Overview:

For a broader overview of the EBA module, please refer to our EBA Overview.

EBA Profiles are the set of rules that the Generate EBA function looks at to determine what time and allowances to give to timesheet lines. One profile is generally applied to multiple Users. EBA Tags can be utilized to trigger specific allowances based on the job or user, and multiple profiles can be collected into a single EBA Scheme and then applied to a job in Job Maintenance.

Screen Guide:

Open

The initial screen lists all existing profiles. Click + New EBA Profile to add an additional one, or to edit an existing profile, click the Code field of the desired line.

Main Tab:

Open

EBA Profile - Main tab

The Main tab of a profile simply shows the Code field, which is the unique identifier for this profile, as well as Details which provides an explanation for the profile. The Details text box can be expanded by clicking and dragging the bottom right corner of the box to suit.

Start Time and End Time, are only used in conjunction with Upvise Timesheets, and cater for a very rare and specific scenario. Simple is best with your EBA configuration. When Upvise Timesheets are synced to Workbench, the start time of an Upvise Timesheet must match the Start time on the EBA profile and that will automatically populate the EBA profile on the timesheet line in Workbench. A use case for this was to trigger the different shift EBA profiles such as morning shift, day shift, afternoon shift and night shift.

The Additional check box is used to indicate that this Profile can be selected on an employee profile as an Additional EBA Profile. Additional profiles are optional and are executed over the Payroll transactions generated by the Employee’s Default EBA Profile. This type of profile only applies overtime rules over the weekly total hours. See EBA Additional Profiles for setup.

Time Tab:

The Time tab is used to populate the rules regarding time (and any allowances associated with time). 

Use the Copy Time from EBA Profile field to select an existing profile that you want to copy from. This is useful when you have multiple similar profiles that need to be set up.

Copy from ___ to ___ is used to quickly copy a single day in the current profile to another, allowing for rapid development of identical days.

• Day is the field used to designate the day of the week or an entire week that the line should apply to. These options are maintained in Lookups under EmpProfileDay.

• Step is the sequence that this line will be used based on the Day field. For example, if the first line is 10, and the second is 20, 10 will happen before 20. Spaces are traditionally left so that you can place additional steps between existing steps if needed.

• Group is a list of categories that you can assign to each band of time. You can assign the same group to allowances on the Allowances tab. For each hour of time entered in a timesheet, allowances with a matching group will be triggered. These groups can be maintained in Lookups under EmpProfileGroup. As an example:

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  • In the above example, on the left, we have the first step with the Normal Time group for 8 hours. On the right, we have an allowance also set to Normal Time. If the user who is assigned this profile enters 10 hours, the EBA would generate 8 hours of Normal Time, 2 hours of Time and a Half, and 8 quantities of Site Allowance. This is because the allowance will only generate for the matching group on the Time tab.

• Time Code designates which Time Code should be used for the step. Every hour processed in this step will use the designated time code, and will ultimately carry the Payroll Code of the Time Code to the payroll software.

• Job Tags is a free text field where you can designate a tag that, if a matching tag is found on the job used in timesheets, will trigger the Allowance Time Code field of this line. This field can contain multiple comma-separated tags.

• Employee Tags are similar to Job Tags but are applied to Users on the Extended Productivity tab. This causes allowances to be triggered only if a matching tag is found on the user who is being processed.

• Start / End fields are used to set a starting and ending time in 24-hour format for profiles relying on specific times of day worked. This field requires that users enter a start and end time on their Timesheets, which can be enabled in Grid Management
  A profile can have a combination of lines with Start and End time specified only, and others with Worked Hours only.
  Any Timesheet entries within the Start and End time of the line specified in the Profile, will generate Payroll transactions with the Time Code specified in the Profile line, regardless of the Worked Hours rules. Any Timesheet hours outside of the Start and End time defined in the EBA Profile, will then generate Payroll transactions based on the rules by Worked Hours. The rules with Start and End times have priority over the ones with Worked hours, and are applied first. The balance of hours on a timesheet line will be processed as per the Worked Hours rules. For example, if using the EBA Profile below (Late Shift), for an employee that worked on a Monday from 8PM to 3AM, EBA Interpreter will generate:
  -One line at Overtime 2x, for the time worked between the 21:00 - 03:00 period (Step 20 on the EBA profile).
  -And the rest of the time will be processed as Worked Hours, at Normal Time (Step 10 on the EBA profile).
  
  
  

  
  
  

  
  
  

• Worked hours is the basic field for how many hours should be calculated by the EBA generator for this line.

• Paid is used where you want a specific quantity of time given to the employee despite what was entered in the timesheet. If you combine the Worked hours with Paid, you can control when the paid hours are triggered. For example, if you want a minimum amount of hours paid for a day, the first Worked hour would be paired with say 4 Paid hours, then the next Step would have Worked as 3 and Paid as 0, with the rest of the day as normal without using the Paid field.

• Allowance Time Code is used if you want to embed an allowance Time Code into the line. This is useful for situations where an employee is granted an allowance after a certain number of hours are worked. The Allowances tab is used for all other allowances

• Allowance Activity is used when you want to redirect the Allowance Time Code to a different Activity. Allowances generated in this way will create an additional timesheet line using the same job as the origin line, but with the designated activity. Any costs associated with this line will be moved from the original transaction to the newly created line. The new line will still exist in the Payroll view of the original entry in Timesheet Administration.

• Allowance Quantity is the quantity of Allowance Time Code that should be generated if it is activated.

Allowances Tab:

Similar to the Time tab, you can Copy Allowances from EBA Profile to quickly copy the allowance setup of an existing profile.

• Group:
  
  

  
  Is a list of categories that you can assign to each allowance. You can assign the same group to time bands on the Time tab. For each hour of time entered in a timesheet, allowances with a matching group will be triggered. These groups can be maintained in Lookups under EmpProfileGroup. As an example:

  •         

  • In the above example, on the left, we have the first step with the Normal Time group for 8 hours. On the right, we have an allowance also set to Normal Time. If the user who is assigned this profile enters 10 hours, the EBA will generate 8 hours of Normal Time, 2 hours of Time and a Half, and 8 quantities of Site Allowance. This is because the allowance will only generate for the matching group on the Time tab.

All of the below Groups are supported, most of them come as default with the database, and those that are day specific, as they are not that commonly used they are supported but must be manually added to the list as required (Lookups type = EmpProfileGroup): Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday.

Weekday is a generic one that will be trigered by any hour entered on week days (Monday to Friday), and Weekend is a generic one that will be triggered by any hours entered on a weekend (Saturday and Sunday). These options make the Profile setup simpler, with less rules required on the Times tab. In the example below an employee will get 1 Travel allowance (TRAV) per week day worked, and 1 Travel Weekend Daily allowance (TRAVO) for each day on the weekend worked.

Using the same example as before, If the user who is assigned this profile enters 10 hours for a Monday, 10 hours for a Saturday, 10 hours for a Sunday, the allowances based on the setup of the Profile as shown in the screenshot below will be:
1 LAFHA
1 TRAV
2 TRAVO

• Time Code is the Time Code of the allowance that should be used when this line is activated. The Payroll Code of the time code will be used when exporting to payroll.

• Job Tags is a free text field where you can designate a tag that, if a matching tag is found on the job used in timesheets, will trigger this allowance line. If the tag is not found, this line is skipped. This field can contain multiple comma-separated tags if necessary.

• Employee Tags are similar to Job Tags but are applied to Users on the Extended Productivity tab. This causes the allowance to be triggered only if a matching tag is found on the user who is being processed. 

• Job is used when you want to redirect the allowance to a different Job and Activity. Allowances generated in this way will create an additional timesheet line using the designated job and activity, and will only create a new line if both a Job and Activity have been populated here (if only a Job has been designated but no Activity the new allowance line will not be created). Any costs associated with this line will be moved from the original transaction to the newly created line. The new line will exist in the Payroll view of the original entry in Timesheet Administration.

• Activity is used when you want to redirect the allowance to a different Activity. Allowances generated in this way will create an additional timesheet line using the same job as the original line if there is no Job designated here or it will use the Job designated on the Job column, with this designated activity. Any costs associated with this line will be moved from the original transaction to the newly created line. The new line will still exist in the Payroll view of the original entry in Timesheet Administration.
  Possible combinations:

  • An allowance line with no redirect Job and no redirect Activity.

  • An allowance line with redirect Job and redirect Activity.

  • An allowance line with no redirect Job and a redirect Activity. Job is optional.

• Quantity is the number of allowances that should generate when the line is activated.

Next Steps:

Once a profile is completed, you can include it in an EBA Scheme, or make it the default profile for any number of Users. Remember to populate Jobs and Users with their corresponding Job Tags if they are being used.

For client-specific EBA rules that cannot be fulfilled with the extensive functionality of our current EBA module, there is the option of applying further rules after the Standard and Additional profiles have been run, by executing a custom-developed stored procedure to apply further logic to the Payroll transactions. This can be done by calling custom procedure “wbBuildCustomEBA” passing PersonID and TimesheetDate.