One of the simpler shift concepts, and one very often used, is Balancing. In a nutshell this allows you to move time from one category to another based on pre-defined minimum and maximum amounts.  

Related Articles

Daily Balancing

Daily balancing means that the hours are balanced daily. So you can define a set of rules that apply to a day, and then as that day is processed the rules are applied.

Example : If an employee normally works an 8 hour day, but comes to work 1 hour late, and stays an extra hour, then naturally he should be paid 8 hours of normal time, not 7 hours of normal time plus 1 hour of overtime. 

Another Example : The first 8 hours of time worked is at normal time, after that he gets Overtime 1 (up to a maximum of 3 hours, after that he gets Overtime 2.

Payroll Shift Balancing

Tip : Remember a "Week" is the payroll period. It might be 7 days, 14 days, or a month.

Payroll Shift Balancing allows all the time for the week to be collected together, and then the payroll shift balancing rules are applied. 

Example : An employee must work 40 hours of Normal time before Overtime can be earned.

Another Example : The first 40 hours of the week are assigned to normal time, after that time is accrued at overtime rates.

The usual complication to Payroll Shift Balancing is that not all Overtime is necessarily the same. For example the following rule may apply;

The first 40 hours of the week are assigned to normal time, after that time is accrued at overtime rates. However Overtime earned on Saturday or Sunday cannot be used for Balancing.

The solution to this problem is to simply set the Rates for the weekend to be different to the Rates during the week. 

Entering the Rules

The rules are entered, either for the day, or the week, as a list of rules.

Category : This is the category that needs to be balanced.

Rate : This is the rate of the category that needs to be balanced. Balancing does not take place across rates. Thus this rate also applies to the Get From and Send To options as well. 

Min : This is the minimum time required by this category. If there isn't sufficient time then time is taken from the Get From category. If Min is set to 0 then no minimum is applied.

Get From : Time is taken from here, and added to Category, if there is less than the Min time in Category. 

Max : This is the maximum time that can be accumulated in the Category. If the category has more than this amount of time then the extra time is sent to the Send To category. If Max is set to 0 then no maximum is applied.

Send To : This receives any time over the amount set in Max.

The rules are applied from the top to the bottom.  This means you can specify the order in which time is balanced. For example you may prefer to remove time first from Overtime 2, and then only later from Overtime 1 if required.

Case Study

Let's look at the above diagram again.

The processor would apply these rules as follows;

a) (Line 1) Normal time needs at least 40:00. If there is less than 40:00 then get some time from Overtime 2. (If any time at Overtime 2 exists.)

b) (Line 1) Normal time has a maximum of 40:00. If there's more then send it to Overtime 1.

c) (Line 2) Normal time needs at least 40:00. If there is less than 40:00 then get some time from Overtime 1. (If any time at Overtime 1 exists.)

d) (Line 2) Max is set to 0 so the rest of the line is ignored. At this point Normal cannot be more than 40:00 because of the rule explained in (b).

e) (Line 3) Min is set to 0, so the Get From column is ignored.

f) (Line 3) Overtime 1 cannot have more than 20:00 - send the rest to Overtime 2.