Department of Computer Science and Engineering

CSE Timesheet Administration Quick Start Guide

In order to use the CSE Timesheet system, you will need to get a digital certificate and have it verified by the CSE Department. This digital certificate will identify you to the CSE Timesheet system. If you do not already have a digital certificate for use with this system, please send email to help@cse.ohio-state.edu indicating that you need a digital certificate. You will be contacted by someone who can help lead you through the necessary steps. Alternatively you can read the document "Why Do I Need a Digital Certificate and How Do I Get One?" and follow the steps as outlined.

Once you have created a digital signature and had it verified, you are ready to use the CSE Timesheet system. You will use this system to review and sign timesheets submitted by your hourly employees. Hourly employees are for the most part undergraduate students. Graduate students are paid monthly stipends and do not need to fill out timesheets.

Overview

The CSE Timesheet system allows a student employee to fill out an electronic timesheet, digitally sign it, and submit it for signature by their faculty or staff manager. An email reminder is sent to student employees the week before the timesheets are due. An email reminder is sent on the Sunday evening before timesheets are due to all faculty and staff who currently manage employees. Typically a faculty/staff manager would then set aside a specific time on Monday morning, before noon, to sign all timesheets from their employees at one time. The timesheets are then routed to the fiscal officer for approval and processed Monday evening by ARMS. One benefit of this process is that Faculty/staff managers do not need to be available or know when each student has signed their timesheet, they merely need to pick a deadline by when the student timesheets are due and then sign all timesheets submitted by that deadline.

Since the timesheet program can be accessed via Windows PC's and with X access under Unix, a benefit of the CSE Timesheet system is that faculty/staff managers can choose to sign timesheets from home or anywhere they have this type of access.

Logging In

The program CSE faculty/staff managers will be using to sign timesheets is called 'tsadmin', which is short for Timesheet Administration. The 'tsadmin' program is available on both the Unix and Windows systems within the CSE department. The only difference in running the timesheet program between these two systems is the startup.

On Windows:

On Unix:

After you have entered your login and password, a splash screen will appear. The splash screen is displayed while the program is connecting to the central server and authenticating your session. It will take approximately 20-30 seconds for this connection to be completed. The splash screen will then disappear and within a few seconds the timesheet administration application will startup.

Signing Timesheets

Upon initial startup , the main window of the timesheet adminstration application is divided into three areas: the Browser, the Display, and the menu/tab bar. The menu/tab bars are located at the top of the window. The menu items allow you to navigate and perform various actions within the system. The tab items allow for navigation between different display areas. The tab that is active when the application starts up is called 'Browse Timesheets'. Within this tab, faculty and managers can browse to find specific timesheets by year, payperiod and position with the list of timesheets being displayed to the right in the Display area.

Typically, a manager will use the 'Unsigned Timesheets' tab to sign timesheets on Monday mornings at the end of each biweekly pay period. By clicking on the 'Unsigned Timesheets' tab, a listing is generated of all timesheets which are waiting for signature by the faculty/staff manager who is logged in to the session (indicated by a status of 'Pending'). Timesheets can show up with a status of 'Unsigned' if there is a multi-level signing hierarchy. At this time there are no multi-level signing hierarchies for graders or research assistants so 'Unsigned' status would only apply to some staff managers, not faculty.

To begin signing within this list of unsigned timesheets, the faculty/staff manager will click on the 'Timesheet Detail' tab. From the 'Timesheet Detail' tab the faculty/staff manager can view the individual work times for each week, view any annotations associated with the timesheet or add their own annotations, view information on Fund, Account, Project, Program being charged, the signing history, and any errors associated with the timesheet. A timesheet can be rejected, which will send email to the employee, or it can be signed. When signed, the timesheet is then send marked as ready for signing by the next person in the signing hierarchy (typically the fiscal officer). The 'Forward' button can be used to move forward in the list of unsigned timesheets to view their detail and sign.

When all timesheets listed in the 'Unsigned Timesheets' tab have been signed, the faculty/manager can exit the program by selecting the File->Exit menu item.

Quickstart Summarized

For a really quickstart, follow these steps once you have logged into the timesheet system on either Windows or Unix:

  1. Wait for the splash screen to disappear and the timesheet adminstration to appear
  2. Click on the Unsigned Timesheets tab
  3. Wait for the listing of unsigned timesheets to be generated and displayed
  4. Click on the 'Timesheet Detail' tab
  5. Wait for the first unsigned timesheet to be displayed
  6. Review the hours worked as display in the Week 1 tab
  7. Click the 'Week 2' tab and review hours worked
  8. Review any annotations (if none exist you will not be able to click on the 'Annotations' tab)
  9. Review any errors if they exist
  10. To sign the timesheet click on the 'Sign' button or select Actions->Sign from the menu items, to reject the timesheet click on the 'Reject' button or select Actions->Reject from the menu items
  11. Click on the 'Forward' button or select Movement->Forward to view the next unsigned timesheet
  12. Return to step 4 until all unsigned timesheets have been signed
  13. After all timesheets have been signed, select File->Exit to exit the program
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