Table of Contents
Purpose
Walk through the process to export your payroll hours from Aspire to process your payroll.
This process is something that you would complete for every payroll cycle. If you have a biweekly payroll schedule, you would still have to complete weekly time review even if you are exporting payroll bi-weekly!
If you are using a payroll system besides QuickBooks Desktop, this article is for you. This article is also for those using QuickBooks Online!
Check Before Exporting
If you are reading this article, you have already completed the following steps:
✅ If employee numbers are used, confirm employee numbers have been added and match the employee numbers in your Payroll System.
✅ Confirm all Pay Schedules must have at least a Default Pay Code and a Default OT Pay Code. Also check the Pay Codes in Aspire match the Payroll Items in your Payroll System.
✅ If you use branch codes, confirm that Aspire Branch Codes & Division Codes match your Payroll System.
Exporting Payroll Hours
We will now go over the workflow to ensure there is a successful export of your payroll hours from Aspire to process your payroll.
Reviewing Employee Hours
Go to Scheduling and select Weekly Time Review.
Select the first day of the pay period you need for the payroll export. You can use either the calendar or the arrows to select your work week.
Review all employees' times for their work week. Time worked is broken down daily, with the total hours worked, and a total for each employee’s overtime hours is displayed at the end of each week.
Your Operations teams should be reviewing and accepting time entry daily for minimal errors. (To learn more about Aspire's Time Entry Acceptance Workflow, read the article here.)
Look if the employee's time is in an Unaccepted status or if their name is in red text.
If Employee Time is Unaccepted
Correct time for each employee if their status is Unaccepted.
Click on the hours, and choose Open Time Entry.
Review the total hours to be sure all the hours are correctly assigned to a work ticket.
After reviewing the time in Time Entry, when the Save button is clicked, the status will change on the employees weekly time review from Unaccepted to Pending.
If an Employee's Name is Red
⚠️ If an employee’s name is displayed in red on Weekly Time Review, that means the employee is missing information necessary for payroll processing or an OT Paycode Exception.
To fix an employee's missing information:
Go to Contacts, and select the employees contact record.
Verify that a base rate and a pay schedule have been entered into the Payroll fields.
📌 Note: Be sure the Effective Date is set to the first day of the pay period at the beginning of the employees' first pay period.
Once the payroll fields have been corrected, you should be able to go back to Time Entry and the name would be listed correctly, so you can proceed.
Approve Employee Time
Once all the employees are shown in Pending status with no errors, the hours need to be Approved.
Click the check box next to each employee you want to approve, or click the check box next to the status field to select all employees you want to approve.
Select Bulk Actions and click Approve.
Hours Export Options for Your Payroll System
Option 1: Exporting From Weekly Time Review
Next, select the Pay Schedule to filter your list of employees that applies to your payroll export.
📌 Note: If you track sub-contractor or temporary hours, it is necessary to select the correct pay schedules.
Use the box to select all approved hours for your employee or make sure every employee’s name you want to export has the checkmark selected next to their time entry for the export.
Go to the Bulk Actions and select Export.
⚠️ Aspire exports one week at a time; if you complete payroll bi-weekly, do this process again for your second week.
After the Export is complete, a file will be created. This is the export file used to process hours into your Payroll System. The export is available immediately.
Example of an Aspire Payroll export file is down below:
📌 Note: If this file export type isn't the correct file type for you, choose another file type in Administration. To learn about different export format types, read this article here. If you change your format type, you will have to rerun the export in Weekly Time Review.
Creating a Pivot Report from the Hours Export found in Weekly Time Review
Purpose and Benefits
An hours pivot table can be created in Excel using the Aspire Payroll export format for the hours from the Weekly Time Review.
This method offers a couple of benefits compared to using the Aspire Hours pivot:
You do not need to wait until the next day for the Aspire Pivot to refresh, making it a good solution if payroll needs to be processed immediately.
The exported Excel file is cleaner and easier to work with.
The main drawback to using this method is that you can only export one week at a time. If you are doing bi-weekly payroll, you would need to export two files and combine them.
In the section will be a video and article content going over how this can be achieved. Let’s take a look!
Workflow for Exporting and Creating the Pivot Table in Excel
Verify the Hours in Aspire
In Aspire, go to Scheduling ▶️ Weekly Time Review.
Select the week that needs to be exported.
Confirm that all hours are in Pending status.
Address any Warnings that need to be corrected, such as, Missing Pay Schedules or Missing Pay Rates.
Review the Total and OT Hours for each employee. Adjust as needed in the Time Entry screen.
Approve all hours.
Export the Hours from Weekly Time Review
Filter the hours down to only show the Branch/Pay Schedules/Employees that will be included in the export.
Select all of the employees ▶️ Bulk Actions ▶️ Export.
Combine Exported Data (for bi-weekly payroll)
Export the second week of hours if doing bi-weekly payroll.
Add the data of the two exports together.
Create the Excel Pivot Report
Select any cell with data.
Go to Insert ▶️ Pivot Table ▶️ From Table/Range.
The range containing all of the data will automatically be selected with the chasing dotted lines.
The PivotTable From Table or Range window will open.
Select the New Worksheet option and then click OK.
A new worksheet will be opened in the payroll export workbook file.
Customize the Pivot Table
There should now be a blank pivot in the new worksheet.
It will list the data field to the right of the spreadsheet and below that four sections for Filters, Columns, Rows, and Values.
Drag and drop the following fields into the sections
Employee ID or Employee Name to Rows
E/D/T Code to the Columns section
E Hours to the Values section
Edit for Importing
Edit the worksheet as needed to match the import specs from the payroll company if the worksheet will be imported to payroll.
Update the Pivot Table
Make changes to the data as needed.
Click on the pivot table and the PivotTable Analyze option is now visible in the menu.
Click on the menu for PivotTable Analyze ▶️ Refresh.
Option 2: Exporting Payroll Hours From Hours Pivot Report
You also have the option to create an Hours Pivot Report to help during the exporting process. This might be especially helpful for companies that process payroll bi-weekly.
If you have created this during implementation, or exported hours using Weekly Time Review, then you can skip this section.
⚠️ It's important to remember, when using Pivot Reports, that all hours must be in approved status the day before to show accurately on the report. Pivot Reports update nightly. If you make a change today, the hours pivot report will be updated the following day.
Locate your Hours Pivot Report in Reports ➡️ Standard Reports ➡️ Hours Pivot Table.
The Standard Hours Pivot Report appears, which you will customize to be similar to the hours you will be exporting in Weekly Time Review.
Customize Your Pivot Report Filters
Filter Fields | Data Display Fields | Row Display Fields |
Work Date Year | Regular Hours | Employee (Last, First) |
Work Date Month | OT Hours | Division |
Work Date | Hours | Pay Code Name |
Pay Schedule |
| Base Rate |
Status of Approved |
|
|
📌 Note: Even though these are the recommended fields to add to match weekly time review, pivots report fields are flexible, adjust as needed.
Add the fields to the report by right clicking and selecting Show Field List. Drag and drop each of the filter fields to the sections as shown below.
Once the fields are added to the pivot report, then it will display like this at the top.
Add the filter field of Status to equal Approved to ensure that all hours you are wanting to export has been Approved in Weekly Time Review.
Under each drop down, you would select the correct Work Dates and Pay Schedule.
Use the drop down to select the correct Work Date Year.
Use the drop down to select the correct Work Date Month.
Use the drop down to select the correct Work Dates.
Select the correct Pay Schedule.
📌 Note: Save this report for repeat use and share with your team as needed.
Export Your Hours Pivot Report
Once all of your pivot total hours match the hours in weekly time review, export the pivot report as an excel document.
This is the export file from the Hours Pivot Report:
Depending on the import requirements of your Payroll System, you can then edit the export file to match what you need for the import or you will manually enter in these approved hours to your Payroll System.
This completes the steps to export your payroll hours from Aspire. You can now process payroll in your Payroll Service to create paychecks.
Checklist for Exporting Payroll to Your Payroll System
As you keep learning the flow of exporting payroll to your payroll system, we've provided you a simple checklist to go through! You can download your own checklist below. 👇
