Executive salaried employee timesheet options

Question

Should a executive salaried / exempt employee have a timesheet or not?

Answer

This type speaks to the Executive salaried / exempt employee as opposed to the non-executive exempt employee.

In larger companies, a non-executive exempt employee's work time might be entirely allocated to projects and activities that roll up into costing, and billing. They also have accrued leave balances which are closely tracked. Their leave time is usually approved, either in advance when their approvers approve their leave requests, or, if their are no requests, when they submit timesheets that record leave taken during a time period. Either way, generally, for the non-executive exempt employee, both work and leave time are recorded, submitted and approved.

Executive exempt employees

In general, for the executive exempt employee, they are often considered in a different class. Some organizations high have timekeepers track and submit work and/or leave time on the executive's behalf. Other organizations, might not track executive time at all. And finally, a third option might have the executive tracking and submitting their time, but in a way that makes it as easy a way as possible.

So, time tracking for the executive exempt employee depends upon how you answer these questions:

1. Will this employee's time ever be billable to a customer?
2. Are their leave accruals and leave taken tracked at all?
3. Do your organization's policies require the executive exempt employee to certify the leave that he or she takes?

This article outline the three most common approaches to tracking executive exempt employee time.

Executive employee's time is billable

If the executive's time is billable, he or a surrogate, like an executive admin functioning as a timekeeper, will track and submit the timesheet. This timesheet should track at leave billable client project hours. It might also track leave.

Executive has no billable time 
In this case, the executive might not need to track work time at all, but might, because of company policy, be responsible for recording leave taken.

1. Approval of the timesheet is optional as the executive might be the CEO and report to no line manager.
2. Another option, is to have executive timesheet submitted and approved by their executive admins, HR or payroll if it is required that all timesheets in the company be approved. 

Executive leave tracked, work hours autofill. 
In this case, the executive's time is not billable, but payroll might require that the executive's work hours must be accounted for in order to generate a valid paycheck. One option is to setup an Autofill rule that will automatically autofill the employee's scheduled hours for the time period into the timesheet less scheduled/approved leave and holidays already on the timesheet. This feature requires that the executive a timekeeper submit the timesheet will automatically. To set this rule up:  

1. Navigate to System>Policies>Policy>Time Entry Rules>Miscellaneous>Autofill
2. Check enable. 
3. Make sure that you set the executive's profile has Scheduled Hours per Week value (e.g. 40.00)

Additional considerations about leave only timesheets

Sometimes payroll does not require an executive timesheet to have work hours. In this case, you have an opportunity to assign a Leave Only Timesheet to the executive. Additionally, remembering that when a Leave Request is approved the underlying leave time entries of that request are also approved, regardless of whether the timesheet is submitted and approved. This creates an opportunity for the executive to just submit leave requests, have them approved, but to not have to submit timesheets. To set up this solution:

1. Navigate to System>Templates>(create) Executive Exempt Template>Advanced>Time Entries Allowed>Leave Only
2. You can assign this template to the executive profile.
3. When it's time to submit the leave-only timesheet, they can ignore email notice reminders, or they can submit the timesheet.
4. The approved leave, will have all the properties of leave time entries.
5. They can be sent to payroll or ERP systems as an approved time entries.
6. The approved leave will also be deducted from the executive employee's leave balances.