Second Normal-In causes In Late Exception?

[quepasa]

Every once in a while a user's Time Sheet is showing an "In Late" Exception even though their first Normal-In punch is well within the Grace Period.

I think the exception is happening because there is another Normal-In punch later that day that falls outside the grace period for their schedule. For example:

In *9:00 AM
Out *11:00 AM
In 2:00 PM
Out 5:00 PM

(user's normal schedule begins at 9:30am with a grace of 15min for an In-Late exception, and the In-Early exception is disabled)

Could the 2:00pm Normal-In punch be causing the exception? If so, is this a bug or intentional? In this case the employee left at 11am for a Doctor's appointment, and didn't want to indicate that they were at Lunch or on Break for 3+ hours. Which, seems reasonable to me.

Any help will be appreciated.

Thank you,

-Ben

[shaunw]

What is the watch window set to on your schedule policy?

The watch window tells TimeTrex how far (up or down) to look for a matching schedule for a punch. So TimeTrex is taking 11:00AM and finding a schedule that starts around 9:00AM I'm guessing, and thinking they are In Late.

TimeTrex has to do this because some employees may work split shifts, where they have to be on-time more then once in a day.

If you set the watch window to something smaller it shouldn't happen anymore. Of course marking the punches as a "lunch/break" will also stop it from happening.

[quepasa]

What is the watch window set to on your schedule policy?

Ah, I see that a high value for my Watch Window was the cause of the exception.

I'm not sure what to set the window to though. I want to avoid the problem, but still get an exception if an employee is very very late.

So, let's say that an employee is scheduled to begin work at 9:00AM, the grace period is 15 minutes, and the watch window is set for 2 hours. Will an In-Late exception be generated if the employee punches in at 11:01AM?

-Ben

[shaunw]

No, I don't think so. TimeTrex will only look for a schedule within the watch window, not the watch window + grace time.

Its a trade off between a large watch window and using more then two normal punches in a day.

[quepasa]

Let's see if I understand what is happening. Here is the timesheet for a user:

Normal-In 9:05 AM
Normal-Out 11:00 AM
Normal-In 1:00 PM
Normal-Out 5:00 PM

The user is scheduled to begin work at 9:00am, has a grace period of 15 minutes and a watch window of 8 hours.

When TimeTrex goes to determine In-Late exceptions, it looks at each individual in-punch separately. First, it sees a 9:05am in-punch, and determines that it is part of the 9:00am schedule. It falls within the grace period, and so does not create an exception. It then see's the 1:00pm in-punch, and determines that it falls within the watch window for the 9:00am schedule. It also calculates that it is more than 15 minutes from 9:00am, and so marks an exception.

Would it be possible to change the logic of the program so that TimeTrex first looks at the schedule and the exception rules, and then uses the data to see if a valid in-punch exists. For example, it looks at the schedule and sees that the user should begin work at 9:00am, and that the exception policy has a watch window of 5 hours. It then selects all In-Punches within that 5 hour window, ordering by the time of the punches in ascending order. It looks at the first/earliest record and determines if it is within the 15 minute grace period, and marks an exception based only on that record.

-Ben

[shaunw]

Unfortunately its not easy, however I will have our developers look at this thread and see if they can come up with a solution.

Thanks for your suggestion.