understand the cycles for Time Administration and set necessary expectations with your staff.

When does Time Administration run?

The Time Administration process is run in batchat 12 PM (Noon) and 5 PM on most days. The process takes up to60 minutesto complete. Sofor example if employee reports time in HR Direct prior to Noon, then it should be available for a manager to approve after 1 PM.

On the “Approval Monday”, the Time Administration Process runs a bit more frequently

• 9:30 AM
• 12:30 PM
• 3:30 PM
• 8:00 PM
• 12:00 AM (Midnight)

When I make an update to an employees reported time via manager self-service, do I still need to wait for Time Administration to run before I can approve it?

YES. All reported time (regardless of entry point) needs to run through Time Administration before it can be approved.

NOTE: This blog entry was originally posted on 10/13/10. Updates made 11/15/11 and 4/24/12