Achieve a Seamlessly Integrated Time, Absence, Payroll Management Using PeopleSoft HCM

Logesh Balasubramaniam, Managing Director of SpearMC, recently delivered a presentation on achieving a seamlessly integrated time, absence, and payroll management system using PeopleSoft HCM. By leveraging the features available in each of the three modules, you’ll enjoy a streamlined, more enjoyable user experience with valuable data insights.

SpearMC is a consulting firm made up of PeopleSoft experts. These experts have been helping organizations unlock their true potential with PeopleSoft and Oracle since 2004. They specialize in strategy, planning, and execution of implementations, upgrade, and HCM transformation projects.

Why Should You Use PeopleSoft Time & Labor and Absence Management?

If your organization uses workforce management solutions from Ultimate Kronos Group, then you probably already know that UKG has announced end of life dates for both Kronos Cloud (KPC) and On-Premise Workforce Central (WFC). They will be retired in December 2025 and March 2027, respectively. Based on this news, your organization will need to find a new solution, and PeopleSoft has very advantageous offerings.

If you are already using PeopleSoft HCM for Payroll, it is the perfect opportunity to consider implementing Time & Labor and Absence Management modules. These modules are tightly integrated with Payroll. Together, they can meet and exceed your organization’s requirements for capturing, processing, and distributing time and attendance data.

Time, Absence, and Payroll Module Integration

The Absence Management module is already included as part of the North American Payroll Module licensing. You do not need a separate module license if you’re using the North American Payroll license.

Examples of the tasks that can be achieved with Absence Management include:

• Employee & Manager Self-Service
• Absence Events & Workflow Approval
• Balance Forecasting
• Absence Takes & Entitlement Calculation
• Absence Balance Maintenance

Time & Labor is a standalone module. You may have to purchase a license for it, since it is licensed separately. Time & Labor covers everything from capturing employee time (either online or through another device) to processing it, approving it, generating paperwork, sending to payroll and integrating with financial applications. It is a very comprehensive module and includes:

• Time Reporting & Collection
• Employee & Manager Self-Service
• Time Admin Rules & Exceptions
• Time Approvals
• Payable Time Management

North American Payroll is used by customers who are on PeopleSoft HCM, so you may already be familiar with it. Payroll includes:

• Load Time & Absences to Timesheet
• Payroll Calculation
• Confirm Payroll
• GL Integration

The modules are sequenced in this manner because the data flow moves from Absence to Time & Labor to Payroll.

Deeper Dive into Absence Management

Through Absence Management, the employee is given the ability to request absences, view absence balances, forecast future balances, cancel absence requests, donate leave, request extended absences, and request schedule changes.

Managers have capabilities to request absences on behalf of employees, approve or reject absences, view absence balances, forecast balances, cancel absence requests, schedule management, and perform team absence analytics.

Administrators can manage absence events and calendars, run absence calc processes, review absence results, resolve exceptions, manage adjustments, and approve and manage donations.

Deeper Dive into Time & Labor

Through Time & Labor as a module, the employees can submit time with elapsed or punch time entry. They can connect with different time clocks, interact with web-clocks, perform task reporting, manage exceptions, see time processes in payable time reviews and request overtime.

Managers are able to perform time entry and approval and manage exceptions and schedules.
One of the most valuable capabilities of managers is the 360-degree visibility to employees’ time, absences, and schedule. They can use this visibility to see day-of workforce availability through the team calendar. They also have access to overtime approvals and team time analytics.

Time administrators have much functionality including time reporter maintenance. They can process payable time, manage schedules and exceptions, view reported and payable time analytics, and send time to payroll.

Time Data Integration

Below is a diagram showing how Time & Labor data can be integrated with other modules:

There are three built-in integrations. If you’re using project costing, it can be integrated with your time data. There is a one-way integration for time & labor to expense. Time & Labor typically integrates with your other financial areas.

Time & Absence Dashboard

The consolidated time and absence dashboard looks like this:

It is a fluid dashboard with access to Timesheet. The web clock is a single-click ability to submit time. Employees can use the In or Out button quickly and easily. There are several informative tiles available for display on the dashboard, such as Payable Time shown above. Setup Quick-Fill simplifies the time entry for employees who need to use specific codes when booking time. They can set up this feature to easily populate the timesheet in order to avoid manually filling it in each time. The Exceptions tile shows the user items that need attention.

Essentially, the top two rows of the dashboard pertain to time while the bottom two rows relate to absences. The final tile gives employees the ability to request schedule changes.

Below is an example of a punch timesheet:

These are mobile-friendly timesheets. There is multiple job support with a view of the scheduled hours. Employees have a timesheet option, time entry capabilities, timesheet period view options, time validation through rules, absence entry, comments, and time details.

The Request Absence button pulls up the Request Absence box, as shown below:

The balance shown in blue above forecasts the balance for eligibility. Managers also have the forecasted balance feature for approving employee requests.

Here is an example of the timesheet after time off has been booked.

The timesheet brings in both worker time and absences from the absence module. It leverages the data coming into timesheet.

For customers who do not use both Time & Labor and Absence Management, this would be a basic timesheet look.

For a calendar view, employees can look at the Time Summary:

The example above shows a partial absence on October 17. Essentially, this calendar is broken down by individual date. This is a central view of time reported and absences.

Below is a detailed view of an employee submitting an absence:

Current balances and the holiday calendar are shown on the right side of the screen. In the center of the screen, employees can create a new request with the start date, end date, type of absence, and more. It’s relatively new and highly advantageous functionality for employees to be able to view all of this data related to absences on a single screen.

The broken-down view of employee balances looks like this:

Another fairly new feature is the ability to request schedule changes. Employees can either give up their shift or trade their shift with a chosen co-worker, as shown below:

The trade shift options include a status for ideal matches for the trade. The employee can choose the action, date, and the target person for the request.

The Time Calendar combines time, absence, and schedule. It is used by the manager, and looks like this:

If you’re already using HCM modules, you can leverage this new functionality.

Time that has been submitted by employees and approved by the manager goes then goes to the administration process which determines codes to assign (regular time, overtime, double overtime options, etc.). All of this is consolidated in Payable Time:

Process Flow

You may be wondering how the process flow works for Time, Absence, and Pay. Here is an example:

Each of the three modules deals with a large amount of data. For Time & Labor, you’ll see operational dashboards available to the Payroll team for insights into reported and payable time, as well as trends. The Absence Management module provides processed absence insights and trends and administrative tasks. The Payroll module has many powerful data visualizations, cost analytics, and payroll trends.

These three modules have data visualizations with Kibana or open search framework. All of this is available as delivered PeopleSoft functionality with no additional licenses required. You can make use of it with your existing data.

You can watch the full RECONNECT Dive Deep 2023 presentation here:  Achieve a seamlessly integrated Time, Absence, Payroll management using PeopleSoft HCM.