Best practices for importing time entries

Best practices for importing time entries

When importing time entries from an external CSV file, it’s important to make sure your data is formatted correctly to avoid errors. Below, we’ve outlined some best practices and ideas to take into consideration when importing your time entries. For more details on importing time entries, check out our article on How to import time entries from CSV files.

Understand each column

Here’s an overview of each column that you can have in your time entry file.
  1. Employee ID
    1. The employee’s unique ID assigned to them automatically by Rise. See the Add the required employee data section below for how to access employee IDs. Note that employee IDs are usually not required and should only be used when there are employees with identical names or employee codes.
  2. Employee Code
    1. Each employee is manually assigned a code when they’re first added to Rise. The Employee Code can be found on the Work tab of the employee’s People profile.
  3. Employee Name
    1. The employee’s full name. Use the names listed under First Name or Common Name and Last Name on the employee’s profile in People.
  4. Department
    1. Employee shifts can be linked to Departments if desired. A list of departments that an employee is part of can be found on the Work tab of the employee’s profile in People.
  5. Shift Date
    1. If the employee's shift took place over the course of a single date, add the date of that shift here. Use YYYY-MM-DD formatting.
  6. Start of Shift
    1. The time that the employee punched into their shift. Depending on how you record shifts, this field can be formatted as H:mm AM/PM, HH:mm, or YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm. For details on which to use, see the Format time entry data correctly section below.
  7. End of Shift
    1. The time that the employee punched out of their shift. Depending on how you record shifts, this field can be formatted as H:MM AM/PM, HH:MM, or YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM. For details on which to use, see the ​Format time entry data correctly section below.
  8. Unpaid break minutes
    1. The length of the employee’s unpaid break, recorded in minutes. If the employee took a paid break or didn’t take a break at all, this field can be left empty. This field isn’t necessary if you’re using Shift Duration.
  9. Shift Duration
    1. Rather than recording the start and end times for an employee’s shift, you can also just record the total length of the employee’s shift. If you choose to use Shift Duration, the only other time-based field you need to fill in is Shift Date. This field should be formatted as H:MM.

Use your local time zone

If you have employees across multiple time zones, make sure you record their punch times using your local time zone rather than the time zone the employee punched in or out from. Rise will then automatically adjust the employee punch times using the time zone associated with the shift’s payroll department.

Don't include the Shift Date for multi-date shifts

If a shift ends on a different date than it started on (the employee worked past midnight), leave the Shift Date column blank and make sure you add a date to the Start of Shift and End of Shift fields to specify that the shift ended on a different date when recording the punch out. Formatting details for punch times are shown above in the Understand each column section as well as in the Format time entry data correctly section below. The system will accept shifts that start and end on different dates as long as the shift is shorter than 24 hours.

Add the required employee data

To make sure the system is able to recognize your employees, add both their first and last name and employee code to the time entry sheet. If you have employees with the same name and employee code, you can use employee IDs to differentiate between them. The employee ID is a unique identifier attached to each employee in your organization that can be accessed through the Employee Master List report in People. For instructions on how to run the Employee Master List report, check out our article on How to create a report in HR.

Ensure each shift has the required data

To ensure that all employee hours are counted, make sure that each shift has one of the following combinations of information:
  1. If an employee punched in and out of a shift that took place over one calendar date: Shift Date, Start of Shift, End of Shift 
  2. If an employee punched in and out of a shift that took place over two calendar dates (the employee worked past midnight): Start of Shift (including the date), End of shift (including the date)
  3. If the employee records their total hours rather than punch times: Date, Shift Duration

Format time entry data correctly

The information in each column must be formatted correctly to ensure that it is read properly by our system. We recommend that you copy the formatting used in our time entry template, but we’ve provided a list of proper formats for each field here as well. Note that the formatting below must be followed exactly in order for shifts to be imported without errors; dates, for example, must be in the correct year-month-day order and separated with - rather than / or .
  1. Shift Date
    1. YYYY-MM-DD (e.g. 2022-06-18)
  2. Start of Shift / End of Shift
    1. H:MM AM / PM (e.g. 8:01 AM)
    2. HH:MM (e.g. 13:57)
    3. YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM (e.g. 2022-06-18 13:57)
      1. Note that you only need to include the date in Start of Shift / End of Shift if the shift took place over two calendar dates.
  3. Shift Duration
    1. H:MM (e.g. 7:12)

Use the right file format and size

Our system only supports comma-separated values (CSV) files. Spreadsheets in other formats such as XLSX files must be saved as a CSV file before they can be imported. Time entry files can have a maximum of 250 rows, which is equivalent to 250 time entries. If your file has more than 250 rows, you can split it up into multiple files and upload them one at a time.

Auto-approve your imported time entries

We recommend setting up auto-approval for your imported time entries so you don’t have to manually approve each one. To set up auto-approval, open Time Approval Settings under Settings in Scheduling and check the Auto-Approve when importing via CSV box.

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