MYOB Advanced Workforce Management FAQs

With onboarding, if an employee is under 18 years old, can the driver’s licence or proof of age card workflow be bypassed?

Yes.

It’s possible to make the step in the onboarding process non-mandatory. So then in this case it can be bypassed.

Is there an automated process for letting an employee know x weeks in advance to upload the renewed license/document?

Yes. Current functionality provides management with a WFM Dashboard notification of any relevant upcoming certification expires.

When the manager clicks on the notification, they get the details report of who/what/when.

The manager/administrator can then contact employes with the appropriate reminders/schedule the appropriate certifications.

Does the onboarding feature allow for selecting delegated authority (for example to approve rosters to a certain budget)?

Yes. You can select the permission rights you want the employee to have access to on the onboarding invite form.

See “Sending and monitoring an onboarding invitation”

Onboarding cannot currently be delivered independently of Advanced Workforce Management. Only the whole product can be offered, as we are unable to toggle off other functionality. 

It has been identified that Standalone Employee Onboarding is a need, and we have this on the Roadmap.

How customisable is the onboarding? 

This can be entirely customised to meet the company’s needs.
Additional customised stages can be added as needed.

Can an individual who is going through the onboard process, yet to be offered employment, be excluded from provided essential employee information e.g. Tax Dec or Bank detail?
And if later be offered employment, asked to complete onboarding providing essential employment detail e.g. Tax Dec or Bank detail?

No. The Onboarding process starts once an offer has been made.
It’s possible to have a pre-populated list of potential candidates and import that into Advanced Workforce Management.
We do not have a Recruitment module for Advanced Workforce Management yet.

Yes.

The onboarding import brings the employee in so that they can then start that hire process and get them to onboard themselves, whereas the employee import is bringing in the employee record directly into the WFM System itself.

The BSB Number is validated for Australian bank accounts.

Note, however, the full account number is not validated, and Advanced Payroll may reject incorrect records that fail the more stringent validation.

There is currently no validation for bank account numbers entered in New Zealand.

Once they have hit the submit button then No, they can't make any changes as that commits the record to Work Force Management.

If an employee leaves Onboarding partway through, any information they have entered is remembered in the form, so they don't need to complete the whole process in one go.

But once submit has been pressed, they would need to complete that data in Workforce Management itself by updating their profile or advising the Payroll admin of the required changes.

Documents can be added as well as Employee Notes, under the Management> Employee > Documents and Notes. This is on a per-employee basis.

See “Adding documents and notes to employee records”

Can staff submit allowance requests?

For example mileage, on-call allowance, alternative holidays, etc 

Yes it is possible to set this up.

You can send messages to employees by going into Management > Settings > Employee Settings.

Can you create exception reports for certain documents to see who hasn’t read a particular document? For e.g., The client is looking at rolling out a Health and Safety policy and they want all employees to view it.

Yes, a report exists for Managers to gain this information.

The ‘Documents Signed Off’ report, details which users have viewed the documents, also which employees have not.

Is it possible for the company to send out a shift availability notification?

So first-come-first-served, to respond and self-assign that shift, takes that shift?

Shift Swapping functionality is available, which involves an existing shift being marked as “available” (either by the manager or the employee themselves, if the feature is enabled). That will notify other employees that the shift is available, which in turn can be taken by other employees on a first-come-first-served basis.

A “shift request” is slightly different and refers to a manager making a temporary variation to the employee's shift pattern, and the system notifying the employee of that change (which they can subsequently accept on their app or web portal).

Shift Swapping to ensure employee meets minimum shift requirements -how does this work?

Is there an alert to let the manager know that the employee they’re trying to add doesn’t meet the minimum requirements to run that shift? 

Shift swapping does not require express approval by the manager to approve the shift; however, the system will check:

• Does the candidate have the same position as the item being swapped?
• Does the person have availability on that day?
• Does the person have location access to the location where the shift swap is taking place?

Should the person meet these requirements then they will be notified as well as will be able to pick up the shift.

Minimum Shift Requirements can be set up, which ensures that only an employee at the same level or above can pick up a shift, from the employee who put it up for Shift Swapping.

The shift requirements are usually used when you have set up a template where you can assign a requirement to an Unassigned shift, so when you click on Smart Roster in the Roster section, the system will automatically search for the employee who matches your requirement.

See “Using Smart Roster”.

Yes.  Smart Rostering features will help you automatically populate unrostered shifts with the most relevant employees for that shift.

See “Using Smart Roster”.

Can you do Resource Assignment to shifts? e.g. ambulance, kit, hardware/ machine with ID.

Relevant employees are taken into consideration according to employment type, shift requirements, work types, and rankings–see “Using Smart Roster”.

A Roster template can be created to allocate a number of employees needed per location, position, for how many days or which day you want to apply the template then you can apply the smart roster for employee allocation–see “Using Roster Templates”.

Blackout Periods will help WFM to prevent employees from applying leaves during holidays or busiest days–see “Using Blackout Periods”.

If an employee has minimum hours per pay period (e.g. 20 hrs), does the roster have enough smarts to alert and notify if an employee has not been allocated minimum hours on the said roster?

Under the Alerts section, we have Shift Minimum Hours type where it can be a blocker or dismissible. You can also set this up per employment type. The manager will see a red line beside the employee's shift showing the alert that needs to be corrected.

Is it possible to add a document to a shift?

For example, someone is working in the field and that location has a specific H&S requirement

No, not at shift level.

There are Comments on a Shift. The manager can ask the employee “you must wear steel-capped boots” but this isn’t a document.

This can be done at the onboarding level. Also as an ad hoc by sending them a document outside of the onboarding process. The manager can send the employee a document with the H&S Policy, asking them to acknowledge it and read.

It is also possible to generate clock-in questions, however, these apply to all employees company-wide and are designed primarily for Yes-No answers.

Not at present. Employee Notes can be added to a shift only.

A document can be shared at any time via Management > Documents – see “Using the Document Library”.

With a roster change, can a notification be sent to several different employees in different areas of the business?

For example, if someone rings sick and there is no one available to replace their role for that day.

Yes, this is possible and Team Rosters are readily available for the individual.

Employees can use the Roster screen on their mobile app. Tapping the My Roster button on this screen shows the Company Tree of departments/locations that will appear. The user can select the area they are working in, or that they want to see the Team Roster for.

See “Available shifts and roster”.

2021/10/01

Yes. There is a configurable Shift Alert for exceeding Max hours. This will produce an alert when creating/publishing a roster.

See “Timesheet alerts”.

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What is the process for historical adjustments?

Can you adjust closed periods, for example, could you edit and resubmit a closed timesheet? 

2021/10/01

Does the WFM calendar on the app or web show Public Holidays?

If so, for a multi-regional business, which calendar does it show?

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Can we lock a period of annual leave?

E.g. no holiday over Easter

Yes. This can be set up using a blackout period.
See "Using Blackout Periods."

How far in advance can leave be applied for?

There is no limit to future dates. If you want to limit this, you could create blackout periods per location to prevent leave from being applied for.

Yes. The Roster shows employees as on leave with a different colour to indicate their unavailability to be booked into a shift.

A blank Roster will include leave that has previously been booked for your employees.

If an employee is rostered and they then book leave, WFM will put an alert against that person's roster showing that it has a leave request in the period.

Employees leave will come through once it has been approved by the manager.

Yes. For clocking, you can have a tablet with the clocking app. Each employee has a pin code and uses this for clocking.

For Leave requests, they would have to log in to the WFM website using a username or password and make their leave requests, or use the mobile app.

There is an option to set minimum leave balances for each leave type. Setting the Minimumleave balance will then restrict a person from submitting leave if they do not have enough leave available for their request.WFM will not allow an employee to then book leave if they don’t have the balance; the request will be blocked from proceeding.

See “How do I add leave types?”

The system does not have the function to automatically prompt unpaid sick leave.

How are Approved Leave Requests treated in WFM?

Is that request going to drop onto the roster once it has been approved?

How is that going through to Advanced People payroll?

An approved leave transaction marks their roster as the employee being on leave and then it also creates a timesheet in WFM.

In WFM timesheets an airplane icon displays next to an approved leave request entry.

When you take all of those timesheets from WFM through a pay run and import them into Advanced People, that will then create those leave transactions in Advanced Payroll at that point.

Can an employee upload a document into the Document Library at their discretion? 

Yes. Currently, employee information from Onboarding is pushed automatically through to Advanced Payroll to create their new employee. Syncing of further changes from WFM to Advanced Payroll after initial onboarding will be coming in a future release.

Yes. This can be set up via Custom Permission Rights, so any user’s access can be enabled/restricted for the Employee Management section, as a whole and/or specific sub-sections–see “User permission list”.

Yes. For clocking, you can have a tablet with the clocking app. Each employee has a pin code and uses this for clocking.

Facial verification for employee clock-ins is an optional feature that uses advanced artificial intelligence to cross-reference photos. It ensures that the correct employee is clocking in and out for their shift, reducing time theft.

Please note, this feature is not currently available to all customers as of November 2022. If you would like this feature please register your interest with your implementer.

2021/10/01

If an employee forgets to clock off, they can clock off using their app outside of their work location. If the company is set up for overtime to be automatically applied over and above their Standard Hours, then yes this would apply. Most probably a company’s setup will not allow this, i.e. with an upper threshold setup against pay types.

A manager would also be able to review the clock out times across all employees on any rostered day and review these. They then have the opportunity to manually amend and adjust as required.

If GPS location tagging is enabled, the manager will be able to see where the user was located when they clocked out.

Currently, only clock-in questions can be set up in Advanced Workforce Management. It is possible for a Manager to add a clock in question for the employee to add free text to. The ability to add clock-off notes is being investigated for future development.

See “Setting up and reporting on clock questions”.

No, this isn’t supported.

There are many options:

• Employees using their own Mobile Phone app
• Mobile app and a shared tablet on the wall.
• Ability to import clock data
• API to integrate 3rd party clocks (extra implementation and custom configuration costs apply)
• Timesheet in Advanced Workforce Management via the website to capture the times

If an employee didn’t clock in/out and didn’t submit a timesheet, what can they do to rectify this? 

An employee would let their manager know if they failed to clock in/out or submit a timesheet. The manager would edit the employee’s timesheet details accordingly by entering their approx clock in/out times on the Roster in Advanced Workforce Management, then finalise the timesheet on their behalf

An employee can enter their own timesheet, or a manager can add one. The manager can also choose to pay from the rostered hours.

Can we get all staff, including salaried, to use Advanced Workforce Management for clocking in/out each day?

Can we track who is at work and for emergencies, see who is on sites?

Yes. Salaried staff can use the clock in/out features.

Yes, for a current list of those employees who are On-Site currently, the “On Shift” function can be used on the dashboard for this purpose.

Can a manager prevent an employee from having their pay cut for clocking in late,e.g.shift starts at 9:00 am and they clocked in at 9:10?

How do you adjust for employees who may arrive early and clock in ahead of their shift?

Can you change these start times?

The clocking in/out function includes the start/finish times as well as capturing break clock in/outs from the office. These can then be used to ensure the employee is working a full rostered shift or day, as expected.

There is a tolerance level that can be added to the clocking in/out times so that these don’t red-flag in the system to the manager. This is useful if the important matter is that the employee works 8 hours excluding breaks, for instance.

Yes, this can be set up in Company Settings. A grace period can be set up to automatically approve timesheets within these parameters.

See “Adjusting clock rounding”.

 Yes, so when you look at the timesheet area, there are two types of timesheets. There are timesheets that are completed, and when I say completed, I don't mean that they're approved in any way, shape or form, or that they're authorized to be paid.

A completed timesheet in workforce management terms means that either the employee has clocked in and out for the day, and therefore a timesheet has been completed for that day based on the employee clocking in and out, or the manager has determined a timesheet needs to be completed and they can do that in two ways.
1) If an employee is rostered and they haven't clocked in and out for the days they are rostered, they will appear as an unassociated shift at the bottom of the screen. By clicking on that particular timesheet, the manager has the option to tag that timesheet as being completed. This will push the timesheet to the top of the screen. You can then open up the timesheet and can see it will pay the employee based on what they were rostered. If you don't want to pay them based on what they were rostered, you can make those adjustments and save the timesheet then follow the usual approval process, etc.
2) If I have a casual who has clocked in and out, they will actually appear as an unassociated timesheet even though they don't have a roster. Again as a Manager, I can tag that to be completed.

Can Expense claim requests from employees be linked to pay rules as well? 

So for example, if the employee send through the expense claim (on the app), and also the manager can approve the expense claim - can this go through the process of pay rules as well? So we can put them through in the payroll?

No they don't go through the process of Pay Rules. The intention is for it to drop into the same pay run file that can then be imported into the payroll through that process. It doesn't use Pay Rules to generate any transactions.

Client Scenario:
I'm working a particular shift but today I need to claim a travel allowance or a meal allowance, but tomorrow even though I'm on the same shift, they won't. So in essence, we're looking for a way of allowing the employee to say that's what I want, not to make it stuck in a rule.

So not that the employee has to physically claim for that payment, but more something that has occurred that then generates that payment - almost like a tick box where they say yes, I'm on this shift but want to claim x amount for my car and the meal allowance. Is that at all possible?

At this stage since Expenses aren't fully added as a feature, the best option would probably be to configure Work Types.

Under Settings, there is the ability to add Work Types. That Work Type can be tagged within a timesheet either when you enter in a timesheet for an employee or when a timesheet comes through.

You can always tag a work type against that timesheet and that work type. Within the Pay Rules you can create a rule that looks at Work Types and therefore you can select one of the Work Types and build a rule around this.

Therefore the timesheet can be tagged - Use their own vehicle - and it might then pay a certain amount of car allowance or something along those lines.

Yes. WFM is an API-based system and it’s possible to extract the data from the product. This would be an additional integration to the customer’s data repository.

Is a data join or union query possible in the Advanced Workforce Management Business Intelligence section?

No. The BI dashboard is out of the box. It doesn’t currently support custom data queries.

No.

Yes, but the rate of pay does have to do with the employee. So it's pulling the rate to determine the dollar value from that record.

One way around that - if you don't like the unassigned shifts because they don't give you a cost. Some examples I've seen so far is that create an additional employee record for that location, and actually, you could possibly call it so it could be a non-payroll person, but call it unassigned shifts and you can allocate those shifts to that person. But they could have a rate of pay and therefore it will calculate the cost of that shift for you.

What is the process to maintain Time & Attendance integrity where poor mobile coverage prevents clock-in and clock-out for employees who work remotely?

Yes–see “How to set up mobile clocking”.

With the current functionality, there is no way to limit what employees see unless this has to do with mobile clocking or timesheets. The static items that will always be seen in the mobile app are:

• roster
• leave
• documents
• personal details

Expenses only appear if expenses are switched on, mobile clocking if enabled and timesheets if visibility is given.

Yes. See “How do I send messages to my employees??” 

Can a message be sent to a group of employees? For example with Covid sending out a message to all employees at a location to stay at home etc.

There is a simple messaging function that allows a short notification message to be sent to an employee or all employees at a location via Push notification or email–see “How do I send messages to my employees?”

An improved messaging function is planned for later in 2021.

Web -Yes this can be turned off at Management > Settings > Manager Notifications.

Mobile -In addition, if the user wants to turn off notifications, these can be suppressed in the normal way at the alerts/OS level, where the user turns off notifications from the MYOB Advanced Team app.

Not currently. Notifications use standard text for all clients.

No. There is no planned linkage between a WFM Roster and an Advanced Employee Work Schedule.

A Manager/ Employee would use either Advanced or WFM for Rostering & Timesheeting.

When an employee works a split shift, for example, from 11 pm to 7 am, and takes a day of leave, will the timesheet lines passed to Advanced Payroll show the leave in two parts, 1 hour on the date the shift started and 7 hours on the date the shift finishes?

Yes. This is split and associated to each day accordingly:

Day 1: 1h

Day 2: 7h

Yes, this is a 1 to 1 relationship at present.

More complicated arrangements may be possible on a case-by-case basis, if you believe you need one of these, please contact MYOB to discuss your exact requirements and we can assist with defining the best way to implement Workforce Management for your needs.

When an employee is terminated, their account is switched to View Only access for the purposes of downloading payslips or anything that they may need.

See “How do I terminate an employee?”

Can the termination process send emails to different departments?

No. Currently, there are no email templates set against the Termination / Offboarding process. We will look at this for future work.

There is no approval workflow around the termination.

There is a Terminated Employees report which can be used by Advanced Payroll to then complete the payroll process.

See “Terminated Employees Report”.

No, I don't believe that is possible at present. The Sub-accounts are set up through the cost centres. They are not set up via the location. So all costing is driven by the cost centre table, not the location table.

For Subaccount mapping, please see the Pay Tag functionality.

The cost centre is only associated with the shift. You can override the cost for that employee based on the shift not based on the timesheet.

There is future road map development that has been listed to look at that costing structure in more detail. That will also then include the project and job type costing functionality as well but that is currently being analyzed at present. It's not being worked on from a development perspective as yet.

Under Employee > Location Access, there is the ability to align an employee to multiple locations.

They can have a default (Primary) location, but you can add in additional location access for an employee along the way as well. That means that employees can be rostered and have timesheets approved by different locations as part of that eg they can be rostered in Location A, Location B, and Location C, and their timesheets can be approved by those managers in those locations.

If an organization has event-based requirements, they would need to go via Management > Settings >  Edit Locations and create those new locations. Once these have been created, they would assign these locations to the employees that they expect to work in those locations via the Employee > Location Access tab so they are then available for the manager of that location to allocate these employees across those locations.

LOCATIONS and PAYROLL BRANCHES:

Does this mean that we need to manually maintain an employee's branch after the data is synced into Advavnaced Payroll? My understanding is, in WFM the location is totally separate from the company branch structure in Advanced Payroll. In Advanced, each employee should belong to a branch. I don't know how the synch works? If we create an employee onboarding in WFM, there is no mapping to a branch or company in Advanced Payroll. I assume after it is synched to Advanced Payroll, if they belong to different branches then we would need to manually maintain the branch in Advanced Payroll.

Yes, that is correct.

There are certain aspects of the employee record that do not automatically align to Advanced Payroll as yet. That is the same from a Pay Global perspective as well. The initial take of data was the critical employee information and that doesn't include that branch or that organization structure that sits within Advanced Payroll.   Organizations would need to maintain those two separately. It is not a one-to-one relationship at present.  

Work types can be used to apply allowances and penalties and are often required to ensure employees are paid correctly. 

REQUIRED WORK TYPES

• Public Holiday Not Worked. Generally, create this for all businesses. 

• Minimum Break. (Company Specific)- Please check if needed.  This will apply if the threshold for the minimum required break between shifts is violated.

Pay Groups are a feature that is implemented for another system.

They are not currently available for use in Advanced Workforce Management and are scheduled to be removed from view in a future release.