The Time and Attendance (TAA) module tracks your employees' time, collecting data to help you manage clock-ins, work activities, time cards, absences, overtime, reports, and payroll integration.
Your employee data is imported into the TAA software, usually directly from a file from your payroll system. You organize the employees by department and specify job types and job codes to use for their time cards. The job types are specified tasks your employees perform, such as a regular route, a field trip, and training. The job codes are numbered designations for the job types (such as JT1 for the first job type of a regular route) that match the exact codes your payroll system uses (for customers who export their TAA data for payroll).
TAA also enables you to customize the software to make it applicable to your own business rules. For example, if your organization applies a rounding policy when paying your employees, you can include that in your TAA implementation. Another common business rule TAA can facilitate is guaranteed hours — in which you guarantee to pay certain employees for a specific amount of time, whether they work that many hours or not.
You can export your employees' work hours data to a file that is formatted for your payroll system's use, after you have worked with your Synovia contact to include the records that are specifically needed for that payroll software. Then you can manually deliver the export file to the payroll system as arranged between your organization and the payroll company — perhaps by emailing it as an attachment or using an FTP site.
Note: For details about the TAA user interface, see Legacy TAA Versus Synovia TAA and Navigating the Time and Attendance Module.
A Typical TAA Workflow
A typical example of the Time and Attendance workflow is as follows:
The first step of this workflow is the driver clocking in and out (via a mobile data terminal [MDT] in the vehicle, the TAA Portal, or the Synovia app), which is automatically recorded in TAA. In the second step, a lead driver or manager will use the TAA software to check the time cards from the preceding day. He or she will make any corrections that are necessary due to shift exceptions, such as if a driver entered the wrong job type or forgot to clock out. The third step is approving the time cards in TAA, and the final step is using TAA's export feature to create a work hours data file for the payroll database (that you can manually deliver to your payroll company as frequently as needed).
Your workflow may be different, based on your preferences and size, and there are variances even among organizations that use this same process. Further, some organizations don’t include a step for approval at all because they feel that the time cards are ready to export after editing:
TAA/Payroll System Integration
TAA is designed to work with almost any payroll software package. Certain payroll systems have predefined setups in the module:
- ADP
- AMS
- Lawson
- LINQ (formerly ISIS)
- Munis
- SunGard Pentamation
- RDS
- SunPac Sartox
- Skyward
- USPS (Uniform Staff Payroll System)
TAA implementation may be quicker with one of these payroll systems, as its needed settings for export are already one of TAA's configurations. However, TAA can also work with almost any other payroll system, through the use of our Generic setup. With this, your Synovia contact works with you and your payroll provider's specific needs to customize the requirements for the payroll software.
The TAA Portal
The TAA Portal (https://portal.synovia.com), sometimes called the kiosk, is a website where employees can obtain and approve their time card data, clock in and out, and make requests for days off, depending on what options your organization has chosen to turn on.