Manage employee time and attendance overview
Applies to: Dynamics 365 Customer Service, Dynamics 365 Customer Voice, Dynamics 365 Field Service, Dynamics 365 Finance, Dynamics 365 Human Resources, Dynamics 365 Project Operations, Dynamics 365 Sales, Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management
This article describes how organizations can manage employee time and attendance including leave and absence, timesheets, shift, and time clocks using Dynamics 365 products.
Managing employee time and attendance is a critical aspect of organizational efficiency, playing a pivotal role in ensuring optimal workforce productivity and compliance. In today's dynamic business environment, the use of Dynamics 365 products, such as Human Resources, Project Operations, Field Service, and Supply Chain Management, can help organizations streamline these crucial processes. These tools enable an interconnected approach to time and attendance management including leave and absence management, fostering a more cohesive and efficient work environment.
The process of managing employee time and attendance encompasses several key business processes that are supported by Dynamics 365. Organizations typically start by defining and managing time and attendance policies to align with their specific requirements. Dynamics 365 Human Resources supports flexible configuration for leave and absence policies and plans including sick time, paid time off, selling or borrowing leave, and the leave accrual process.
In addition, you can use Dynamics 365 Human Resources to record employee absences and facilitate requests for time off, all seamlessly integrated into the employee self-service experience. In addition, Dynamics 365 Commerce supports the ability to create and managing shifts.
Depending on your industry and time-reporting needs, Dynamics 365 allows employees to create and submit timesheets. This includes time clocks functionality with Dynamics 365 Commerce, Human Resources, and Supply Chain Management. For more complex manufacturing environments, you can use job card terminals on the production floor or the Time and attendance module in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, providing a comprehensive overview of their work hours and production completed. Supervisors can then efficiently review and approve timesheets, ensuring accuracy and compliance.
When you use Dynamics 365 Field Service or Project Operations, you can record time against specific work orders or projects for detailed time reporting that can be easily allocated to the right financial resources for billing, cost recognition, and revenue recognition. The flexibility of the Dynamics 365 platform also allows for easy adjustments and corrections to timesheets, ensuring that the time and attendance data remains accurate and reflective of the dynamic nature of business operations.
Determining the high-level architecture of your solution early in the implementation for your time and attendance business processes is important, but you can leave the configuration and setup to the later stages of your project.
Stakeholders
Many people across the organization should contribute to the decision-making process and design of the Manage employee time and attendance area. The following list provides examples of such stakeholders:
Human resource stakeholders include HR managers and HR specialists. Their involvement is crucial in defining and managing time and attendance policies, ensuring alignment with HR guidelines and regulations. They play a key role in shaping policies that reflect the organization's culture and compliance requirements.
Management stakeholders include shift supervisors and shift managers. These stakeholders are integral in creating and managing shifts, overseeing day-to-day scheduling, and ensuring that the workforce allocation aligns with business needs. Their input is essential to optimize staffing levels and maintain operational efficiency. Frontline supervisors are crucial in the review and approval process of timesheets. They verify the accuracy of reported hours, ensuring that the data reflects the actual work performed and adheres to organizational policies.
Absence coordinators stakeholders focus on recording and managing employee absences. Their role involves tracking and documenting leave requests, ensuring accurate records, and facilitating communication between employees and management regarding time-off matters.
Project managers stakeholders: In the context of Dynamics 365 Project Operations and service-based organizations, project managers play a key role in overseeing the integration of time and attendance data with project timelines and milestones. They ensure that project schedules align with the availability of resources.
Employees stakeholders: All employees are stakeholders in the time and attendance process, as they actively participate in requesting time off, submitting timesheets, and ensuring the accuracy of their attendance records. Clear communication and training are vital to their effective engagement in these processes.
Manage employee time and attendance process flow
The following diagram illustrates the Record time and attendance and manage leave and absences business process area.
Each solid gray rectangle on the diagram represents an end-to-end business process. The solid blue rectangle represents the business process area. The diagram shows the subprocesses for the business process area. The arrows on the diagram show the flow of the business process in an organization. If a subprocess can lead to more than one other subprocess, the parallel subprocesses are shown as branches.
Start
Hire to retire
The upstream processes Order to cash, Plan to produce, Project to profit, and Service to cash all connect directly to Create and submit timesheets.
Onboard and manage the employee lifecycle
Manage employee time and attendance
Define and manage time and attendance policies
Record employee absences
Request time off
Manage time off requests
Create and submit timesheets
A parallel branch connects to downstream processes including Order to cash, Plan to produce, Project to profit, Service to cash, and Record to report, all of which have a connection to End.
Review and approve timesheets
Adjust and correct timesheets
End
Manage employee time and attendance benefits
Many key benefits can be used to monitor and measure the success of implementing technology to support the manage employee time and attendance. The following sections outline the key benefits that an organization might monitor and measure for manage employee time and attendance.
Improved workforce efficiency
When organizations use Dynamics 365 for managing employee time and attendance, they can significantly enhance workforce efficiency by automating and streamlining critical processes. The system's integration with Human Resources, Project Operations, Field Service, Supply Chain Management, and Finance helps to ensure a seamless flow of data across the organization. With features such as automated timesheet creation, accurate recording of employee absences, and efficient shift management, organizations can experience a substantial reduction in manual workload and administrative overhead.
This efficiency improvement can be measured through KPIs such as a decrease in time spent on manual data entry and an increase in the accuracy of attendance records, leading to more productive and focused HR and operational teams.
Real-time visibility and decision-making for operations
Dynamics 365 provides real-time visibility into employee time and attendance data, empowering decision-makers with actionable insights. The system's robust reporting and analytics tools allow HR managers and supervisors to track key performance indicators (KPIs) such as attendance patterns, overtime trends, and project resource use.
This transparency enables data-driven decision-making, leading to more informed workforce management strategies. Organizations can apply these insights to optimize staffing levels, identify training needs, and proactively address attendance issues, resulting in improved overall workforce performance and strategic planning.
Enhanced compliance and accuracy
By using Dynamics 365 for time and attendance management and leave and absence management, organizations can achieve higher levels of compliance and accuracy in workforce data. The system's ability to define and enforce time and attendance policies ensures adherence to regulatory requirements and internal guidelines. Features such as automated timesheet reviews and approvals contribute to accuracy by minimizing errors in recorded work hours.
KPIs for measuring this benefit include a reduction in payroll errors, decreased instances of non-compliance with labor regulations, and improved audit readiness, showcasing the system's commitment to maintaining data integrity and legal compliance.
Streamlined leave management
Dynamics 365 Human Resources facilitates a streamlined leave management process, allowing organizations to efficiently handle employee time-off requests. The system enables employees to submit leave requests electronically, reducing paperwork, and manual processing. HR managers can easily track and manage these requests, ensuring that staffing levels are maintained, and operational disruptions are minimized.
KPIs such as reduced time spent on leave request processing, decreased instances of scheduling conflicts, and improved employee satisfaction in leave management highlight the positive impact of Dynamics 365 on enhancing the overall efficiency and employee experience in this critical aspect of workforce management.
Cost savings through automation
The automation capabilities of Dynamics 365 contribute to cost savings by reducing the need for manual intervention in time and attendance processes. Automated timesheet creation, approval workflows, and accurate payroll calculations lead to operational efficiencies and cost reductions associated with manual data entry errors.
KPIs for this benefit include a decrease in labor costs related to manual administrative tasks, reduced instances of payroll discrepancies, and overall operational cost savings, showcasing the financial advantages of using Dynamics 365 for time and attendance management.
Next steps
If you would like to implement Dynamics 365 solutions to assist with your manage employee time and attendance business processes, use the following resources and steps to learn more. (Links are added, when the articles are ready.)
Manage employee time and attendance (the article you're reading right now)
Related information
You can use the following resources to learn more about the manage employee time and attendance process in Dynamics 365.
Time and attendance registration overview - Supply Chain Management
What's changed in Dynamics 365 Human Resources | March 29, 2023 TechTalk
Find definitions of terminology used in content for manage employee time and attendance in the Glossary of terms in Dynamics 365 business processes article, including the following terms:
- Flex groups
- Leave and absence plan
- Leave and absence types
- Time and attendance
- Registrations
- Working time calendar
Contributors
This article is maintained by Microsoft. It was originally written by the following contributors.
Principal author:
- Rachel Profitt | Principal Program Manager
Other contributors:
- Rich Black | Senior Program Manager