Overview
This white paper explains in detail how Logic Forte collects time clock records from each POS and uses the Clock In and Clock Out times to calculate labor statistics to the minute, which has been more accurate than many of the Point of Sale (POS) reports we have encountered.
Rounding issues do tend to balance out and are allowed by Department of Labor as long as time is not always rounded in favor of the employer. While rounding does not have a major impact on employee pay, these type of issues do prevent reports from matching perfectly, which can be frustrating—and cause extra work for managers who need to approve payroll for their stores.
In the more extreme example below, you can see how five time clock records could cause a discrepancy of 0.02 hours when summing hours each day (rounded to nearest hundredth of an hour), compared to adding up minutes and calculating hours from total minutes.
Example 1: Employee Time Clock Records
| Date | Clock In | Clock Out | Hours (POS) | Minutes (Logic Forte) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monday | 9:00AM | 10:07AM | 1.12 | 67 |
| Tuesday | 9:00AM | 10:07AM | 1.12 | 67 |
| Wednesday | 9:00AM | 10:07AM | 1.12 | 67 |
| Thursday | 9:00AM | 10:07AM | 1.12 | 67 |
| Friday | 9:00AM | 10:07AM | 1.12 | 67 |
| TOTAL | - | - | 5.60 | 335 (5.58) |
When customers asked us to explain why employee labor statistics on Micros POS reports did not match the same statistics on Logic Forte reports, what we found surprised us.
Time Clock reports from Micros POS only show Clock In and Clock Out times to the minute. Furthermore, we found inconsistent records in the Micros Time Clock reports that did not seem to have correct hours.
Here are a few examples of actual entries from a single Micros Time Clock report for a specific store (1766) on a specific pay period (08/16 - 08/31). For this example, we only used records that appear to be an even number of hours. Notice that Micros occasionally shows +/- 0.01 hours.
Example 2: Employee Time Clock Records
| Date | Clock In | Clock Out | Hours (POS) | Minutes (Logic Forte) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8/18/18 | 5:53AM | 1:53PM | 8.00 | 480 (8.00) |
| 8/25/18 | 5:09PM | 8:09PM | 2.99 | 180 (3.00) |
| 8/29/18 | 11:03AM | 5:03PM | 5.99 | 360 (6.00) |
| 8/16/18 | 5:03AM | 11:03AM | 6.00 | 360 (6.00) |
| 8/25/18 | 4:58PM | 7:58PM | 3.01 | 180 (3.00) |
| 8/16/18 | 4:54PM | 9:54PM | 5.00 | 300 (5.00) |
| TOTAL | - | - | 30.99 | 1860 (31.00) |
What We Discovered
We determined that Micros POS records Clock In and Clock Out times to the second, even though they do not appear to make those seconds details available to their customers. This makes it impossible to calculate labor statistics for your Micros POS locations on your own.
Or does it?
It became clear that we needed to upgrade our systems to record Employee Time Clock records to the second instead of to the minute. We upgraded our databases, polling systems, reporting systems, and payroll systems to calculate Regular Hours and Overtime Hours for each Time Clock record to the second.
But how do we calculate Micros POS records to the second if they do not make that level of detail available to us? Micros Time Clock reports show their “Hours” calculation next to each time clock record.
Our Updated Approach
We decided to use the following formula when importing Micros Time Clock records into our system:
If the Micros Hours are lower than our Hours calculation based on minutes worked (Clock Out - Clock In), assume Employee worked slightly fewer seconds. Calculate the difference in seconds and add seconds to the Clock In time.
If the Micros Hours are higher than our Hours calculation based on minutes worked (Clock Out - Clock In), assume Employee worked slightly more seconds. Calculate the difference in seconds and add seconds to the Clock Out time.
This approach worked well for us because we trim seconds (instead of rounding) when we display Time Clock records. That means our Time Clock reports are now identical to the Micros POS reports. If you are rounding Time Clock records, you may need to split the difference and add half of the seconds to the Clock In time while subtracting half of the seconds from the Clock In time so that your rounded records will match the Micros POS records.
We are usually guilty of over-engineering our systems, so this issue caught us off guard. Based on our experience with many different Point of Sale (POS) platforms, we did not anticipate that we would ever encounter a platform that would record Time Clock data to the second.
Takeaways
Migrating our systems and the many millions of existing time clock records from minutes to seconds was no small task, but all of our labor statistics perfectly match your Micros POS reports without affecting our labor statistics for the other POS platforms we support.
When your managers at Micros POS locations are approving their Logic Forte payroll reports, they will no longer need to determine if minor discrepancies are due to rounding or some other issue that needs to be corrected on their end. Either the reports will match or they will not.
When your office staff or CPA encounters a Labor Auditor who requests an explanation of these Micros Labor inconsistencies ("How can 180 minutes equal 2.99 hours or 3.01 hours?"), we can generate detailed reports for auditors that show time clock detail to the second and help explain the inconsistencies for you.
Contact Logic Forte if you have other questions about your Micros POS reports.