Overview

In many organizations with hourly employees, timecards must be completed in order to determine how much a person should be paid. This kind of environment is common to many organizations of all types with hourly or salaried employees. Timecards or timesheets are completed and turned in to a supervisor who checks them and send them up the chain of command to be authorized until they arrive at the payroll department where hopefully they turn into a paycheque for the appropriate amount.

Very few of these top-down organizations were ever able to link this data to their project management environment since the orientation of most such timesheet systems was a "time and attendance" system and did not allow for tracking of charges at the discreet task level.

In many organizations, this has resulted in a double-standard time-recording system. The payroll department still requires timesheets to be completed and collected in order to determine who should be paid. The project department sets up a secondary timesheet environment in an attempt to capture task-level effort. Even in those few systems which try to accomplish both goals, there is always one predominant direction.

The 1990's has brought the concept of "matrix organizations" to industry. Many large organizations have now or are considering altering their structure from the traditional hierarchical, top-down plan to one where individual projects or disciplines work in a more compartmentalized fashion.

A Matrix Organization allows different departments to work on individual projects. Work-teams are organized so that many projects can be worked on at the same time.

This diagram shows how not every department works on every project and not every project requires every department.

This allows a more effective allocation of resources and allows project managers to request only the required resources from the organization.

Timekeeping in a Hierarchical Organization

In a hierarchical organization, the flow of timekeeping data is well-established. Data moves from the grass-roots users to their supervisors. Supervisors approve the data then either move it up to the next level of the organization or summarize the information first before moving it up to the next level.

Once approved, the timekeeping data is forwarded to the payroll department where individual pay packets can be determined prior to payday.

The problem with this environment is that typically, the organizational structure has not allowed for timesheet data to be identified by task or by project. Often, this results in a second, parallel timesheet system specifically designed to collect data horizontally through the project structure. In the case two separate projects are created, it is likely that the summary results of these two system will not match, resulting in distrusted data in both systems.

The interest of an organizational roll up for the payroll department is to determine who worked how many hours and, if applicable, at what rate so that an accurate payroll can be generated.

For the payroll department there is very little interest in what work was accomplished or what project the work was spent on or whether hours spent ere billable or overhead hours.

The validation commonly applied here is oriented around time and attendance and determining if a given employee was actually working the hours reported. Timekeeping in a Functional Scenario In a project oriented organization, the entire project team includes all departments. In this case, timesheet data moves horizontally across the functional group until it is summarized. Data is then delivered to either a single or a project-specific payroll department.

The problem with this scenario is that the results of a project roll up are likely not to match an organizational roll up.

The interest in the project management department is what work was done and what project was worked on. Specific resource progress and budget versus actual analysis is the objective in this direction.

There is very little interest in this structure as to who did the work or what percentage of the week workers attended work.

The validation for this structure is oriented around internal or external project billing. Timesheets are validated to determine that activity or task codes are correct and that work was done on the proper project and in the proper phase.

Timekeeping in a Matrix Organization

The most difficult implementation area in this scenario is timesheet validation.

There are always several suggestions on how this should be accomplished. The most common request is that timesheets immediately split into component line items by cell and that validation be accomplished in both directions simultaneously. The notion is that the individual lines items can be manipulated simultaneously be each project manager then will magically be re-assembled into a coherent timesheet without losing integrity.

Unfortunately this scenario is almost never possible to implement. The idea that all project managers will independently agree on specific project charges while not changing the total number of hours in the timesheet is, at best, overly optimistic. (At worst, ludicrous.)

The timesheet is much more likely to be pulled in every direction and never re- assemble. Even in a paper-based system, this phenomena is very common. It results in timesheets falling into a bureaucratic "loop" in the system.

This then leaves us with two options: First, we could create two parallel systems, one for the payroll department and the other for the project management department. If this is not an attractive option, we can alternately create a system which first validates through one structure then through the next. It is this methodology used in TimeControl.

Managing a Matrix Organization using TimeControl

TimeControl is structured to accomplish both of these as follows. The system allows for a very rapid validation through the organizational structure of the payroll data. This validation includes the ability to determine that all timesheets have been collected and that Once this is done, TimeControl data is posted to a non-changeable status. This locks in the number of hours assessed per person for payroll purposes. Since payroll has virtually no interest in exactly what tasks these hours were spent on, a transaction file of the data can be generated that will be used to create the payroll.

Once the data has been posted, it is now made available for reporting back to the project managers. Each project manager is provided with the functionality to create a Debit/Credit against any timesheet in existence. The Debit/Credit must equal a zero balance of hours. This functionality allows the project managers to remove hours from one charge code and put it onto a different charge code without altering the original timesheet. Debits and Credits are overlaid on top of the original timesheet. This ensures that we can maintain a complete audit trail of all timesheet data should it be required.

By restricting the charge codes that the project manager has control over, we can prevent project managers from removing hours from their own project and dropping them onto the project of another. A window of opportunity is left open for project managers to enter and post their Debits/Credits are validated in the same manner as regular timesheets but need not follow the same routing. Once this window has closed, all the original timesheet data and the overlaid changes are posted to the project management system. If a project manager misses this window for posting changes, the TimeControl Administrator can allow a further period for changes which will be moved to the project management system during the next posting cycle. It is up to the Administrator to determine when new charges or changes are disallowed for a particular period of time.

This methodology allows TimeControl to deliver the best of both worlds. Using this two-pass validation system, we can accomplish the following critical functions in a timely fashion:

• Ensure that all timesheets are entered and validated
• Validate timesheet data through both electronic and manual means for the number of hours worked and the applicable rate
• Move the timesheet data rapidly through the organizational structure and post it to the payroll department
• Generate a payroll based on stable data with a high degree of integrity
• Allow project managers to view actual labour hours organized by project, sub-project and task
• Allow project managers a window of opportunity to issue changes to the original timesheet data by moving hours from one charge code to another without changing the total number of hours worked on any timesheet.
• Move timesheet information and any associated changes to the project management system
• Ensure a full audit trail is maintained to always be able to determine the source of timesheet information

To receive a printed copy of this paper or information on any of our products and services, contact HMS Software at info@hmssoftware.ca or by phone at 514-695-8122.