Working with hours and time operations in Robaws

If you want to add hours to a work order, you always do that via a specific item of the type time operation. In the Employee hours panel — in Robaws as well as in Wappy — you can only select items of the type 'Hour code - employee'. That way your time registration stays clean. In this article you read how you create such a time operation, link it to your employees and follow it up afterwards.

Creating a time operation

You create a time operation in the items module. As the item type you choose 'Hour code - employee'. The cost type then automatically switches to 'Labor'.

There are two kinds of time operations: Hour code - employee for the hours of your people, and Hour code - material for the running hours of machines. This article is about the first one. You register the running hours of your machines in the Material hours panel on the same work order; how that works is explained in Equipment, in the section 'Registering equipment hours'. If your employee registers those hours on site, they do that via Wappy | Registering equipment hours.

Fill in both a cost price and a selling price:

• the cost price is the average cost price of this kind of labour across your entire organisation;
• the selling price is the rate you charge for these hours.

You can refine the exact cost per person later via the wage cost on the employee record (see the Type section further on in this article). More explanation about how that cost price is determined on the work order can be found in How is the cost price of my hours on a work order determined?.

If you work with hour types, an extra field hour type appears on the time operation. Robaws copies it to every hour line and uses it in the time check. You enable hour types via settings > employees.

Applying it to the work order

Once the time operation exists, you can add it to a work order. That is possible in Robaws as well as in Wappy. This is how you register the hours achieved by your employees on the correct project.

Employee roles

With employee roles you determine which employees may use which time operations. This prevents someone from selecting the wrong time operation on the work order.

You manage the roles via settings > employees > employee roles. Create a new role, give it a name and select the time operation(s) this role may add.

You then link the role you created to the employee on the employee record, in the Type section, at the employee role field.

On the same record, also fill in the default time operation. Robaws then fills it in automatically on every new hour line of this employee. The combobox only shows the time operations that belong to the chosen employee role.

Type

In the Type section you fill in all work-related and financial details of the employee. The Engagement type field determines the kind of engagement. There are five options:

• payroll
• interim
• independent
• OA (subcontractor)
• trainee

Alongside the engagement type you choose the status (worker or white-collar worker) and possibly a subtype (limosa, dimona or independent). Depending on that combination, the accompanying fields appear, such as employer, gross wage or dimona number.

The wage cost (per hour) is an important detail for the recalculation: it is the cost that an employee actually costs your organisation per hour. Robaws copies that wage cost as the cost price of every hour line, and it takes precedence over the cost price of the time operation itself. Only for an OA or an independent contractor with an employer filled in can a purchase price on the item record still take precedence — you can read the full order in How is the cost price of my hours on a work order determined?. So make sure you fill in a value.

Performance sheet

If you want an overview of the hours an employee has achieved, you use the performance sheet. Go to the employees module and click the pdf action button in the overview screen.

You first get a window in which you fill in a start date and an end date — both are mandatory — and select one or more employees. You get one pdf per selected employee.

More details can be found in Can I get a performance sheet of my employees?.

Recalculation

The hours achieved also come back in the recalculation of a project. This lets you see per project how much labour was actually achieved from the work orders, alongside the other costs. How you build up and read a project recalculation is explained in Project recalculation.

Checking working hours

If you want to check the working hours achieved by your employees, you use the calendar overview in the work orders module. There you follow up the presences and absences and approve the achievements. Everything about this is explained in Time check.

Analysis

In the work orders module you switch to the analysis display via the display buttons. There you see the hours achieved in a chart, grouped by employee, project, time operation or kilometres. This shows you at a glance where the hours went.

Updated on: 08/09/2026