In theory TNA should be a trivial exercise. The employee arrives at work, and then he leaves work. You calculate the time he was at worked, and pay him.

Of course in the real world it's not this easy. And one of the first things to spot is that time is not necessarily created equally. There are things like Normal time, Overtime, Weekend time and so on. 

In TNA 2000 we call these Time Categories. They're the most basic building block on which we'll build shifts. Currently TNA 2000 allows you to create up to 25 different Time Categories.

Time Categories are also used as building blocks for Overtime Authorisation and Running Totals. These two topics are discussed in detail in other documents.

This document discusses creating and using basic time categories.

Related Articles

Overtime Authorisation
Running Totals

Creating Categories

To create time categories go to the Configuration module, to the Shift Setup menu, to the Shift Time Categories option. You will see a list of existing time categories. (Or you may see an empty list.)

To change an existing category highlight the one you want to change (by clicking on it) and then click on the Change button. If you want to add a new one then click on the Add button.

The form looks something like this;

The Code is a number from 1 to 25. It's normally a good idea to start from 1 and count upwards. On most screens and reports category 1 will be displayed on the left, and the highest category on the right.

The Description should be a short description of the category. Words like Excess and Normal, as well as abbreviations like OT1 (for Overtime 1) etc are common.

The colour is used later on when building the shifts so that you can easily tell one category from another. You can change the color by clicking on the ? button.

In the User module a Total time for the day is displayed. Most categories have a positive effect on the total, however some can have a neutral, or even negative effect on the total. If in doubt then set this to +.

The Daily and Payroll time sheet reports are designed to print all the time categories. However on some reports you may want to suppress this category. If so click on the All Reports check box. There are also some reports which are designated as Overtime Only reports. If you wish to suppress this category on Overtime reports then click on the box marked OverTime Report. For example Normal time would probably have this option checked on.

Your payroll extract may be set up to conditionally include time categories, depending on which categories you want to export. For each category that you want to export tick on the Include in Payroll option. For items that are not going to the payroll system (for example totals, or other informational categories) tick this option off.

Some payrolls require that a specific name be used to identify the category. If you are exporting the category to your payroll, and if the name differs from the category Description, then fill in the Payroll Name field with the name that the payroll needs.

If you have the Lite level of TNA 2000 then you will not see the Requires Authorisation box, or the Running Totals tab. If you have the Standard level, or higher, of TNA 2000 then you will see them. For more details on the Requires Authorisation or Running Total items, see the associated documents on those topics.

Advanced

If you have version 3.18 or later then you'll also see an Advanced tab.

Picture 

Normally these categories hold a Time value. For example 12:45.
However sometimes you want a category to hold some other special value. Maybe bonus points, or money, or something like that.

This field allows you to set the picture, that will be used for formatting the field.

For a full list of available pictures see the manual.