Set up time tracking

Setting up time tracking in upmesh – the first steps

As a payroll administrator, you want to record your employees' working hours in upmesh in a clean, traceable, and payroll-ready manner. This article will guide you through the most important steps to ensure that time tracking runs smoothly from the very beginning.

1. Check prerequisites

Before you get started, make sure you have the appropriate permissions:

• You need the Administrator role in your company to set up the company settings and time tracking.

• Your employees need a license that matches their requirements for time tracking. Pure time trackers can use the Time Tracker role, while employees with full functionality require a Full License.

Tip: Clarify early on who only needs to record time and who works with projects and tickets in addition to that. This saves on license costs.

2. Open the company headquarters

You can find the central control for time tracking in the Company Headquarters. Open the Time Tracking section or the Company Settings. Here, you define the basic rules that apply to all employees.

3. Define working time models, activities, and allowances

To ensure that the recorded times flow correctly into payroll, you must first define the framework conditions:

• Working time models – Target hours per weekday, including daily breaks. You can create multiple models and set a standard model.

• Activities – the categories that your employees book their time against (see the next section).

• Cost centers – optional, if you want to book time to cost centers in addition to other parameters.

• Allowances – e.g., for night, weekend, or holiday work. (You do not need to configure overtime – upmesh calculates it automatically based on the recorded hours versus the target time.)

Set these values up properly once – they form the basis for all subsequent evaluations.

Activities, activity types, and absences

In upmesh, time is booked to Activities. Each activity has an Activity Type that controls how the time is treated and whether it is considered productive. Available activity types include, among others:

• Working time (productive)

• Vacation

• Sick

• Overtime reduction

• Short-time work

• Winter break

• Further education

• Other

Absences (e.g., vacation or sickness) are a separate process in upmesh, distinct from clocking in/out for working hours: instead of "coming/going," you or the employee enters a period of time and selects the appropriate Activity (with a non-productive activity type such as Vacation or Sick). The reason for the absence is therefore derived from the assigned activity – there is no separate "reason for absence" field.

Tip: Only create as many activities as you really need for payroll and evaluation. Too many categories make time entry confusing for your employees.

4. Set up holidays & regions

Holidays influence target hours and holiday allowances – and they are not the same everywhere. In upmesh, you represent this via Regions:

• Create regions – create the regions you need (e.g., for different locations or federal states). A region has a name and a country. upmesh does not prescribe federal states – you define the regions yourself.

• Create holidays and assign regions – create your holidays (date, description) and assign them to one or more regions. For example, Corpus Christi would then only apply in the regions where it is actually a public holiday.

• Assign region per employee – assign each employee their respective region. They will then receive exactly the holidays that are stored for their region.

Tip: Maintain the holidays at the beginning of the year and check the regional assignment of your employees. Missing holidays or incorrect regions will lead to incorrect target hours.

5. Create and assign employees

Add your employees in the company headquarters and assign each:

• the appropriate Role (e.g., Time Tracker),

• the appropriate Working Time Model,

• the appropriate Region and,

• if applicable, a Group.

This way, every employee automatically receives the correct rules for their time tracking.

6. Prepare projects for time tracking

Your employees usually book their time to Projects. Ensure that the relevant projects are created and that employees have access to them. This allows working hours to be evaluated on a project basis later – practical for post-calculation and billing.

7. Recording time (having it recorded)

Now we can get started. Your employees record their time:

• Mobile via app – clocking in/out or entering time manually,

• Web client – for retrospective entries and corrections.

As a payroll administrator, you maintain an overview of all bookings.

8. Review and approve time

Regularly check the recorded times:

• You can identify missing or unusual bookings in the overview.

• You can make corrections or request them from employees.

• Once reviewed, you approve the times so they can be transferred to payroll.

9. Export for payroll

Finally, you export the approved times for your payroll software. upmesh supports several formats of common payroll systems – including DATEV, Lohn und Gehalt, Addison, BRZ, GDI, Novaline, and VRG – as well as a generic CSV export. This makes the recorded hours, allowances, and activities ready for payroll processing.