About timesheet rules

Accurate timesheets ensure that hiring managers and PMO users have precise records of the hours worked and associated costs, and that workers are paid accurately. By building flexible timesheet rules, organizations can automate the application of labor laws such as overtime calculations, mandated breaks, and other region-specific or industry-specific regulations and requirements. This helps ensure and support compliance across diverse work arrangements and locations.

As a Beeline Professional administrator, you can build a set of rules to determine the rates that apply to the time submitted through timesheets. As a result, workers can submit their worked hours and accurate time rates are automatically calculated for them, reducing their administrative burden.

A timesheet rule is a set of input and output values that represent a single instruction about how pay is calculated on a submitted timesheet. The input values define which conditions to check during timesheet allocation. The output values define which allocation is applied when the conditions are met.

All instructions within a rule are executed from the top down, either daily or weekly. Time is only allocated once, which means there is no risk of inaccuracies.

Table 1. Input and output values
		Description	Usage
Input values	Allocation time codes	Indicates the router time codes used to activate this rule.	required
	Total hours	Indicates the time threshold required to activate the rule.	required
	Day grouping	Indicates if time is tracked daily or weekly. You can use this to indicate different daily and weekly thresholds. If not specified, a weekly grouping applies automatically.	optional
Output values	Allocation time codes	When the input conditions activate the rule, this indicates the time code that will apply to the new allocation.	required
Output values	Last working day accumulation	For weekly groupings, this option allows for overtime allocation at the end of the week. Do not use it with `Daily` day groupings.	required

About building rules

You build a rule by adding input and output items to each of your instruction rows. Next, you specify values for each item.

First, define the most specific rules such as overtime or double time. Next, define the rules that use your regular time codes. To reorder the instructions, drag and drop them to the location that you want. For more information, see Building timesheet rules.

For example, you might want to set up timesheet rules that automatically calculate overtime rates for any hours worked over the weekly threshold of 40 hours. You can define two instructions to support this rule:

An instruction that processes the hours over the weekly threshold.
An instruction that processes the hours less than or equal to the weekly threshold.

Use a router time code for your input allocation time code.

Table 2. Timesheet rules instructions that support weekly groupings
Input values			Output values
Allocation time codes	Total hours	Day grouping	Allocation items	Last working day accumulation
`<Your router time code>`	Greater than 40	weekly	`<Your overtime time code>`	Yes
`<Your router time code>`	Less than or equal to 40	weekly	`<Your regular time code>`	No

You can also introduce a daily threshold to allow for more granular allocations by adding these instructions:

An instruction that processes the hours greater than or equal to the daily threshold of 12 hours for double time.
An instruction that processes the hours greater than or equal to the daily threshold of 8 hours for overtime.
An instruction that processes the hours less than or equal to the daily threshold of 8 hours for regular time.

Table 3. Timesheet rules instructions that support weekly and daily groupings
Input values			Output values
Allocation time codes	Total hours	Day grouping	Allocation items	Last working day accumulation
`<Your router time code>`	Greater than or equal to 12	daily	`<Your double-time time code>`	No
`<Your router time code>`	Greater than 8	daily	`<Your overtime time code>`	No
`<Your router time code>`	Greater than 40	weekly	`<Your overtime time code>`	Yes
`<Your router time code>`	Less than or equal to 8	daily	`<Your regular time code>`	No
`<Your router time code>`	Less than or equal to 40	weekly	`<Your regular time code>`	No

Understanding timesheet rule versions

When you update a rule, the system creates a new version of that rule to help you keep track of all the changes you’ve made. You always access the latest version of a rule when you open it, but you can retrieve any of the previous versions and review them. The Version list is located in the upper right of the rule editor page.

If the changes you’ve made to a rule don’t work as expected, you can restore a previous version that you know works well. To restore a previous version of a rule, select the version you want to restore from the Version list, and then select Restore.

Figure 1. Restoring a rule version