Kronos Configuration - Careful to not "reinvent the wheel"

How many times have we heard the old cliché don’t reinvent the wheel? Under normal circumstances the phrase usually applies as a standard catchphrase for many things in life. Per Wikipedia's definition: "To reinvent the wheel is to duplicate a basic method that has already previously been created or optimized by others". As it is one of the key sayings that have been used lately and one that I have enjoyed over the years, I felt it worthwhile to write about the particular topic when it comes to your Kronos pay or work rule configuration. The catchphrase can also be applied to configuring other areas of Workforce Timekeeper (display profiles, accruals, or <your idea here!>).

OK, so how do we avoid "reinventing the wheel" you ask? Just recently I was involved configuring some Workforce Timekeeper (WTK) work rules. A work rule calculates employee hours (based on the start, end, or transferred time for the day) based on a span of 2 punches. We identified two work rules that were "square wheels". I visualize “square" as they did not provide for a very smooth ride at all! The "square wheels" were requiring at least 1 hour of manual edits per pay period. We decided to do a screen sharing session to see if we can find out exactly what was happening within the work rule configuration. After examining some timecard totals, we found the work rule wasn’t calculating the hours as the customer expected. At this point, we needed to do some discovery on their existing work rule configuration. One of my first questions naturally was: "Do you have a group of employees where hours are indicated accurately based on the punched times?" I was overcome with delight when the Kronos managers responded with "Yes!" and we reviewed the existing work rule configuration screens. Let's reference these existing work rules as the "round" wheels. We decided to go forward with the work rule most were familiar with. This was also a work rule assigned to the majority of the employee population. For simplicity's sake, in this article I will refer to the working rule as Rule A and the square wheel Rule B.

Planning: After discovery we knew how wanted the timecard totals to appear AND we verified that the one existing rule that met the customer’s expectations.

The two outlined solutions:

1. Start from scratch with new work rule building blocks and build a new work rule from our discovery findings.

2. Copy or "Duplicate" one of the other round "wheels" (the existing Rule B that was relayed to me as working) and roll it out to Rule A, the misconfigured rule.

Resolution: We decided to choose option 2 (copy). “As it turned out, some of the logic was missing in Rule A, and we were able to locate it when we compared it to Rule B, because we knew Rule B was working correctly. That provided us a fantastic reference point to bring out the shiny new pay Rule A. Once we made the changes, the totals processed to the customer’s expectations, and we didn’t have to re-invent the wheel!