On an average day, a line of student employees stand at the Kronos clock in the main lobby of the Information Technology Building to clock out before they leave work. That won’t happen anymore.
Starting Saturday, BYU will use a new timekeeping system, Y-Time, instead of Kronos. The university has considered this change for about five years.
“We’ve been using the Kronos timekeeping system since about 1993,” said Douglas Belliston, university controller. “We’ve had various upgrades along the way.”
Belliston said Kronos has been a useful tool for BYU to track employees’ times and make sure they get paid properly. Currently, employees can record their time by punching in their ID number on one of the Kronos clocks around campus or through the web application.
“It [Kronos] has served us quite well, but there are some very important reasons to make the change,” Belliston said. “Employees will notice more convenient methods for time entry. Most will record their time at IP telephones in their work area. Others without easy access to an IP telephone may use similar entry devices located in building lobbies. Some may also use a new myBYU portlet. Another improvement will be the ability to see the time worked for the week and pay period right at the time entry device. That should help students keep within their allowed hours.”
One of the key reasons for this change is to improve the support for the university financial system, he said. Currently, BYU has only one programmer who has skills in supporting the Kronos system.
“With this change, the university will also save money on time entry devices and software maintenance costs, ” he said. “And, we will have more programmers who can support the Y-Time system because the same type of software is used for our human resources and financial systems.”
Y-Time also displays all the jobs employees may have and allows them to easily select which job to record time for, he said. This new feature is helpful for the users who have more than one job on campus. Employees can also clock in through their desk phones, Belliston said.
He said he thinks users will be pleased with the new system because Y-Time will provide more convenient and clearer information which cannot be displayed on a Kronos clock.
Shannon Kelly, assistant payroll manager, said Y-Time will be more intuitive for student and staff employees.
“This new system integrates directly with the payroll system,” Kelly said. “That makes it much more efficient.”
For training dates and times, student employees should refer to an email sent Monday.
“Student and staff employees can either come to one of the training sessions or there will be training sessions available online,” Kelly said.
