A common question we receive is why the time that is shown in your ExakTime/AccountLinx system differs from the time that was imported into your accounting/payroll application. This is generally due to different time formats between ExakTime/AccountLinx and your accounting/payroll application.
When looking at the hours, it is important to note if the hours and minutes are separated by a colon ( : ) or with a decimal ( . ).
- If you see a colon, then the hours are being presented in a typical 60-minute time.
- If you see a decimal, then your time is being presented in decimal time where the hour is divided by 100 instead of 60-minutes.
For example, 6 hours and 45 minutes could be presented as 6:45 or 6.75, depending on the time format.
The reason why many accounting/payroll applications utilize decimal time is that it is easier to calculate an employee's pay/billable hours. The important thing to be aware of is that the formats are not interchangeable and doing so could result in employees receiving less/more time than expected.
Where this can also cause trouble when time is converted from one format to another as the time may not convert cleanly. For example, if we were to convert 20 minutes into decimals, it would be .33 of an hour. If we had an employee work 3 separate 20-minute chunks, it would naturally add up to an hour. If we were to convert them into decimal time and try to add it the same way, it can cause trouble as .33 x 3 would be .99, which is not possible. Scenarios like this can require you to perform slight tweaks for it to make sense in your accounting/payroll application as some will try to accommodate for this, but not do it successfully every time.
For more information about time formats, you can refer to the following article that covers this in detail.