Defining Time Codes

ServiceCEO is shipped with a set of time codes designed to meet the needs of most businesses. Time codes provide three settings to the time blocks A block of time that indicates the employee's status for that time. Each time block is associated with one time code. to which they are assigned:

Availability. Determines if the employee is available or unavailable for work.
Hourly Employee Setup. Determines if the time block is eligible for payroll or not.
General Ledger Account. If integrated with an Accounting Account, determines the account to which pay associated with this time code will be exported.

Time code setup is hierarchical. This means that values not explicitly defined are inherited from a higher level in your company hierarchy. Thus, if you define time codes for your entire company, these values will propagate down to all of the companies' employees. Accordingly, if you then edit an employee's time codes, the new values will override the company level time code for that employee.

Tip:
When you save an employee-level override of a company-level time code, the edited time code row will appear in bold. Afterwards, if you change the employee-level time code's values to match the company, the override will be deleted when the record is saved.

You can access the Time Code Setup dialog box from two places:

For the entire company, select Tools > Lists > Time Codes.
For an individual employee, click Time Codes from the employee record.

Tip:
The values for Color, Active, Name, and Available for Work can be updated for the entire organization. However, they cannot be updated for individual employees or, if you are running ServiceCEO Enterprise, specific branches.

Adding Time Codes

If you'd like, you can add new time codes to ServiceCEO.

Open the Time Codes dialog box.
If necessary, select the level for which you want to define time codes from the Setup for drop-down list.
Click Add to add a new time code.
Type the name of the time code into the Code field.
By default, all time codes are active. Deselect the Active check box if you don’t want it to appear in the list when you select a Time Code elsewhere in ServiceCEO.

Note:
Time codes which are in use in the database cannot be deleted. However, they can be deactivated, which will make them unavailable for selection on new records.

Select the appropriate value from the Available for Work drop-down list. Your options are:
- Available. Indicates employees with this time code are available for work.
- Unavailable. Indicates employees with this time code are not available for work.
- Busy. Busy is generally used to mark time spent on a job. It indicates that an employee is not available to be scheduled for work because they are busy working (as opposed to explicitly unavailable time like a vacation).
  Note that you cannot schedule an employee to be Busy (i.e., you cannot assign an employee a time code with a Busy value on the Work Hours or Work Hours Override screen).
Select the appropriate value from the Hourly Employee Setup drop-down list. Your options are:
- Include. This time code will be used to calculate payroll for hourly employees.
- Exclude. This time code will NOT be used to calculate payroll for hourly employees.
- Include/No Overtime. This time roll will be used to calculate normal payroll for hourly employees, but will not be used towards calculation of overtime.

Caution!

Caution:
The Hourly Employee Setup selection only controls hourly payroll. It will not affect employees being paid commissions, a flat fee, or a salary.

To link a time code with a particular accounting account, click the "three dots" button in the General Ledger Account column and select the appropriate account from the subsequent dialog box.

Tip:
The General Ledger Account column appears only if Accounting Integration is enabled.

To add additional time codes, repeat steps 3-8.
When complete, click OK.

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Editing Time Codes

Open the Time Code Setup dialog box.
If necessary, select the level for which you want to define time codes from the Setup for drop-down list.
Edit the time code values as necessary.

Note:
Note that you cannot deactivate time codes that are in use. In addition, the Job, Task, and Travel are built-in time codes which cannot be renamed or have their Available for Work status changed.

Click OK.

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Deactivating Time Codes

You cannot delete time codes that are in use, or have been used in the past. You can, however, deactivate time codes, meaning that the time code will not be removed from current configurations, but you will not be able to select the deactivated time code from any Time Code drop-down list moving forward.

Open the Time Code Setup dialog box.

If necessary, select the level for which you want to deactivate a time code from the Setup for drop-down list.
Clear the Active check box for time code you want to deactivate.
Repeat steps 3-4 to deactivate additional time codes.
Click OK.

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