Agile Supported Configuration

Implementation Methodology:

 

The Synerion team will provide a guided setup which walks the customer through an implementation wizard to configure the system. The Synerion team will also help the customer to ensure employees are properly entered into the system, and the system is capturing time correctly. Once the configuration is complete, the customer is in “parallel” and Synerion support will help them to ensure the system is properly exporting data to the payroll system. The Express model relies on Synerion’s 30 + years in the industry to recommend a best practices approach to configuration. Training is based on a combination of videos on key aspects of the system and built-in help which takes the customer step by step through common actions.  Remote instructor led training is available at extra cost.

System Features

 

Available Express system features

Synerion Agile Express is available as a cloud offering through a Software as a Service (SaaS) commercial model. The customer is billed monthly according to their usage (for more details refer to the SaaS Billing FAQ document). The following system features are available with the express model:

  • Time and Attendance
  • Scheduling
  • Employee Self Service
  • Weekly Timesheets
  • Web Punch
  • Absence Requests
  • Accruals
  • Web Service Integration
  • Payroll export to a supported system (see Appendix A)

 

Time Collection

  • IN and OUT punches can be used with all punching terminals, including web punch
  • Breaks and lunches can be punched using IN and OUT punches
  • Timesheets supports duration based reporting

 

Pay Periods

The following pay period types are available through the system:

  • Weekly
  • Bi-weekly
  • Semi-Monthly
  • Monthly

Overtime

The system supports several different overtime configurations:

  • Daily Overtime
  • Weekly Overtime
  • Bi-weekly Overtime

 

Work Rules

Weekly

  • A static shift with worked days and times that repeat each week unless there is a scheduled absence or statutory holiday.

Scheduling (available with scheduling module only)

  • Work days, start times, and end times, are all variable and can be set per individual employee. These can repeat, change each week, or be defined as a rotation of multiple weeks.

Open

  • All punched time is paid. No absences or late/early exceptions are generated.  Scheduling absences requires the Scheduling Module.

Timesheet (requires ESS with timesheets)

  • Monday to Friday required days. Employees fill in the duration worked. Time can be tracked against departments and labour levels.

Notes

  • All rules except Timesheets Module can be configured with rounding, and breaks
  • All rules can be configured with premiums, daily overtime, and automatic authorizations
  • Weekly rules can be setup to pay overtime or double-time on weekends, all other rule types start with regular until the overtime threshold his reached

 

Rounding

Punch Rounding

  • IN and OUT punches can be rounded every 5, 6, 10, 15, 30, or 60 minutes.
  • When used, rounding is active at all times (before, during, and after the shift).
  • IN punches can have different rounding values than OUT punches

 

Break Rounding

  • Long breaks can be rounded by duration
  • Short breaks are automatically rounded up to the minimum duration of the break

 

Notes

  • Time is calculated using the rounded values
  • The original punched values are always available in the system
  • Shift rounding is based on individual punches, not shift duration

 

Breaks

Customers have the ability to configure different lunch and other breaks during the day.

  • Breaks are configured with a minimum duration
  • If unpaid, the break can be configured to deduct automatically without punching
  • If paid, the break will pay up to a specified duration and anything outside is unpaid
  • Breaks can be taken in any order, and at any time within the shift
  • Breaks can be rounded using the rounding values listed in the rounding section above
  • Any number of breaks (lunches, paid breaks, unpaid breaks) can be configured in one rule

 

Premiums

Premiums are amounts of time (example 8 hours night premium) paid in addition to regular hours worked.

The following types are premiums are supported:

 

Shift Premiums

  • Shift premiums can be configured to pay on all hours worked during a shift or in a specific zone of time

 

Manual Premiums

  • Premiums can be manually added to an employee’s time card by a supervisor

 

Accruals

The customer can configure different accrual packages which are combinations of benefits such as:

  • Vacation
  • Sick
  • Banked time
  • Others

 

Notes

  • All accruals are calculated in hours
  • Multiple accrual packages can be configured for different types of employees
  • Accrual deposit amounts can be configured to change based on number of years with the company
  • Accrual periods are based on a fixed calendar date (example Jan 1st to Dec 31st)
  • Time can be banked at either straight time or time and a half
  • Each bank can be set to empty or carry over (100% of the balance) at the end of the accrual period

Integration

Synerion has built specific web service integrations with some of the largest payroll companies in North America. This integration can automatically pull over employee information from the payroll system in near-real time to provide single onboarding experience for the customer. Department structure is synchronized between the two systems. Jobs and labour costing information are not synchronized.

 

The supported payroll systems are:

  • National Bank – Nethris
  • Desjardins – EmployerD
  • ADP – Workforce Now

User Roles

User permissions are fixed in the express model. There are three roles: Administrator, Supervisor and Employee (ESS)

 

Administrator Role Definition

  • Has access to all employees
  • Can modify employee profile data
  • Has access to main functions such as scheduling, time card edits, absence management, and reporting
  • Has access to higher security functions such as adjusting system parameters, running payroll export, and resetting passwords

 

Supervisor Role Definition

  • Access can be restricted by department
  • Has read-only access to employee profile data
  • Has access to main functions such as scheduling, time card edits, absence management, and reporting

 

Employee Self Service

The Employee self-service feature covers the functionality described below depending on the customer’s license. Multiple Employee Self-Service “profiles” to expose different features to different employee groups. Employee Self-Service functions can be accessed from any device with a current browser connected to the internet. Employees can be given access to view absences of other employees in their department.

  • Web Punch
  • The ability to request an absence
  • Employee based reports
  • The ability for an employee to view their department’s absences in a calendar
  • The ability for an employee to view his schedule

 

 

 

Appendix A – Express Supported Payroll Interfaces

The following is a list of supported payroll interfaces included with Express.

Provider Product
1 ADP Workforce Now
2 ADP PCPW
3 ADP Pay at Work
4 ADP Pay Specialist
5 Acomba Acomba (Pimport Tbl7)
6 Attache Attache
7 Ceridian HPL
8 Ceridian Insync Red
9 Ceridian Insync Blue
10 Ceridian Payflex
11 Ceridian PowerPay
12 National Bank Nethris
13 National Bank Paie PC / PC Payroll
14 National Bank Paie Expert
15 Cytronics Cytronics
16 Desjardins Employeur D Unique
17 Desjardins Paie PC / PC Payroll
18 Easypay EasyPay
19 Easypay EasyPay Version 2
20 Fidelity Fidelity
21 Frontier Software Chris 21
22 Microsoft Great Plains
23 Micropay Meridian
24 Microsoft Microsoft Dynamics
25 Minotaur Canadian Payroll
26 NEBS PAYweb
27 Orange Digital EMPulse Series 6
28 Paycard Paycard
29 Paychex Time 0002
30 QLab Systems Paydirt
31 QuickBooks QuickBooks (version 6)
32 Rockfast Timesheet
33 Talent2 NPS

 

 

Appendix B – Additional Configuration elements

Some scenarios are supported by the Synerion Agile product but are not configurable via the Express portal. These configurations will be quoted separately and configured, after the customer has completed Express implementation process.

Topic Scenario Example
Payroll interfaces A payroll interface to a non-standard payroll system (see Appendix A for list of supported systems) My company has a payroll export not in the standard list
My company exports payroll to 2 or more separate payroll companies.
Language Custom names for punch types or names of the week. Monday is either called Mon. or Lun.,in the system by default –

Calling Monday -MON/LUN or  Day 1, anything else… would be additional configuration

Punch is either called In or Entrée.
Punching Special Punch scenarios Single key (all punches the same) where users punch and the system figures out if it is an IN or OUT  or explicit  break punching (Break begin and Break end punches) require extra configuration
Security Roles Custom roles can be created to add or remove functions, and modules Static roles based on best practice, however if you need employees to edit their HR profiles, or custom security roles this requires additional configuration
Work rules Flex start and end times (zones of acceptable entrance and exits) Employee can come in between 8 and 10 and leave between 3 and 5
Automatic bonus time built into work rules Employees change clothes on company time, a payment of 15 minutes is added to punched time to cover this.
Automatic punching rules (e.g.. for salaried staff) Salaried employees are tracked in the system for the purpose of absence tracking, but I want to export their hours along with all of the other employees or I want to run reports and see regular versus absence hours.
The system will generate automatic punches for these employees.
Multi-shift employees through automatic assignment to correct shift The company operates on rolling shifts, the system will determine the correct the shift based on punched in time.
Example: 7am-3pm, 3pm-11pm, 11pm-7am (system matches to shift based on punches)
Pre-set weekly rotation rules I have employees that work 1 week day shift, followed by 1 week night shift or continental shifts and I don’t want to schedule that, it should be automatically templated through a work rule.
Timesheet and Open rules have a fixed attendance requirement, Monday to Friday are required, Saturday and Sunday are optional days I have timesheets employees where they are required to work only some of the weekdays, and I don’t want them marked as absent when they miss those days.
Rounding Express Portal supports punch rounding.
You can’t have special punch rounding at the start or end of the shift.
All entry punches will be rounded the same way.
All exit punches will be rounded the same way.		 I can round the in time for all employees, I can’t round punch times differently at the start or end of a shift than the rest of the day.
Express portal doesn’t support duration rounding for shift lengths My employees punches are rounded to 15 minute increments, but the shift length varies based on break lengths
Breaks No minimum duration Employee breaks don’t have a minimum length, deduct only what the take, with break duration rounding
Pay part of the break Employees can be on break for 1 hour, but only the first 30 minutes are paid
1-time grace Allowed 5 minutes late per day once…breaks will round all durations
Specific order to breaks, or specific zone of time during the day By default, breaks are matched based on absence time, not on absence order.

Example:
Employee is on break for 20 minutes, 15 minutes, and 12 minutes during the day with 2 paid 15 minute breaks and an unpaid 30 minute lunch. The system will use the longest absence for the lunch regardless of timing of start of the breaks.
Premiums Premiums that require rate interactions (multiplication, explicit rate values)

Premiums that apply only to specific employee groups are not available, the employees must use specific rules/scheduling templates

Unique employee premiums

 Employees working on a rule or schedule get an extra premium hour for every hour worked.

Employees working on a rule or schedule get an extra premium hour when working between specific times.
Bulk premium amount payments based on a shift worked Employee are paid bonus premium time for meeting attendance requirements
Premiums with rates attached Employees get paid a premium which is a multiple of their calculated rate.
Employees get a specific rate for each premium hour, this rate varies based on the rule schedule
Department premiums I get an extra .50 cents per hour when I work in dept. X
Premiums that are only active for a specified calendar period During the Christmas season, the employee gets a $1 / hour
Premiums that are only active if a specified number of hours worked in the premiums zone are achieved You must work 3 hours after 11 PM to get the night shift premium
Overtime Automatic OT banking Employees are not paid overtime, all time worked in excess of schedule is banked in lieu automatically
Daily overtime is calculated the same for every day of the week. If the customer needs to pay Saturday at overtime or Sunday at doubletime this requires a specific configuration Company has an established practice that weekend work is always overtime for scheduling or timesheets customers.

To be clear, employees that work Monday to Friday on regular shifts, this can already
Accruals Accruals periods and deposits based on hire date My benefit deposits and rollovers happen on my work anniversary, instead of a date that applies to all employees who share the benefit
Banking regular time and overtime at different multipliers If I bank 1 hour of overtime, and it counts as 1.5 hours of banked time
Shared accrual bank between sick, vacation, other benefit… I have 14 days of sick time + vacation time. Each tracked item must be used individually, vacation bank is attached vacation time and sick bank is tied to sick time
Carrying over partial accrual banks Employees are must use their vacation allotment during the year, but can carry up to a week of time into the new year.
Carryover vacation to a separately managed bank Vacation time must be used up in the granted year, there is a 3 month grace period to finish using last years vacation. The previous years allotment must be used up first
Accruals can be based on employee qualifications assigned in the employee profile Different employee groups must be managed with different benefit packages. Employees can’t change benefit packages once started.