Clarity

  • 1.  Advantages/Disadvantages of Bi-Weekly Timesheets

    Posted Jul 25, 2016 12:06 PM

    Could you please help gathering Advantages vs. Disadvantages of Bi-Weekly Timesheets? We would like to move to bi-weekly timesheets for Financial Processing but would like to see if there is any negative impact any of you have seen?



  • 2.  Re: Advantages/Disadvantages of Bi-Weekly Timesheets

    Posted Jul 25, 2016 12:58 PM

    No advantages, on CA PPM side, that I'm aware of.  However, you may have a business advantage, due to your business processes/rules that are bi-weekly (e.g. actual costs are updated and pushed into Rate Matrix biweekly) then maybe you have a local, business advantage for doing this.  For instance, we have a group that updates their actual costs monthly, so they want to process transactions monthly, not weekly.  When we process weekly, they are using the 'old' actual cost and need to perform an end of month adjustment - and WIP adjustments in CA PPM are not easy to perform in large quantities.  Of course, we have other groups that want to process weekly, so there's a bit of an unresolved conflict...  if there was a good way to filter transactions on the Post to WIP page, we might meet both groups objectives.  But that's another story - which had an ERQ behind it - now, see that it didn't carryover to this forum's Idea list....

     

    Disadvantages:

    1. Quality of timesheet content/accuracy degrades the longer one waits - unless user's have good personal habit of filling in their work daily, regardless of submission requirements.
    2. Project scheduling updates delayed - can't be performed weekly if actuals and pending ETC requests are turned in bi-weekly.
    3. Transaction errors take longer to find - bigger quantity to correct.  Biweekly vs. weekly, maybe the difference is not that great.  But remember, this is inventory that is not just produced and sitting idle - it can go defective while waiting (e.g. Project completed successfully, all timesheets turned in approved, posted - then, while waiting for Post to WIP and for Posting Transactions to Financials, project and/or resources are made inactive - now, posting creates invalid transactions, which need to be corrected....the longer one waits to complete financials, the more errors will accumulate.)

     

    You could still have weekly timesheet submission, approval and posting, but then run the "Post to WIP" function and "Post Transactions to Financial" job biweekly.  That way, you might get better timesheet content, have it delivered to project managers weekly, but then meet whatever the requirements are from finance for the biweekly financial processing.  If the errors from point 3, above can be minimized through your business process controls (e.g. don't deactivate projects or resources before financial processing is completed), then maybe this would work for you.

     

    What do you think?



  • 3.  Re: Advantages/Disadvantages of Bi-Weekly Timesheets

    Posted Nov 30, 2016 06:52 PM

    Thank you recommendations and concludes + and -. This helps. I think, your recommendation works if there's no schedule constraints for financial system. If they need data on 1st day of Month, there is no way that Weekly Timesheets could achieve it as Week will not always end on last day of Month.

     

    We would like to have Financial processing tied to Calendar Month and not Fiscal Month that includes 4 or 5 weeks. Hence, We are moving to Semi-Monthly (1-15, 16-end of month) timesheets.



  • 4.  Re: Advantages/Disadvantages of Bi-Weekly Timesheets

    Broadcom Employee
    Posted Jul 26, 2016 01:10 PM

    I agree with Dale on the issues with accuracy and approvals. What I have done is submit timesheets weekly, but only post them biweekly. Gives the user and managers the benefits of a weekly cadence for submission and approval, but impacts to financials are limited to biweekly.



  • 5.  Re: Advantages/Disadvantages of Bi-Weekly Timesheets

    Posted Jul 27, 2016 07:06 AM

    I agree with Dale, accuracy and errors would be my biggest concern.

    What's the business story here? (what benefit are you trying to get !)

     

    I'd also add by moving to bi-weekly you would increase the amount of system processing to be done in multiple areas:

    • double timesheets created/edited
    • double amount of timesheets to approve (+timesheet processes if you are using them)
    • double amount of timesheets to post
    • double amount of transactions to create

     

    All of which would typically happen in a very short period on last working day of timesheet

    Might be negligible at your scale but worth impact assessing.



  • 6.  Re: Advantages/Disadvantages of Bi-Weekly Timesheets

     
    Posted Jul 27, 2016 06:22 PM

    Hi DJ.V - Did any of the responses help answer your question? If so please mark as Correct Answer. Thanks!