There is no greater mistake than the hasty conclusion that opinions are worthless because they are badly argued. Thomas Henry Huxley, 1825 – 1895
Rounding is almost always permissable in any activity as long as the outcome is fair. For example, when adding a set of numbers, always rounding up will result in an unfair outcome while rounding up on five or higher and rounding down when under 5 will result in a much closer result as compared to adding the actual numbers.
Time and Attendance is where we see rounding violations. The employer doesn’t trust the employee. The belief is that the employee clocks in early, before actually working, and clocks in late, after their work is long done resulting in an overstatement of time by the employee. To repair this breach, the employer may program the clock to deduct five to fifteen minutes from the employee’s clock in and clock out time.
Don’t do it. This could result in the payment of late wages complete with fines and penalties while dragging you through an ugly audit process. It also can degrade the trust between the employer and employee. You can program your clock to round to the nearest tenth of an hour, the nearest five minute increment, etc. as long as you round without favor to the employer.
Rounding good, rounding in favor of the employer, bad.
Cheers,
Bryan Dear
June 23, 2010 at 6:15 pm |
Very good post. It is short, simple and to the point. I’ve added your post as a resource to our recent post on attendance rounding.