FAQ -- Why do I see 11:59:59 PM in the employee time out entries?

Please note midnight checkout entries do not have anything to do with licensing, trial expiration, and/or billing issues.  It is a built in feature and not a problem with the time management system.

Midnight Checkout causes

There are two main reasons why you may see 11:59:59 in the out entries of employee timesheet records. In the first case the administrator will need to adjust the time sheet entries.

1. The employee with the 11:59:59 timesheet entry forgot to punch out.  The system assumes that they are working through midnight and places an out entry with 11:59:59 AM. (see the "Why midnight checkouts are necessary" section below). In this case the administrator may want to correct the entries to match the true hours and should delete the 11:59:59 AM entries and replace it with the correct punch out time. To perform edits to an employees timesheet entries go to the 'Manage Timesheets...' form under the administration section in TimeFlow.

2. The employee works through a midnight and the system places the 11:59:59 entry.  This is normal and should not be changed (see the "Why midnight checkouts are necessary" section below).


Why midnight checkouts are a necessary...

Midnight checkouts are an essential part of any robust employee time management system.  In order to calculate overtime hours correctly across time boundaries (eg. weekly)  the work in a 24 hour period must be grouped separately even when an employee works through a midnight.  The midnight checkout will not affect the employee pay rate and/or hours but will only segment it into two entries.

An example is an employee who works through midnight (ex Sunday 8:00pm - Monday 5am). Assuming the work week is Monday-Sunday this employee would accrue a certain amount of overtime hours within that week that would reset and start from zero on Monday 12:00 AM.  So in order to separate the hours of week 1 from the hours of week 2 the system will automatically punch out the individual at 11:59:59 and punch them in at 12:00:00 automatically.

A shift with 8:00 PM - 5 AM would result in the following two entries:

8:00 PM - 11:59:59 PM (Day 1)
12:00 AM - 5:00 AM (Day 2)