How do I change payroll time periods in Pacific Timesheet?

Question

How do I change payroll time periods in Pacific Timesheet?

Answer

Organizations might need to change their payroll time periods from a semi-monthly to biweekly time period. Reasons for such a change can be:

1. Simplified regular time periods are easier for employees to understand. Semi-monthly time periods are more irregular.
2. As biweekly time periods can be setup to end on a Sunday and timesheets are submitted and approved on a Monday (a business day). With Semi-monthly time periods, timesheets can be due for submission and approval at times on weekend days. 

How To Convert From Semi-Monthly to Biweekly Time Periods

Overall, this conversion requires the creation of a system cutover date and changing settings in Pacific Timesheet.

Steps to Complete the Conversion

1. Pick a date where the finish date of your current semi-monthly time period is closely in sync with the beginning of the biweekly time period.
2. For example, the best cutover date would be where the old semi-monthly time period ends one day before the beginning of the new biweekly time period.
3. Once you have decided on the biweekly time period start and finish dates, go to system>time periods>add> and create a new biweekly time period with the correct start date. The system will automatically create timesheets to every biweekly time period (every two weeks) after this start date. 
4. Schedule to have all semi-monthly timesheets submitted and locked on the last business day of the time period. A friday afternoon would be best. Your aim is to completely finish the old time period and have submitted and locked down before beginning the new period.
5. Once all timesheets are submitted and locked, change the timesheet template time period from semi-monthly to biweekly. You should do this before the new biweekly time period starts to ensure that all new timesheets are created with the new biweekly time period.

Case Example:
Conversion Description: Semi-monthly to Biweekly
Old Period/Semi-monthly date range: 1st - 15th
New Period/Biweekly date range: 16th - 30th
Have all employees submit the semi-monthly timesheet. After all timesheets are submitted and locked from further editing, change employee timesheet template to the new time period (e.g. biweekly). It is important to have the old timesheets locked because any editing of the timesheet will now change its time period to the new time period.

Admins and/or payroll staff should approve and export the final semi-monthly period.

When the employee logs into the system next time, the system will automatically render a biweekly time period for his timesheet. 

You can apply the same approach to changing from the biweekly to semi-monthly or from any period to any other period. Again, be sure to complete and lock down the old period before having users begin entering data into the new period.

Caution:

1. Failure to lock down older timesheets before changing the timesheet template will cause older time periods to change from semi-monthly to biweekly.
2. Not planning to have the semi-monthly and biweekly timesheets overlap can lead to double counted data, as you might have two different timesheets claiming hours for the same dates.