Setting Up Time and Attendance
So, you’ve decided to easily manage your employees’ timekeeping. Congratulations! Here are the next steps to set up Time and Attendance in Patriot:
Step 1: Set up your pay periods
Select the first day of your first pay period that you will begin tracking time. See Setting Up Pay Periods in Patriot TIME for more details.
Step 2: Review your hour types settings
Next, review all of your hour types, and make sure any hours you want employees to record appear on their time cards.
Go to Settings > Hours & Money Types > Hours Types
In the Hours Types list, there is a column, “Include On Time Card,” with a value of yes or no. If you want to make changes, click the name of the hour type to edit. Check the box for “Include on Time Card” for the hour type to appear on employee time cards. If these are non-worked hours, such as vacation, also check the box for “Track Non-Worked Hours.” And if you want to track a balance of allowed, taken, and available hours, also check the box for “Track Time Off.”
For more info about tracking a balance of time-off hours, see Setting Up Time-Off Hours.
Step 3: Set up any state- or company-specific overtime rules (optional)
This is only needed if you need to pay employees overtime differently than the federal rule of one and a half times the regular rate over 40 hours in a workweek. If you need to create an overtime rule to comply with state or local laws or your company policy, you can create customized rules as needed.
For more details, see Setting Up Overtime Rules.
Step 4: Decide how your employees will enter time
On each employee’s record, you will see a “Time” tab. Enter a Time Card Entry Type for each employee, either “Manual” or Time Punch,” to set up employee time cards. Manual time entry allows the employee to enter hours worked, regardless of the actual time of day.
- Hourly employees set to “Manual” will see “in” and “out” fields on their time cards.
- Salary employees set to “Manual” will see one set of fields per day to enter their total hours worked.
Time punch will require the employee to “punch” their in and out times in their employee portal using the actual time of day.
See Using the Time Punch Feature for more details.
Step 5: Make sure all employees have access to their employee portal
Once you have all your settings in place, you are ready for your employees to start recording their time. In order for employees to enter their own time worked on their time cards, invite each employee to register and use their employee portal. If you haven’t already done so, you can send employee portal invites. For more details, see Employee Portal Registration Access.
You are now ready to go! For further help, see Managing Time Cards.
Employees have questions? We also have help for them:
- Employee help article: Hourly Employees: Entering My Time Worked
- Employee help article: Salary Employees: Entering My Time Worked