Can someone explain how to enable the automatic collection of Idle Time for employees clocked in, for the time not assigned to Production, Setup, or other Indirect Labor? I checked the “Calc Idle Time” box on the Company Configuration form, and assigned the Resource Group and Indirect Labor. I would expect to see an Indirect Labor entry of Idle Time for each employee clocked in and clocked out, but there are none. Thoughts?
Indirect labor transactions will get generated for the idle time whenever a person clocks out for the day. It won’t retroactively generate any transactions if that’s what you are trying to do?
I activated this feature in the middle of last week. I would have expected to see entries for for all production employees clocked in/out from that point on, but there are none.
Ah I see what you mean then. You’re expectations are right you should see some transactions on the LaborDtl table. Are you multi-site? There are site level settings in site config you could try.
No, not multi site.
It is noteworthy that our Time and Attendance software automatically creates the Time and Expense record in Epicor when the employee clocks in for work, then edits that record to the actual clock-out time when they clock out at the end of the day. The employee is not clocking in/out through Epicor (MES).
Interesting! To try and narrow down the issue you could clock-in / clock-out through MES and see if that will generate the transaction. Is the Time and Attendance sofware from Epicor or a 3rd party?
I’ll try clocking through MES. We have a couple of BPMs that need to be disabled that prevent employees from clocking in/out through MES, and redirects them to the timeclocks used for T&A.
The Time and Attendance software is third party, but provided by an Epicor consulting frim for the express purpose of automatically creating the Time and Expense record when the employee clocks in through Time and Attendance.
I see! My money is on that being the issue, but there may be a workaround.
Yes, the Idle Time feature is a feature of MES/Data Collection. Manual time entries through Time & Expense Entry are not included. It is triggered off of the Clock In / Clock Out methods.
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Sure enough. I disabled the BPMs, clocked in and out through MES, and the “Idle Time” indirect labor entry was logged. Any thoughts on a workaround?
Any way to dig into the 3rd party software to see how they are doing things? I was thinking you could try to call the proper method in a BPM after a row update or something.
Did you ever get this resolved? We are doing the same thing with our time clock and MES stations. I am wondering if we used the wrong API when the customization was created, but would hate to have the programmer change this and find out it still doesn’t work. Thanks!