Time Approval Changes

Time Approval Changes

Not all units are affected by this time approval change - only departments with the following types of employees.

• Staff who report their own time in Wolverine Access
• Staff who use a time clock and the punches are approved in Wolverine Access
• Staff who use the Wolverine Access Web-Clock
• Interface Units that have Departments set as Self-Service time reporting

These "self-service" employees need to have their Supervisor IDs populated in M-Pathways in order for their time to be approved.

The key change is that Supervisor IDs are used to identify and grant access to the Primary Time Approver of each self-service employee. Primary Time Approvers may have up to five backups (i.e., delegates) who can approve time on his/her behalf.

This takes effect June 29, for the first biweekly and monthly payrolls in July 2015. An important aspect of this security change is that:

• Only Primary Time Approvers and their delegates can approve time for direct reports.
• Timekeepers will no longer be able to approve time unless they are a delegate or a Primary Time Approver.

Detailed information about this change is covered in the FAQs on the project website. Additionally, a Communication Toolkit is available to assist units with inform staff of the upcoming changes.

Designate Primary Time Approvers

The process of choosing who should be the primary time approver for each employee is a departmental responsibility. Different approaches or hierarchies may be used depending on the type of unit. Typically, the primary time approver is the employee's manager who has direct knowledge of the employee's work schedule.

If Supervisor ID is not entered when a self-service employee is hired or has a job change, it is auto-populated with the Department Manager of the appointing department. Otherwise, reported time cannot be approved.

A list of employees with blank Supervisor IDs and their Department Managers are located on the Supervisor ID Action Items webpage.

Populate the Supervisor ID Field

To ensure all self-service employees have a Primary Time Approver, the following tasks should be performed in M-Pathways prior to the start of the upgrade outage on June 25, 2015.

• Upload Employee Supervisor Information - review current Supervisor ID assignments and update Supervisor IDs as needed
• Run Supervisor ID Reports - identify blank or problematic Supervisor ID assignments
• Create Organization Charts - run a report to show employees and their supervisors or blank Supervisor ID fields

Enter Backup Approvers (Delegates)

The Delegate Group page can be found for each Primary Time Approver by searching for the approvers uniqname/Campus ID at:
Main Menu > Manager Self Service > Time Management > Approve Time and Exceptions > Approval Delegate Group

Refer to Add or Remove Employees in a Time Approval Delegate Group for the detailed steps.

Notes:

• A batch upload process is not available for entering delegates.
• You will not find a Approval Delegate Group page if the supervisor does not supervise self-service time entry employees.