Negative Drive and Office Hours / Duplicate Jobs on Payroll

Negative Drive and Office Hours will appear on the Payroll Summary if the Job Hours for that day are greater than the Clock Hours for an employee. They can also be related to duplicate jobs appearing on payroll. This article outlines how to identify and resolve these issues.

If you’re viewing the Payroll Summary for multiple days, you can click on the employee’s name that is showing the negative hours to see a daily breakdown of their payroll. This will help narrow down which day needs to be reviewed. When you find the day(s) that are showing negative hours, you can now look into these days a bit deeper.

Why This Happens and How to Fix It

This can be caused by multiple job clocks overlapping, a manual clock edit that pushed a day clock out of alignment with the employee’s job clocks, or if an employee forgets to clock out for the day. You can go to the Employees tab > Employee Clock Monitor to view if the clock has flags and make any corrections necessary. Click here to learn more about the Employee Clock Monitor!

Example:

Ex: From the screenshot above, Luke was showing -1.50 hours for his Drive & Office Hours. Luke had a second job clock manually added, and it overlapped with another job clock, causing him to have more job hours than his day clock could cover. Below is what you’ll see in the Employee Clock Monitor.

You can click on the red bar for Luke’s first job clocks, and change his end time from 4:30 to 3, and that would fix it.

Scheduled Work Start Time

The Scheduled Work Start Time determines what time your employees will get paid for. Whether your teams are set to Hard Start or Soft Start will determine what the Scheduled Work Start Time will automatically be set to. Check out this guide to learn more about Hard Start and Soft Start!

The Scheduled Work Start Time cannot be after the employee checks into a job. It either has to line up with the time that they clocked in that day or come before the job check-in time. You can check the Scheduled Work Start Time by going to the Employees tab > Daily Timeclocks > Clocks tab (see below). It will be under the Work column.

You can click on the blue edit pencil for that time clock and edit the Scheduled Work Start field to correct it if needed.

Example:

Luke’s day clocks were manually changed to the correct clock-in time of 11 AM. You’re noticing that he has negative Drive and Office Hours for that day.

When you go into the Employee Clock Monitor, you’ll notice that there is a flag on Luke’s first job clocks. Since the clocks looked aligned, the last thing to check would be the Scheduled Work Start time. You can click on the green day clock bar and notice that it’s set to 1 PM instead of 11 AM. Changing this time to 11 AM to match when he clocked in, will fix the flag on the Employee Clock Monitor and the negative drive and office hours.

Duplicate Jobs on Payroll

Duplicate jobs will appear if the system has trouble completing calculations for payroll. They can cause negative drive and office hours on payroll, but not always. You can also spot these on the Payroll Summary if Clock Hours, Allowed Hours, or Job Hours are higher than normal. Same as above, these are easier to find when viewing the individual Payroll Summary.

Why This Happens and How to Fix It

This can happen if an employee has job clocks that don’t align with their Scheduled Work Start Time or if an employee forgets to clock out for the day, very similar to above. Manual clock changes can also cause this to happen. You can go to the Employees tab > Employee Clock Monitor to view if the clock has flags and make any corrections necessary.

Example

Luke accidentally forgot to clock out one day, resulting in negative Drive & Office Hours on the Payroll Summary. When you access his individual Payroll Summary, you see duplicate jobs, as shown below. This means that the system cannot complete calculations for that day.

In the Employee Clock Monitor, you notice that Luke’s day clocks are in yellow and don’t end. This means that Luke did not clock out for that day. Clicking on the yellow bar and adding an end time would correct this issue.