Version 6.72 Build 309, February 8, 2010

This page documents all new features, enhancements and bug fixes included in this release of Pacific Timesheet. For information on changes made in previous versions of Pacific Timesheet, please see the release notes archive.

1. New Accrual Option - Forecasting Only

A new accrual option is available that, if checked, will cause accruals to only be used to compute or forecast available leave for requests. The accruals will not be added to the actual balance. This is useful for situations where you are importing or setting balances from an external HR or payroll system, but would still like leave requests to show future available balances. To find out more go to the System > Policies > Balance and Accrual Rules page and click the online help link.

2. New Time Entry Rule - Minimum Work Hours Per Day

There is a new time entry rule, "Minimum Work Hours Per Day", that allows you to require that employees account for each work day, Monday through Friday. This rule only is run when the timesheet is submitted, and both work and leave hours are counted when totaling the number of hours worked each day.

3. Balance/Accrual Rollover Sequencing Issue

Previous versions of Pacific Timesheet would try to automatically handle sequencing rollovers and accruals when both fall on the same day. For instance, annual accruals and rollovers both occur on the same day (in particular, close to midnight at the end of December 31). You may want the annual rollover to occur before annual accruals, in order to not erase the accrual. However, for monthly accruals you may want the December accrual to run before the annual rollover. For improved consistency, this release allows you to specify whether rollovers run before or after accruals, on the System > Policies > Balance and Accrual Rules page. It is important after updating to this release that you check this setting for each of your policies to make sure it is correct for you requirements.

4. Leave Request Issue When Changing Time Zone

Changing the time zone property of an employee could cause future leave requests to be pushed onto timesheets incorrectly. For instance, a one-day leave request might show up as two days of leave. This is fixed in this release by shifting future leave requests to the new time zone.

5. Balance Minimum Checking

Pacific Timesheet allows you to specify a minimum balance allowed when recording leave on a timesheet. This is configured from the System > Policies > Balance and Accrual Rules page. In prior releases, to enforce this rule it would check the available balance as of the end of the timesheet period to see if it went below the minimum. This could result in employees having more leave available to them then they should (for example, if an annual accrual happened on one of the last days of the timesheet period). This new release corrects this issue by checking the available balance on the day the leave is being taken, rather than at the end of the timesheet period.

6. Problem Deleting Blank Rows On Non-Weekly Timesheets

In some cases it would be difficult to remove a row with no hours from a timesheet that has a non-weekly period. This is fixed in this release.

7. Fixed Issue With Scheduled Start/Finish Times In Employee Import/Export Files

Employee import/export files have fields named "Scheduled Start" and "Scheduled Finish". These fields were being formatted only in 24-hour time, rather than the locale of the user doing the import/export. This has been fixed in this release, so that a U.S. user will see "5:00 PM" and a U.K. user will see "17:00", for instance.

8. Multiple Partial Day Leave Requests On Single Day

You can submit more than one leave request for a single day (for example 4 hours of sick in the morning and 4 hours of vacation in the afternoon). However, once both are approved only one was being put onto the timesheet. This has been fixed in this release.

9. Request Approval Due Notices

Previous versions would send a 'Request Approval Due' notice to an approver when an employee submitted a leave request, even if the approver's permissions only allowed them to approve timesheets. This version will check the approver's permission level in their profile to make sure they have the 'Can Approve' leave request permission before sending a leave request notice.

10. XLS Export

Fixed an issue in which exporting timesheet data in XLS format with no header could result in an error page being generated.