New features in Replicon

Timesheet & Time Off

• Current hours in Time Workbench
• ZeroTime^TM

Project, Billing, & Costing

• Project Audit report
• Client rep expense approvals
• PM-defined expense billing statuses
• Billing Summary timesheet component

Other

• Rebranded UI
• Home page messages
• Additional BI extracts
• ADP Connectors

We’ve added an Hours (Current) column that can be included in Time Workbench exports. This column shows the current value for any changed entries, versus the Hours column, which shows the difference from the previously exported value (the delta). You can use this new field when exporting to systems that don’t support import of deltas.

Getting employees to complete timesheets is a pain point for many businesses. Employees find filling out their timesheets hits that sweet (sour) spot of being both boring and difficult.

That’s why we’ve been researching ways to make completing timesheets simpler, faster, and easier.

We’re proud to announce that we’ve come up with a solution to the problem of timesheet compliance – we call it ZeroTime^TM.

Here’s how it works:

• First, you’ll install ‘collectors’ that integrate Replicon or Polaris with applications your employees use, such as Zoom and Google Calendar. We offer nearly two dozen collectors now, with many more coming soon.
• Then, ZeroTime gathers data about employee activities as they use those third-party apps – like, the duration of a Zoom or Calendar meeting, who it was with, and the meeting description.
• This data appears in ZeroTime as notes that users can then apply to their Time Distribution Grid timesheets. Only the user has access to their gathered data, and they can choose to apply it to their timesheet as they see fit.
• Over time, ZeroTime learns to associate data gathered from apps with particular clients, tasks, locations, etc., and will automatically apply those labels to the associated work. This means that, over time, users will need to manually update notes less and less.

If you’d like to try out ZeroTime, contact your Customer Success manager or Replicon Support.

For more general information about this feature, refer to:

• ZeroTime: AI-powered Time Tracking for Your Global Workforce (video)
• Feature Spotlight: Introducing ZeroTime™, the timesheet of the future (article)
• ZeroTime page on our website

For help using this feature, refer to:

• ZeroTime help for administrators
• ZeroTime help for end users

We’ve launched a Project Audit report template in both Replicon and Polaris. Project managers and other permitted users can use this report to view what changes were made to a project, when they were made, and by whom. This report can help you enforce accountability among project managers, or better understand a project’s history of changes.

The report shows changes made to 44 supported project fields, and can be configured to show what action was taken and the original and new field values. It also includes a Modification Summary field, that shows all changes made to that project on a given day.

Refer to Using Replicon reports for more information on working with reports.

In the past, client representatives could only approve timesheet entries related to projects they were assigned to.

Now, they can also approve expenses for their projects.

If you want to allow client approval of expenses, you can choose what items the client rep can view from within the Client Representative permission set they’re assigned. You can allow them to view and approve:

• All expenses for their projects, or
• Only billable expenses for their projects

If you’re allowing client reps to view billable expenses only, it may be a good idea to define which expense codes are billable at the project level.

For more information on setting up expense approval by client reps, refer to Allowing a client to approve timesheets and expenses before billing.

In the past, while administrators could include or exclude a Bill Client column on expense sheets, project managers could not define expense codes as billable or non-billable. This left deciding what to bill in the hands of end users, who don’t always know what expenses should be billed.

Now project managers can decide up front what expense codes should be billed, on a per-project basis.

By default, all expense codes are set to both billable and non-billable. To update billable statuses, change the expense code fields on the Expenses tab for a project.

The status you choose won’t be editable on expense sheets; that is, if you select Billable, expenses of that type will always be billable for the project.

You can also assign a billable status to each client’s default set of expense codes, which are enabled automatically for each project created for that client.

Refer to Setting up your project for expense entry for more details on assigning billable statuses to a project’s expense codes.

We’ve added a new optional Billing Summary UI component to Replicon timesheets for customers who use a product that tracks billing.

You can add this component to timesheets via timesheet templates. The component can be configured to show billing data summarized by client, project, task, billing rate, units, rate, and amount.

This feature is primarily aimed at project managers when they’re approving timesheets, so they can quickly gauge how much each timesheet will contribute to client invoice amounts.

We recently rebranded Replicon! Our new look boasts bolder colors, cleaner lines, larger fonts, more white space, and faster transitions.

Admins can choose whether users are automatically opted in to this change, or they can let users choose. But note, upcoming features will only be available to those who’ve updated, so we recommend getting on board now.

You can now publish a custom message on the Home (or Overview) page in Replicon.

This provides a way of communicating updates to a wide audience, and it complements other available messaging methods available in Replicon, like broadcast emails.

To configure a message, go to Administration > Notifications System  > Home Page Messages. You can target specific groups to receive the message. Plus, you can update the message format and maximum time frame options by clicking the Home Page Message Settings link on the setup page.

Note: You’ll need the following administrator permissions to use this feature:

• Home Page Messaging
• Home Page Messaging Settings

For more information, refer to Sending Home page and broadcast messages to employees.

Additional BI extracts

We recently finished rolling out some additional business intelligence extracts you can use to generate analytics charts using Microsoft Power BI and Tableau.

There are about 40 extracts in total – refer to our BI extract data model reference document for a full list of the ones available, along with more details about each extract.

We’ve offered dedicated ADP editions of Replicon products for a few years now – these products are configured for out of the box integration with ADP RUN®, Workforce Now®, and Workforce Now® Next Generation. But, these products are only available to new Replicon customers.

Now, existing Replicon customers can leverage the functionality offered in these products via our new ADP connectors:

• Replicon Connector for RUN Powered by ADP®
• Replicon Connector for ADP Workforce Now®
• Replicon Connector for ADP Workforce Now® Next Generation

These connectors are available for purchase exclusively from within the US or Canadian ADP Marketplace.

You can use these connectors to transfer employees from ADP to Replicon, where they’ll record time. Then, you can use the Payroll Workbench to transfer calculated payroll data back to ADP for processing.

Refer to Purchasing and configuring Replicon for ADP or an ADP connector for more information.