Creating Multiple Time Cards with the Time Card Creation Wizard

The Shop Floor Time Card Creation Wizard provides a bulk method for creating Shop Floor Insight time cards for one employee or multiple employees over a date range.

Typical uses include:

• Creating vacation time cards for an employee over several days.
• Creating holiday or planned plant shutdown entries for a group of employees.
• Creating the same activity for everyone assigned to a particular shift.
• Pre-creating several daily time cards for an employee.
• Creating time cards based on each employee’s configured shift schedule.
• Creating one time card containing entries covering several days.

The wizard is available as Time Card Creation Wizard from the Shop Floor Insight Approver Role Center. The application describes the action as being used for “shutdowns, vacations, holidays” and for handling multiple dates and multiple employees.

Before you start

Determine whether you want to create entries using a Specific Activity or the employees’ Shift Details.

Specific Activity is generally appropriate when all generated entries should represent the same activity, such as vacation, holiday, shutdown, training, or another configured Shop Floor Activity.

With this option, you specify:

• The Activity Code.
• Which weekdays should receive entries.
• The number of hours for each selected weekday.

Use Shift Details As Template is appropriate when the entries should follow each employee’s configured shift. In this mode, Shop Floor Insight uses the employee’s shift configuration to determine the days, hours, start times, end times, and activities to create.

Step 1: Select who to create time cards for

• Open Time Card Creation Wizard.
• In Create For, select one of the following:
  • A Specific Employee
  • Employees in a Shift
  • Employees in a Group

To create time cards for one employee

• Set Create For to A Specific Employee.
• In Employee No., select the Shop Floor Employee.
• Confirm the employee Name displayed by the wizard.
• Select Next.

When an employee is selected, the wizard also retrieves that employee’s Shift Pattern. This can be used later when defaulting working or attendance hours.

To create time cards for everyone on a shift

• Set Create For to Employees in a Shift.
• In Shift Pattern, select the required Shift Pattern.
• Confirm the shift Name displayed by the wizard.
• Select Next.

When the wizard finishes, Shop Floor Insight processes employees whose Shift Pattern matches the selected value. Blocked employees are skipped by the shift-based creation routine.

This is useful for scenarios such as a planned shutdown or holiday that applies to everyone assigned to a particular shift.

To create time cards for a Shop Floor Group

• Set Create For to Employees in a Group.
• In Code, select the Shop Floor Group.
• Confirm the Group Name displayed by the wizard.
• Select Next.

The wizard processes the employees who are members of the selected Shop Floor Group.

This is useful when the affected employees are already organized into a logical Shop Floor group rather than sharing the same Shift Pattern.

Step 2: Enter the date range

The second page controls the dates covered by the generated entries. Both dates are inclusive.

• Enter Start Date.
• Enter End Date.
• Confirm that the End Date is on or after the Start Date.
• Select Next.

For example, to create vacation entries from August 17 through August 21, enter:

• Start Date: August 17
• End Date: August 21

The wizard will consider each date from August 17 through August 21, inclusive.

By default, the wizard initializes the Start Date to the beginning of the current work week and the End Date to seven days after that Start Date. Replace these defaults with the actual range you want to create.

Step 3: Choose how the time card lines will be created

The third page provides two mutually exclusive options:

• Specific Activity
• Use Shift Details As Template

Option A: Create entries for a Specific Activity

Use this option when the generated lines should all represent a particular activity.

• Enable Specific Activity.
• In Activity Code, select the activity to use.
• Confirm the displayed Description.
• Confirm the displayed Paycode.
• Select Next.

The Description and Paycode displayed on this page come from the selected Shop Floor Activity.

The selected Activity Code is validated onto each generated Time Card Line. As part of normal Activity validation, the activity can also default values such as its configured Paycode. The wizard then records the specified number of hours as Run Time, using hours as the Time Entry Unit of Measure.

Common examples include configured activities such as:

• VACATION
• HOLIDAY
• SHUTDOWN
• TRAINING
• MEETING

These are examples only. Use the actual Shop Floor Activities configured for your organization.

After selecting a Specific Activity, the wizard proceeds to the weekday and hours page.

Option B: Use Shift Details As Template

Use this option when the generated time cards should reproduce the employees’ configured shift details.

• Enable Use Shift Details As Template.
• Select Next.

When this option is selected, the wizard skips the weekday/hour configuration page because the applicable days and hours are determined from the employee’s shift configuration.

For each date, Shop Floor Insight checks whether the employee is expected to work on that date. If so, it retrieves that employee’s applicable Shift Pattern Details.

For each Shift Pattern Detail, the generated Time Card Line uses:

• Work Date: The applicable shift date, including the next-day offset where configured.
• Hours: The Attendance Time (Hours) from the Shift Pattern Detail.
• Start Time: The Shift Pattern Detail Start Time.
• End Time: The Shift Pattern Detail End Time.
• Activity Code: The employee’s Default Activity Code, unless the Shift Pattern Detail has an Adjustment Activity Code, in which case that activity is used instead.

This option is most appropriate when you want the generated cards to reflect each employee’s normal configured schedule instead of applying one activity and one set of hours to everybody.

Step 4: Select weekdays and hours

This page appears when Specific Activity is used.

• In Default Hours From, select:
  • Working, or
  • Attendance.
• Review Monday through Sunday.
• Enable each weekday on which an entry should be created.
• Enter the required Hours for each enabled weekday.
• Disable any weekday for which no entry should be created.
• Select Next.

Every enabled day must have an Hours value greater than zero, and at least one weekday must be selected. The wizard prevents proceeding otherwise.

Default Hours From

When a Shift Pattern is available, the wizard can initialize the weekday selections and hours using expected hours from the Shift Pattern.

• Working uses the expected working hours.
• Attendance uses the expected attendance hours.

You can review and change the resulting weekday selections and hours before continuing.

For example, for an eight-hour vacation week:

• Monday: enabled, 8
• Tuesday: enabled, 8
• Wednesday: enabled, 8
• Thursday: enabled, 8
• Friday: enabled, 8
• Saturday: disabled
• Sunday: disabled

When using Specific Activity, these weekday settings determine which dates within the selected date range receive entries. The wizard does not use each employee’s expected shift dates to decide whether to create the line in this mode; it uses the weekday selections entered on this page.

Step 5: Choose how the time cards are grouped

The final page provides two options.

Create a new Time Card for every day

• Enable Create a new Time Card for every day if each applicable date should have its own Time Card.
• Clear it if the applicable dates should be represented by lines on a single Time Card for each employee.

The wizard enables Create a new Time Card for every day by default.

For example, if an employee has five applicable dates:

Enabled

• Monday → Time Card 1
• Tuesday → Time Card 2
• Wednesday → Time Card 3
• Thursday → Time Card 4
• Friday → Time Card 5

Disabled

• One Time Card is created for the employee.
• The applicable Monday-through-Friday entries are added as separate lines to that card.

This option is particularly useful when you specifically need multiple time cards for the same employee over a date range.

Automatically approve the created Time Card(s)

• Enable Automatically approve the created Time Card(s) if the generated cards should immediately be marked Approved.
• Leave it disabled if a supervisor or payroll user should review the generated cards before approval.

The option sets the Approved value on the generated Time Card headers.

Automatically approving a card does not mean that the wizard posts the time card. It creates the cards and optionally marks them Approved.

Step 6: Create the time cards

Before completing the wizard:

• Confirm the employees, Shift Pattern, or Group selected on page 1.
• Confirm the Start Date and End Date.
• Confirm whether you selected Specific Activity or Use Shift Details As Template.
• If using Specific Activity, confirm the Activity Code, weekdays, and hours.
• Confirm whether you want one card per day or one card covering the range.
• Confirm whether the cards should be automatically approved.
• Select Finish.

Shop Floor Insight creates the time cards and displays the number of Time Cards created.

Example: Create a week of vacation for one employee

To create five eight-hour vacation entries for one employee:

• Create For: A Specific Employee
• Employee No.: Select the employee
• Start Date: First vacation date
• End Date: Last vacation date
• Specific Activity: Enabled
• Activity Code: Your configured vacation activity
• Monday-Friday: Enable the applicable weekdays
• Hours: 8 for each applicable weekday
• Create a new Time Card for every day: Enable if you want one card per vacation day; disable if you want one card containing all vacation lines
• Automatically approve: Set according to your normal approval process
• Select Finish

Example: Create shutdown entries for a group

For a planned plant shutdown affecting a configured Shop Floor Group:

• Create For: Employees in a Group
• Code: Select the affected group
• Start Date / End Date: Enter the shutdown period
• Specific Activity: Enabled
• Activity Code: Select the activity your organization uses for shutdown time
• Enable the applicable weekdays.
• Enter the appropriate Hours for each selected weekday.
• Decide whether to create one Time Card per day or one Time Card per employee covering the shutdown.
• Decide whether the generated cards should be automatically approved.
• Select Finish.

This causes the wizard to repeat the time-card creation process for the members of the selected group.

Example: Create cards from employees’ normal shift schedules

To create time cards that follow each employee’s configured shift details:

• Select Employees in a Shift or Employees in a Group.
• Select the required Shift Pattern or Group.
• Enter the required date range.
• Enable Use Shift Details As Template.
• Select Next.
• The weekday/hour page is skipped.
• Choose whether to create a new Time Card for every applicable day.
• Choose whether to automatically approve the cards.
• Select Finish.

For each employee and date, Shop Floor Insight only creates shift-based entries when that employee is expected to work. It then creates lines from the applicable Shift Pattern Details, including their attendance hours and start/end times.

Choosing the appropriate mode

Use Specific Activity when you want to say:

Create this particular type of time for these employees on these weekdays for these hours.

Examples include vacation, holidays, training, or planned shutdown activities.

Use Shift Details As Template when you want to say:

Create time according to how each employee is already scheduled to work.

The wizard can therefore handle both simple bulk entry and more schedule-driven creation without manually creating each Time Card and Time Card Line individually.