AX7

It might be hard to get an overview on how the module works, so I made this chart that I feel pretty well illustrates the process and flow of the module in general.

When doing training I feel that this is a great point to start.
An alternative view is this top down approach with a little more detail.

Data input:
Time and attendance uses jobs to that is registered in raw registrations at the time of input from the user. It creates multiple jobs for each production operation depending on the settings, a job for each project and project activity, a job for each indirect activity and absence code and absence group.

Calculating work times:
When the person doing the calculation/approval opens the profile day for control of the hours the system creates the time journal header and time journal transactions based on the raw registrations. The journal can be changed. It can also be reverted back to it’s original transactions by importing the raw registration transactions again. The system require absence to be identified at calculation.

Calculating parameters and Pay agreements:
The pay agreements are used to set the base for what pay types that will be generated.
After the work times are calculated and approved it runs through the calculation parameters where the profile types corresponding with the raw registrations generate pay agreement types based on the calculation parameter settings and pay agreements.

Transfer:
After calculating and approving the user will transfer the journals. This results in the lines being removed from the view of the user and pay types being locked in. These can later be exported to an external payroll system and the pay type transactions will be flagged as exported.

At the time of transfer the production orders and projects will get hours amended in the time journals posted as discrepancies in new route cards/Job Cards and Hour journals.

That should cover the basics!

Go to the AX 7 – Time and Attendance guide page

There are a lot of parameters, but I’ll focus on the ones you mostly need to take in to account early on. We’ll get in to the different parameters later, but the default parameters are pretty OK.

No surprise. The general parameters are located at: Time and Attendance > Setup > Time and Attendance Parameters.

I most often keep “Auto insert flex-/absence” blank. If not you will automatically get an absence suggested when approving hours. You would probably want to allocate this and be alerted when absence is registered.

I seldom “Use password”. This is a security feature giving you an extra box in the check in dialogue. It is a field on the worker setup. Leaving it blank lets you only require the user ID. I have a customer where the factory floor workers only authenticate with a barcode ID (no password) and the administration use ID + Password.

I often “Use badge ID” because most companies don’t have a good number sequence on the employee numbers. This requires you to add an ID to the Badge ID field on the worker setup.

Check out the post on user setup for the Password and Badge ID fields.

I recommend using centihours as “Time presentation” as this is easier in conjunction with payroll.

I normally set “Restart at clock-in” to “Yes”. That allows the workers to check in and the system will try to continue on the job they where active on when signing out. If not, they will have to sign in to the job as well after they checked in.

If you set up the “Automatic” clock out function, the system will try checking the user out at the clock out time in their active profile if they forget to clock out after the given “Max. working minutes” has transpired since they clocked in.

I prefer to have a separate journal type for the “Inventory Adjustment” journals then what is standard to be able to see what is created from the terminals as opposed to the journal entry form.

I would recommend to have different journal types for the Hour, Fee and Item journals then standard to be able to distinctly identify the T&A journals.

“Post automatically” set to Yes will post the journals at time of registration and post a offset journal when transferring approved time registrations. Setting it to No will post the journal, but waits until you have approved and then transfer the time registrations to do so.

If you want to use “Cost categories” as opposed to the hour rates from time and attendance for the project activities, then activate this.

Dimensions decide what way the dimensions should be inherited and what should be master in cases of conflicts where both jobs (projects/activities) and the workers have the same dimension filled out.

You can actually run time and attendance with a great insights by only using the indirect activities. You set up the cost handling here.

Set up a separate “Ledger journal” to be able to track the journals in the general ledger. You can use cost categories, which is a set cost for all activities, or get the data from the payroll transactions if you use this to the full extent.

Dimension can be set to a hierarchy or to a single record type either worker or the job. Most often use a hierarchy of “Worker -> Job” because that takes both in to account and the one (Worker in that case) overrides the other.

In Time and Attendance you can either use cost categories or get the cost price from the payroll transactions. You will have to add rates to the pay types, but that gives you the possibility to have more accurate costing.

In this setup you select what is added to your cost price. I’ll go in to this more closely in a separate post.

Best described by Microsoft help wiki: (Formated by me)

Specify whether the user can roll back registrations after pay transactions have been exported to a file. The following options are available:

• Error (the user receives an error message, and the rollback is not performed),
• Warning (the user receives a warning message before the rollback is performed)
• Accept (the rollback is performed; no message is displayed to the user).

More on this in “Electronic time card”.

Setting up number sequences as in any other module: Use prefixes if you want to easily identify the series and never start a series with only zeros.

This will restore your settings to the default setup if you get to far off… which i find kind of odd…

Go to the AX 7 – Time and Attendance guide page

This is the first post in the AX 7 T&A guide series.

Time and attendance is a very flexible solution for registering attendance and absence as well as manufacturing execution and realtime project feedback.

This is a pretty big setup job if you want it to be done properly. You can however get started right away! Following these steps will get you to start registering time clocking in and out.

1. First you need to run the configuration wizard under Wizards. This will create the required setting like system jobs in indirect activities (clock in/out, wait time, abort pause and more), terminal configurations and profile types.

• Profile group
  Time and attendance > Setup > Time profiles > Profile groups
• Calculation group
  Time and attendance > Setup > Groups > Calculation groups
• Approval group
  Time and attendance > Setup > Groups > Approval groups

5. Now launch the Time and attendance registration terminal and select a terminal setup.
Common > Common > Time and attendance > Clock in/out (Punch clock)

You can now clock in and out using the employee Id (Leave password blank if not set) and do the same to clock out.

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This is the bare minimum to actually start registering attendance. Cool thing is… If you’re only looking for the attendance part of the solution you can start punching time and do the rest of the setup later.

Go to the AX 7 – Time and Attendance guide page