Input Your Time Online
Helpful Tips & Information
Helpful Tips for completing the Online Time Card:
· It is highly recommended that the employee complete their time every day. Then if an unplanned absence occurs on a day when time cards are due to payroll, your supervisor can complete the missing time and submit the time sheet for you.
· If you do not know how many sick, vacation days, etc., you have available, you can check by logging into the NLU Portal. Go to the “My Services” tab and follow the link to the NLU Self Service section.
· All hours entered in system need to be rounded to .25 hour increments according to policy. Therefore, enter time as follows:
Actual Time: / Enter Time as:8:00 to 8:07 is 8:00am / 08:00
8:08 to 8:15 is 8:15am / 08:25
8:15 to 8:22 is 8:15am / 08:25
8:23 to 8:30 is 8:30am / 08:50
8:30 to 8:37 is 8:30am / 08:50
8:38 to 8:45 is 8:45am / 08:75
8:45 to 8:52 is 8:45am / 08:75
8:53 to 9:00 is 9:00am / 09:00
· Holiday Pay – the system will populate the field with your average scheduled hours for a holiday. However, the employee will still need to put in the hours in and out for the system to calculate the holiday time correctly. For example, 7.5 hours of holiday time, the employee would enter: in at 8:30 AM and out at 4:00 PM to equal the 7.5 hours of holiday time.
· Vacation/Sick time – employee will still need to put in the hours in and out for the system to calculate the time off properly.
· Bereavement pay – put in the hours your normally work and indicate in the “comments” field who has passed so we can verify the number of days according to the policy.
· According to our Policy and Illinois statute, an employee who is scheduled to work 7.5 continuous hours or more is provided an unpaid meal period to be taken no later than 5 hours after beginning their work day. Non-exempt (hourly) employees should not be encouraged, or permitted to work through their lunch thereby opting to shorten their work day. As for breaks, employees who work more than 5 but less than 7.5 hours in a given day are given the opportunity to take one 15-minute paid break. Employees who work 7.5 or more hours in a given day are given an opportunity to take two 15-minute paid breaks.
· Overtime must be approved in advance by your supervisor. Please indicate any overtime hours on the “overtime” section of the time card. Overtime is not calculated automatically in the system. Overtime is calculated on physically worked hours over 40 hours per week (Monday through Sunday) and does not include holiday, vacation, sick time, etc.
· Q: Can the employee print a copy of the time card before sending it to the supervisor? Can they print it to an electronic file, like PDF?
ü Yes for a hard copy—under preview there is a print option and they can also print to a pdf file.
· Q: If I only work on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, can I submit my time card on Thursday?
ü Yes, you can submit your time card early.
· Q: If I’m going on vacation, can I input my time and submit to my supervisor early?
ü Yes, as long as the pay period is open to enter the time you can enter vacation into the current pay period and submit early to your supervisor. If you are going to be gone for the entire pay period, you can submit a request for time off in advance and then it will automatically load into your timecard and your supervisor can approve and submit while you are on vacation.
Helpful Tips for the “Approver” of the Online Time Card:
· Be cautious regarding what comments you put as an approver in the “comments” field when you send back a time card to the employee for correction. That comment will stay with the record so be cautious of any health privacy issues that may not be appropriate for everyone in payroll to know.
· If you are going to be out of town or on vacation when time cards are due, please setup an “alternate approver/proxy” than can approve time cards in your absence. You can do this by sending an e-mail to Krystyna Tybor. If no proxy is activated, please contact the payroll office. An alternate approver/proxy will also need to be chosen for all terminating approvers.
· On a weekly basis, approvers should periodically go into the time card system to verify that their employees have started their time cards. This is important, in case the employee is not in on the Friday that time cards are due, then the approver can complete the missing day and approve it on time.
· Q: What happens if an employee puts in paid time off that they don’t have?
ü The time sheet will go through but will be returned by payroll for revisions. A report is available for supervisors to view the paid time off available for their employees.
· Q: Will the approver/supervisor be able to make changes to the employee’s time card and/or complete their time card in the employee’s absence?
ü Yes; however, before making a change, we strongly recommend you send the time card back to the employee for revisions. Only if there is no time left before the time cards are due to payroll should the supervisor change the timecard for the employee.
ü The cut off time for time cards is Noon on Monday, so if you return the time card for revisions, please make sure the employee is aware that the change needs to be made before Noon. Otherwise, the employee won’t have access to the time card to make the change. It is probably best for the approver to receive all the time cards on Friday, so if changes do need to be made, the employee can do it on Friday.
ü If the employee is absent on the day time cards are due, the supervisor should go in and complete any remaining time and submit the time card. This is why it is important for the employee to complete time every day—so if they are absent, the supervisor will only have to fill in the missing time versus the whole time card.
· Newly hired employees that will be approvers in the system will be required to review timecard training.
· Q: What do I do if my employee is off on FMLA or an unpaid leave of absence?
ü HR and payroll will complete and approve the employee’s timecard.
· • Q: What happens if I have a new employee who doesn’t get setup in the system to enter their time electronically?
ü Complete a paper bi‐weekly time card with both the employee and supervisor signatures and send into payroll by the deadline.
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