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Understanding NovaTime Time Clock System
A detailed look at how the system converts time punches into hours
worked.
By: Bruce Bahlmann - Contributing Author (your
feedback
is important to us!)
Created: December 1, 2011
Our company recently shifted most of its employees to hourly and
uses the NovaTime product to manage time punches and electronic
timecards. In this move to hourly, I've noticed on a number of
occasions, that when I punched out, the resulting total time worked
didn't always equate to what I thought it should. After much
deliberation with fellow employees, we figured out the system. This
article is about how the NovaTime product works with hourly
employees and how the system rounds up/down individual clock
punches.
If you punched in at 8:02 am and then out again at 12:02 pm that you should
see an expected result of 4 hours worked. So, ultimately, the time keeping
system isn't flawed in the way it thinks. In fact, for this example, clearly
4 hours is the correct number. However what if I told you there was another
way to clock the same number of hours but work slightly less, would that be
of interest?
The key lies in NovaTime's treatment of time punches. Rather than paying
people for exactly for the time they work, NovaTime takes every single time
punch and runs it through a time conversation process which rounds up/down
the time in order to use a convenient time representation of tenths of
hours. This use of tenths over just simply tracking total number of minutes
worked can either cause a person to work slightly more time for the same
number of hours or allow them to work slightly less than that amount of time
for the same number of hours. It all depends on how educated your employees
are. The key to understanding the time conversion process is the chart
(Table 1.0) below.
| Decimal Hours: |
Minute CutOff: |
| Next whole hour |
57 |
| 0.9 |
51 |
| 0.8 |
45 |
| 0.7 |
39 |
| 0.6 |
33 |
| 0.5 |
27 |
| 0.4 |
21 |
| 0.3 |
15 |
| 0.2 |
09 |
| 0.1 |
03 |
Table 1.0 NovaTime Rounding Chart
To use the chart below, lets return to our earlier example of the
employee that punched in at 8:02 am and then out again at 12:02 pm. This
time, we are going to perform the NovaTime conversion process using chart in
Table 1.0 to show you how it records the time. To use the chart, simply take
the minutes from the time (02) and look up the equivalent decimal hours.
Since 02 mins is less than 03 mins, you round down to 0.0 mins - thus you
have:
08:02 am translates to 8.0 hours
12:02 pm translates to 12.0 hours
12.0 - 8.0 = 4.0 hrs worked
time worked that you were not paid for = zero
Taken another way, NovaTime took the two extra minutes you didn't work
when you timed in, and credited you with an earlier clock in time of 8:00
am. Similarly, NovaTime took the two extra minutes you worked past noon
(12:02), and rounded down to 12 which produced an expected 4 hour clock in
period. So, if you clock in similarly, NovaTime accurately accounts for your
time worked. However, what if you don't clock in this neatly? Well, the
extreme would be the following case:
07:57 am translates to 8.0 hours
12:02 pm translates to 12.0 hours
12.0 - 8.0 = 4.0 hrs worked
time worked that you were not paid for = 5 min
In this extreme case, you clocked in a little earlier at 7:57 am (which
if you use the chart, gets rounded up to 8.0), and then clock out at the
same time 12:02. In this case, you end up working 5 extra minutes for the
same awarded time (4 hours). Worst case, if you did this twice a day for 52
weeks a year, you would work an extra day (8.6 hours) without pay.
But how does one prevent working extra time for no pay? The key lies in
some simple time management techniques which can swing the pendulum the
other way. Take the following example:
08:02 am translates to 8.0 hours
11:57 pm translates to 12.0 hours
12.0 - 8.0 = 4.0 hrs worked
time credited for but did not have to work = 5 min
Using these principles, and the time chart, one could error less on the
side of working less time and still getting paid for it..
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