Overdue timesheet follow-up

How Consult reminds users about timesheets that were never submitted, first by reminding the employee and then by escalating to their resource managers.

Consult can send follow-up reminders for timesheets that were not submitted. The employee is emailed first, and their resource managers are only brought in if the timesheet is still outstanding after a set number of days. Both stages are off by default and are switched on by an administrator.

Follow-up stages

The follow-up runs in the following order:

1. Consult emails the employee to tell them their timesheet for the week is overdue.
2. If the timesheet is still outstanding after a set number of days, Consult emails all of the employee’s resource managers to ask them to follow up.

The employee is always reminded first, so the escalation to resource managers cannot be used on its own.

Administrator setup

The settings are under Admin Settings > General > Configuration, which you open from the user profile icon in the top-right corner. Only users with permission to manage admin settings can change them.

To switch the follow-up on:

1. Enable Timesheet Submission. Neither stage sends anything while it is off, and the settings page does not point this out.
2. Set Timesheet Overdue Reminder to the number of days after the last weekday of the timesheet week to email the employee. Enter 0 to switch the reminder off.
3. Set Timesheet Overdue Escalation to the number of days after the employee reminder to email the resource managers. Enter 0 to switch the escalation off.
4. Confirm that every employee has a resource manager assigned under Users > Managers.

Timesheet Overdue Escalation is locked while Timesheet Overdue Reminder is 0, since employees are always reminded before their managers are involved. Setting the reminder back to 0 also resets the escalation to 0.

Warning: Switching the escalation on applies to every reminder that is still outstanding, not only to reminders sent from that point on. There is no limit on how old an outstanding reminder can be, so enabling the escalation for the first time escalates the entire backlog at once.

For a walkthrough of the rest of the settings page, see configure admin settings.

Timing

One scheduled check runs daily at 08:00, and handles escalations before it sends any new employee reminders.

Employee reminders are effectively weekly. The check only sends a reminder on a day where the reminder days counted back from today land on a Friday, and it then chases the week that ended on that Friday. The value therefore fixes the weekday the reminder arrives on: 1 sends on the Saturday, 3 on the following Monday, 4 on the following Tuesday, and so on.

Escalations are counted in calendar days from the day the employee reminder was sent. They are sent at 08:00 on that day, no matter what time the reminder itself went out.

With the reminder set to 3 and the escalation to 2, a timesheet for the week ending Friday 31 July is chased as follows:

• Monday 3 August at 08:00: the employee is emailed.
• Wednesday 5 August at 08:00: the employee’s resource managers are emailed.

Who is reminded

Employee reminders

A reminder goes to active users who have no timesheet submission other than a rejected one, and who were expected to work that week.

• A rejected submission counts as still overdue, so a rejection puts the employee back in scope.
• A pending or approved submission takes the employee out of scope.
• Expected to work means the expected hours for the week are above zero.

No reminders are sent for:

• Contractors with no required daily hours configured.
• Users whose start date falls after the end of the week.
• Users whose whole week was public holidays or approved leave.

Resource manager escalations

The escalation goes to all of the employee’s resource managers, not only the primary one, as assigned under Users > Managers. Deactivated managers are left out.

Before escalating, Consult re-checks that the timesheet is still outstanding. The employee must still be active, must still have been expected to work that week, and must still have no submission other than a rejected one. If they submitted in the meantime, no escalation is sent.

If the resource manager is on leave, then their own resource managers are emailed instead. Only approved leave causes this substitution, so a manager with a pending leave request still receives the escalation themselves.

If an employee has no resource manager assigned, no escalation is sent and nothing is flagged.