Payroll Approval Process – Pro & Network Editions

This article will help you understand how to approve employee hours for payroll in Virtual TimeClock Pro and Network editions. There are 5 steps to the process: employees review and approve their hours, manager review and approval of employee timecards, sign off on timecards, printing or exporting employee hours for payroll, and closing the pay period.

Note: If you are using the Basic Edition of Virtual TimeClock, review the Payroll Approval Process for Basic Edition article.

1. Employee Timecard Review (Optional)
If you want employees to approve their timecard hours before payroll is processed, there are two options:

• Print and sign - Employees can manually print and sign their timecards. Find out how you can customize the timecard signature line by reviewing the Timecard Signature Options article.
• Electronic timecard approval - Once configured, employees can approve hours digitally right from the timecard report. Learn more about Electronic Timecard Approval.

2. Manager Timecard Review (Optional)
Once employees have approved their hours, you can have managers review and approve employee hours. Follow the links in the step above for details on how managers can approve hours by either signing printed employee timecards or utilizing the electronic timecard approval system.

3. Sign Off Timecards
This step is completed by a time clock administrator, or a manager who has been given access to payroll approval. Follow these steps to sign off on timecards:

1. Select Turn Administration On from the File menu.
2. If you have more than one display group, choose Active Users from the display group pop up menu. This will ensure that hours from all employees in all groups are included in payroll approval.

3. Select Approval from the administrator toolbar to open the timecard approval dashboard.
4. Review employee hours for accuracy.

Note: To edit a timecard, select an employee, choose View Timecard and use the Entry Editor option to modify a punch.

5. After reviewing timecards, click Sign off All to approve hours.

4. Print Payroll Hours Report or Create Payroll Integration (Optional)
Once you have signed off on hours, you can use the Report button to print a payroll report or, if you have previously setup payroll integration, choose Export to format and save employee hours to an integration file. For more information, review the Payroll Integration article.

5. Close Your Payroll Period
The final step in the payroll approval process is closing the pay period. Closing the period means that the hours and pay data for the current period are written to the database as a permanent record.

Note: After you close the payroll period, Virtual TimeClock will automatically advance the reporting dates to your next pay cycle.

To close the period, click the Close Period button at the bottom of the Payroll Approval window.

Note: Once a payroll period is closed, the hours in that period cannot be edited without Reopening the Payroll Period. Employees can continue to punch in and out even if you do not close the payroll period.

If you’ve neglected closing periods, it’s easy to close multiple periods all at once. Simply update your payroll settings to reflect your current payroll period and Virtual TimeClock will automatically total and close every period up to the new period start date.