Hi Chris,
We also use Ceridian, but we input the data manually. Would you be willing to share the BAQ that you created to do the export?
Regards,
Linda
Re: Time and Attendance, Payroll, and MES <
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vantage/message/70549;_ylc=X3oDMTJwY29pZDhoBF9TAzk3MzU5NzE1BGdycElkAzIwMzY5BGdycHNwSWQDMTcwNTAwNzE4MQRtc2dJZAM3MDU0OQRzZWMDZG1zZwRzbGsDdm1zZwRzdGltZQMxMjI2MDcyMzYx>
Posted by: "saab_barracuda"
chris.clunn@... <mailto:
chris.clunn@...?Subject=%20Re%3A%20Time%20and%20Attendance%2C%20Payroll%2C%20and%20MES> saab_barracuda <
http://profiles.yahoo.com/saab_barracuda>
Thu Nov 6, 2008 9:06 pm (PST)
We use the MES for payroll info (as well as job costing, production
qtys etc) and it's working well. We've always had the payroll module
(before my time) but also never paid from it since we submit payroll
to corporate which then submits to Ceridian.
Here are some of the processes and how we handle them.
1. Daily Time Cards - The Labor Edit report based on ClockInDate is
completely worthless for troubleshooting errors. So back when we
were on version 6, I developed an Daily Time Card Report application
in MS Access to help the supervisors manage the punch clock cards for
hourly associates. When we upgraded to V8, we eventually got rid of
the punch cards and just used the Access report printed and signed
daily by supervisor. Report consists of basic info from the
EmpBasic, Labor Header and subreport with the Details. I could redo
this in Crystal but probably won't until forced by upgrade
incompatibility.
2. Change Log - What allowed us to take the plunge and get rid of
the parallel process with punch cards was the Change Log capability.
Vantage has a very loose system in regards to allowed changes to time
entry. Anyone that has access to Labor Entry can change anyone
else's time (which is basically all salaried employees for us because
they need to enter their own time). To start the change log, just
setup a BAM on the LaborHed and LaborDtl tables for the major
fields. I developed a Change Log report again in MS Access that
labor entry changes for the hourly associates. This is printed daily
and the supervisor and employee sign. Report consists of the Labor
Header and Detail records for the day and the changes from the Change
Log. Again, Vantage doesn't make it easy as there are "change"
entries just from clocking out when the labor header and detail entry
closes using MES and multiple changes are bunched up into one big
text field. Maybe Epicor 9 will be better but the current change log
is WEAK!!! Anyway, I had to work around this with some text sorting
VB code and by grouping the report by the person making the change
(dcduserid) and matching them up with employees (supervisors).
Payroll prints the report daily and distributes to the "changers" to
get them signed.
Here I should mention the extended effort we went though to minimize
changes. We were previously rounding the times off the times for job
changes to the nearest quarter hour on the punch cards and "fixing"
Vantage accordingly. Stopped that. It is what it is. Also, a
couple minutes Idle Time is allowable if the associate clocks out of
one activity and doesn't start the next in the exact same minute.
These were previously adjusted out. We made sure everyone was on the
correct shift in their Employee record so the grace period applied
properly. And if they work off shift, the supervisors are to make
them aware which shift to clock into. I think mostly what we're down
to are normal benefit time that the supervisor has to enter.
3. Weekly Time Cards - We run payroll weekly even though we only pay
biweekly. We still run weekly time cards for salaried employees.
This I only did recently even though it's been on my "to do" list for
a year and a half. There weren't near the issues with this one
because everyone just enters their own time for the week and it's
mostly just indirect overhead with the occasional benefits. There
were still a few minor glitches because people would fill out the
paper time card and forget to enter the time in Vantage. That and
just the fact that it was a redundant process, it got on my nerves
every week. For this report we just needed some EmpBasic information
(name, employeenum, dept) matched up with the labor detail entries
sorted by day. I included a subreport to sum up the labor header
payrollhours so it can be compared with the sum of laborhours from
the labor detail listed. This one I did in Crystal straight from
Vantage because it didn't require any serious data manipulation.
4. Payroll Reporting - For the Ceridian upload, we submit a .csv
file exported from a BAQ. We just needed to setup a template for the
export to be dumped into that had all the columns setup (text, dates,
etc) for the upload to Ceridian.
5. Exception Reporting - I did a few exception reports for Payroll
to check, e.g. mismatch between labor hours and payroll hours,
overtime, less than 40 hours, etc.
Overall, what we are doing now is soooooo much easier than what we
were doing before. We had a person whose whole job it was to go
through and double check time cards and make sure they matched
Vantage. That person moving to another job internally accelerated
our implementation of the Vantage only process as we didn't want to
back fill the position. The whole process of using Vantage instead
of external cards and spreadsheets is a whole lot easier to manage.
Plus it should allow you to do more with job costing.
On the Payroll Module, I don't think you need it but you should
research what it buys you. Since we've always had it, I'm not
exactly sure what's core and what's from Payroll. The couple things
that I can think of though.
First are the separate tables with Pay Rates that require extra
security privileges even above Security Manager privileges (Payroll
Manager, Payroll Class access, etc). The tables with rates are then
further separated by a link code that can be turned off. This way
you get some real pay rate data for analysis within the system and is
separated from the labor rates used for job costing. We use an
weighted average by job title on the labor rate instead of the actual
pay rate.
The other thing I don't know if included in base program but the
Posted flag is handy. That locks the Labor Entry so it can't be
changed anymore.
Anyway, I hope some of that helps somewhat and best of luck! These
major process improvements can take quite a bit of effort but it's
worth it.
//Chris
--- In
vantage@yahoogroups.com <mailto:vantage%40yahoogroups.com> , "Brian W, Spolarich" <bspolarich@...>
wrote:
>
> I¹m looking for advice from folks in terms of what they find
works well.
>
> We are running 8.03.405. We¹re starting to implement MES at one
site, and
> implement at another. We didn¹t buy the Payroll module as we¹ve
been
> outsourcing our Payroll. We¹re thinking we want to use MES to
handle what
> we¹re doing right now with manual timeclocks.
>
> Currently payroll procesing for salaried employees (paid monthly)
is done
> by a spreadsheet which includes vacation, personal, and project
time (booked
> against RefCodes). Hourly employees (paid bi-weekly) submit time on
> spreadsheets, signed by a supervisor and entered into another
spreadsheet.
> That is then entered into another spreadsheet by our cost
accountant, who
> then re-enters it into our payroll provider¹s system (Paycor).
>
> Our second location bought a hand recognition scanner, but the
software
> that comes with the scanner doesn¹t support the unusual work
schedule at
> that location, and we¹re trying to harmonize what we¹re doing with
payroll,
> and eliminate a lot of non-value-added steps entering and re-
entering this
> data. So I¹d like to come up with a standard process that will
work for
> everyone.
>
> I¹m wondering if we were to purchase the Payroll module could we
continue
> to submit our data to an outside processing vendor? If we don¹t
buy the
> Payroll module can we get the timeclock data out of Vantage in an
easy way
> to process and upload to Paycor?
>
> What are folks doing here that works really well?
>
> Thanks!
>
> -brian
>
>
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