Thank you for replying Simon. Our needs are a little different. We're manufacturing and our employees account for all their time each day thru time slips. The employees don't enter their own time, office employees do that. Their supervisors are responsible for checking labor entry to make sure time was reported to the correct job and quantities are correct. Changes are made only by office employees. At this time we have no need of the software's approval process. Our manufacturing jobs aren't tied into project so we don't have that to deal with. I'm glad to hear the quick code entries work well for you. I want to suggest we set those up and use those for some indirect employees such as shipping whose time slips tend to be the same from day to day. Again, thanks for the reply, every bit of information helps.
Have a good weekend!
Sue
Have a good weekend!
Sue
--- In vantage@yahoogroups.com, "s1mhall" <s1mhall@...> wrote:
>
>
> Sue,
> Our company is a services company and we use Time and Expense Entry for all of our staff. Take a look at the Professional services vertical in the Epicor Education database that customization removes a lot of the additional fields that were just not necessary for us. We also find that to improve how employees get their time into the system quickly they enter everything in as weekly time then go back to the detail to update comments where required.
>
> We also encourage employees to use quick time entries particularly for repetitive time entries.
>
> The one of the really tricky issues for us is that the system allows project managers to adjust time for employees on their behalf. However if a project manager wanted to alter a Labor Detail record for an employee due to the fact the time had been put against an incorrect project, phase or operation and the record had been already submitted for approval they have to recall the time entry. At that point the time record disapearred from the project managers view as they are no longer the approver for that record (remember the project manager has entered the employees id into the time and expense form on startup.)
>
> Now I am tasked with trying to get some sort of updatable dashboard to allow PM to adjust time in theses circumstances. Why not reject the time and have a BPM to send an email to the employee. We have that, but of Organizational behavioral reasons sending an email and waiting for a response is not satisfactory.
>
> Obviously creating a dashboard to update labor details, in particular the project phase and operation is a rather scary proposition and something I have been pondering for ages. It's the validation aspect that I believe is the concern.
>
> Our old Epicor eproject (aka invisic) had the ability to transfer time which was pretty good I must admit.
>
> Any Time and expense questions feel free to ask and I'll try my best to answer.
>
> Cheers
> Simon Hall
> --- In vantage@yahoogroups.com, "snielsen28" <snielsen.hipco@> wrote:
> >
> > Thanks Paul,
> >
> > I need to figure out who to contact at Epicor (CAM? consultant? support management?) to try find someone to explain to me what parts of the time and expense we can use and what belongs to the expense module. I tried a service call, but got one of those techs that doesn't really listen to me or my question. I knew more than she did, had already found the "workarounds" she suggested, and ended up frustrated because she didn't answer the question I asked when I submitted the call. I'll keep the DMT option in mind just in case. Thanks again!
> >
> > Sue
> >
> > --- In vantage@yahoogroups.com, "Paul Morgan" <paul.morgan@> wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > --- In vantage@yahoogroups.com, "snielsen28" <snielsen.hipco@> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > We have the same situation as Ernie, all time slips are entered manually into time and expense entry. I'm not having the performance problem, maybe something changed after 701. My problem is labor approval. We have no need for it. Our entry work is done rapidly thru the grid. The time slip submit on save checkbox, along with the submit and recall buttons aren't available there. There is a plant configuration control setting that is supposed to set the time slip submit on save to true automatically, but I can't get to to it as we're not licensed for the expense module (although Epicor did give me an SCR, without a target date, for that). I just got off the phone with support who told me that the approval process is a new and wonderful feature for Epicor 9 and we'll just have to get used to a) entering all labor thru the detail tab (increasing our entry time a HUGE amount) so we can use the submit button or submit on save checkbox or b) make an updatable dashboard to update the TimeStatus field in each labor detail record. Those are not acceptable solutions for us as we have hundreds of labor detail lines every week that would have to be addressed one at a time.
> > > >
> > > > I've been working on a few solutions on my own and wondered if anyone else has some solutions or suggestions. I was able to force the checkbox in plant configuration control to true for auto submit on save thru a BPM, but I can only do that for one plant and we have two. The problem with that is if previous lines on a timeslip need to be changed, the user has to go to the detail tab, click the recall button, change the detail line, click on the submit button and go back to the grid.
> > > >
> > > > Next I was able to add two buttons to the daily time summary tab where the user is supposed to check totals. One button approves all detail lines for the timeslip, the other unapproves all lines for the timeslip. Approving a complete timeslip instead of each line is better and if changes are needed all changes can be done at once and then approve all again. The users may choose to get rid of the automatic submit on save and just use the approve/unapprove all buttons.
> > > >
> > > > The problem with that is that payroll happily accepts unapproved labor detail (the tech said it didn't, but my testing tells me it does!), but as has already been reported, job closing doesn't. Once labor has been pulled into payroll it can no longer be changed in time and expense entry. So I think I'll add a dashboard that should be checked before payroll is run to make sure all entries have been approved and add an updatable dashboard to change the entries to approved when the users forget to check before payroll.
> > > >
> > > > I noticed that the labor records converted from Vantage have a time status of blank. Those are accepted just fine when closing jobs. Just for fun, I wrote an updatable BPM and changed some time status fields to blank (the value is E when entered and A when approved). I had no problem closing jobs with those records. I wonder if I can get a BPM to work that would clear that field?
> > > >
> > > > Any suggestions, advice, warnings, etc???
> > > >
> > > > Sue
> > > >
> > >
> > > Hi Sue,
> > >
> > > I have been speaking with Epicor here in Australia to help come up with a solution for us. We are writing a scanning solution that will summarise detail into Epicor. I was looking into service connect but was told about a time and expense bolt on to the DMT product. I dont know any more than that at this stage but thought you might want to ask questions to see if that could help.
> > >
> > > Cheers
> > > Paul
> > >
> >
>