Sunbury City reviews time-clock software demo, asks staff to draft policy on leeway and approvals

Sunbury City’s work session included a vendor demonstration of a new time-clock system intended to replace paper time tracking and integrate with the city’s payroll process. The vendor, Mark, showed both employee and administrator interfaces, emphasizing configurable job/pay codes, geo-fencing for location-based clock-ins and automated overtime calculations.

Council members and staff focused on how the system handles supervisor approvals and exceptions. Mark explained that employees can log in from a mobile device and supervisors would review and approve timesheets before payroll processing, and that a designated gatekeeper (Lisa) would generate a period-ending report for upload to the city’s payroll system (Payforce). "You as an admin... would go in and see every day," Mark said, describing dashboard and reporting functions.

Why it matters: the system would centralize timekeeping and flag small, recurring overages that can create significant overtime costs. Council members pressed for clarity about the city’s policy on start and end times and allowable leeway (examples discussed included seven minutes of leeway or treating 7:55 as 8:00). Joel, the city solicitor, said the city likely already has a written policy but recommended formalizing or confirming it if unclear: "Quite honestly I think we already have that policy that the hours are what they are," he said.

The vendor said overtime is calculated automatically based on job-code thresholds set during configuration, and supervisors will receive exception flags for review. Mark also noted the system can be configured to allow or restrict early clock-ins, establish rounding rules, and use geo-fencing so employees must be within a specified perimeter to clock in.

Council members asked about last-minute corrections before payroll. Mark said supervisors can manually correct entries if needed but that the system records true timestamps to preserve an auditable record. He also explained the initial data transfer process from Payforce would be handled by Beth Yen during setup.

Next steps: staff will follow up with the vendor to finalize configuration and prepare a formal policy or clarification about allowable leeway, supervisor corrections and how lunch breaks are recorded. The council did not take a formal vote during the work session; a follow-up meeting with the vendor is expected in the coming days to finish setup and confirm required policy language.