You create profiles to determin the users actual working times (Time and attendance > Time profiles > Profiles). You can do this in so many different ways that it is could be a dauntfull task to attack. I’ve got my own way of doing it and I’ll show you my way and some other methods of creating this. There is a lot to say here, but jump to: “Create a standard profile” and do that to quickly get started or read all to become a wiz.
Note: Name these based on function or department (Production, Administration, 50%, Day Shift, Night Shift, Flex daytime…) and not on users(eg. Jhonny, Frank, 105, FRS…).
Profile types:
You can configure the profile types at Time and attendance > Time profiles > Profile types. Durring the wizard execution we got some standard profile types, but to get the full functionality you will need atleast:
- Break
- Clock in
- Clock out
- Overtime
- Paid Break
- Standard Time
- Flex +
- Flex –
Create a standard profile
A standard profile has expected clock-in and clock-out records and could looks like this:
| Profile type | Start | End | Start day | End day |
| Overtime | 00:00:00 | 07:00:00 | Monday | Monday |
| Clock in | 07:00:00 | 07:00:00 | Monday | Monday |
| Standard | 08:00:00 | 09:00:00 | Monday | Monday |
| Paid Break | 09:00:00 | 09:15:00 | Monday | Monday |
| Standard | 09:15:00 | 12:00:00 | Monday | Monday |
| Break | 12:00:00 | 12:30:00 | Monday | Monday |
| Standard | 12:30:00 | 15:30:00 | Monday | Monday |
| Clock out | 15:30:00 | 15:30:00 | Monday | Monday |
| Overtime | 15:30:00 | 08:00:00 | Monday | Tuesday |
Before 07:00 the user gets Ovetime. After 07:00 they have standard time untill a paid break for 15 minutes at 09:00 and a break at 12:00 for 30 minutes. The clock out is at 15:30 and time after this is overtime. The profile has tolerances for 5 minutes before and after clock-in/out making the rounding within the clock-in/out times.
After creating one day, you can copy this to the rest of the days in the week by using the copy function.
Note: Always check the “Profile time day:” to see the total work hours for that day and “Profile time total:” for the entire week after copying is done.
Microsoft has some great information and examples on this on MSDN for AX 2012 that still applies: Click here
Profiles that need overtime approval
As I don’t want the system to automatically give the users overtime if they register before or after clock-in/out because this has a great economic impact. I use switch codes and secondary profile type to introduce a approval step for this action. The user can clock in early, but they have to enter a switch code to get the overtime. The switch codes are set up with the approval parameter active and available to be registered on.
You can create new switch codes by going to the Indirect Activity Categories (Time and attendance > Indirect Activity Categories) and adding a group and corresponding activities.
Then add a switch code to the line.
I use Break as the default profile type, because this has no payment associated with it. So if the employee works after 15:30 without registering overtime. No payment will be triggered after 15:30.
Note: The final record goes past 24:00 on to Tuesday because a user can then work past 24:00 and still get paid. The calculation is for the profile date and it only looks at the day it is activated. It does not look at the next day after 24:00.
Create a profile without clock-in/out constraints
The simplest profile type is the one without clock in or out times. This solution is pretty quick to set up and covers anyone who clocks in at any time of the day. It is mostly used for “Contractors” (external workers/hired help) and part time workers that is paid hour by hour. It will not prompt the user for absence codes.
Note: This type require users to register in and out from breaks. These can be added to the profile if needed, but are then static.
Punching in and out of breaks require the right Indirect activities system jobs to be created.
Notice that the lines are chronological, and since the first line lasts untill 24:00 the second line last untill 23:00, but on the day after. This way anyone can clock in durring the entre day from 00:00 to 23:59 and work untill 23:00 the next day without any issues. It is important to check the “Profile time day:” to controll this.
Same type with approval for overtime:
Flex time profiles:
We will cover is in Flex time section later.
Prepair for work planner:
While creating profiles. Select a color for the profile. Try grouping them logically, so you can look at the color and kind of an impression on the type of profile.
My standards are:
- Green for day shifts
- Amber/orange for evening shifts
- Red for night shift
- Grey for generic profiles
- Yellow for reduced times
- White for free or NA
- Blue for flex profiles
dyntips.com by Fredrik Sætre 
Hi Fredrik,
I´ve been experimenting with using the time and attendance to include office personnel that actually not use punch clock to register hours. I want to get 8 hours on each worker in an approve group without using profile type “Clock in” or “Clock out” on the time profile. These hours will then be added, along with the punched time for the workers, to a payroll file. Do you know of a way to accomplish these hours?
/Pierre
To do this without any input you would have to rely on absence codes. There is a parameter under time and attendance that autofill any absence with a given code. This could create some type of payroll trigger and would create your 8 hours based of your profile no matter what. Use an additional title, cert or skill delimitation to make sure only office workers gets this advantage and other workers will get reduction in pay…
So this will also affect your other workers in the sense that it will assume all absence is not payable unless they input and the control (stop message) that you get when approving will be gone.
It has to have some kind of input in time journals to do this. You could have workers clock in and out and statically post 8 hours even if they work more or less then that… However using this will also make you able to handle absence much easier and also have statistics on some office hours.
I assume this is because you want to have some reports generated from the system?
You could create a very simple job to post to the time journals that can be batched every day before approval.
Thanks Fredrik for the reply. Ok, I see. There is no automatic way to get 8 hours for office worker to get registered as working hour with doing the clock in/out.
The challenge is that we want to generate a base for a XML-file for hours and payroll from AX to an external payroll system, for both workers (who uses the punch clock) and for office personnel, who do not use punch clock but only register absence in their current system.
Using the parameter “Autofill” will cause a lot of problems if there is mistyping on the punch clock or if workers forget to clock in or out. If I understand the setting correctly it will “fill up” missing time with that flex or absence code specified in relation with the specified Time Profile. I believe that this can cause more problems that it will solve, I afraid.
I believe that the easiest way to do this is to create a small job (customization) to generate 8 hours for a group (approval group) connected to the office personnel . If we can make this job to also use the logic from the “planned absence” we will have base for a payment file for both workers and office personnel.
Sounds great. Good luck and hope that your successful in your ventures. Thanks again for reading and appreciating my blog.
Hi,
Great post!
But I can figur oyt how it should be set up if I want flex when a worker arrives early from a break?
Tanks in advance!
Hi,
Great Post!
But i can figur out how it should be set up if i want my workers to gain flex if they arrive early from a break?
Is this possibal?
Thanks in advance!