Timesheet Approval App Training Materials

The HR-Primary authorizer in your department can assign you the Timesheet Administrator authorization in the Roles Database (using Roles Admin web) or make the request to business-help@mit.edu. An authorization can be given for a whole Org Unit, which would include all non-exempt employees (support staff and service staff), as well as hourly paid students (grad & undergrad). It can also be given at the time group level, which is a subset of individuals from the Org Unit.  

A time group is an assignment to each non-exempt or hourly student position within an Org unit and should be used to assign an individual for timesheet approval. A department determines what time groups they would like to have for these groups. For example, some departments have a support time group and a student time group. Some departments have a time group for each of their supervisors so they see only employees and hourly students that report to them.

You can each out to payroll@mit.edu to create a new time group. Provide them with your org unit, time group name, and a list of positions that need to be moved to the new time group.

Time entries can be approved (or declined) by day or by the week. If all entries are approved as entered by the employee and no edits are needed, you can select Approve in the Summary view. If you want to approve (or decline) some, but not all days, you can select the appropriate action button at the top of each day.

For hourly students that actually do not work any hours for a given week, this can be selected to indicate this and move the time sheet from Missing status to Completed status. This should only be selected if you are sure no hours were worked. When the time sheet entry tile in Atlas app is available, hourly students will be instructed to access their timesheet every week and enter their hours or make this selection themselves. 

Non-exempt employees hold positions with weekly duties. If they do not work any hours in a week, they should be using available leave or report each regular work day as Leave without pay. 

If hours entered by an employee are pending (not approved by DLCI) after the weekly cutoff, they will be automatically approved to ensure timely payment. If you have identified hours entered by an employee that you are unsure of or know to be incorrect, you should decline the hours, selecting the appropriate reason, to avoid this automatic approval. This removes them from pending status so they are not automatically approved but retains the history that they were submitted by the employee. If a correction needs to be made, you can add another entry with the correct information to the day. The original entry is not editable.

Declined hours remain in that status for reference. You can add additional time to the same day, but it would not be modifying the original entry but creating a new one.

Comments entered by an employee or hourly student would be included in the Summary View. If comments exist, a red indicator will be next to Summary View link.
 

When some days are approved in a week and others are still pending, the status is Partially Approved. For example, if you approved M-F hours on Friday and the employee added additional hours to Saturday after the initial approval, the status is Partially Approved. Remember that all hours should be reviewed by the Time Sheet Approver before the weekly cut-off or they will be automatically approved and paid. If you did not approve hours due to an outstanding question or incorrect entry, you should decline the day so they are not automatically approved by Payroll.

Distribution is displayed under the Summary View and can be edited from there.

We no longer have the functionality to mark distribution as reviewed.

Yes. Edit the cost objects as needed and just exit the time sheet as opposed to selecting Approve (or Decline).

Select Reports in the upper right-hand corner and then select Absence Quotas. You can export the list to Excel to review the details.

We have implemented regular notifications that will send email to your inbox and a push notification to your mobile device to inform you of pending actions you need to take in the Atlas app Time Approval tile. These are generated on Monday afternoons.

You can't turn off email notifications if you have authorization in the Roles database to approve timesheets. If you have the MIT Atlas app on your mobile device, you may disable notifications for that but not the email. You should ask your HR-Primary authorizer to remove the authorizations in the Roles Database if you do not approve timesheets.

The new notification functionality is to ensure that employees and hourly students remember to enter their hours each week, as well as to inform Approvers of time entered that is pending their action.

A push notification is sent to you via the MIT Atlas app when there are timesheets pending your action. 

You can go to your usual App store on your mobile device and search for MIT Atlas to download. For your desktop, you can go to the MIT App Store at https://apps-mit-edu.ezproxyberklee.flo.org/ and select the appropriate option for Atlas.

Within the detail of each time entry, there is a cost object field that you can use.

To reduce the amount of data entry needed. When you select the + for a day, the default attendance is work and the hours are either the employee’s normal work hours (weekly hours/5) or 1 hour for an hourly paid student.

Per the MIT Sick policy, an employee can use a limited # of days from their sick balance each anniversary year for personal or sick-family. They are allowed up to 3 days for personal and up to 3 days for sick-family. These hours are deducted from the sick balance. To allow for visibility into what has been used, we capture the used hours for each and display them to the employee on their rem statement each week (pay stub).