Documentation TiC-Frontend of the University of Cologne

The traffic light shows you visually the current status of your time account. Depending on your plus or minus hours and the remaining contract period, the traffic light can display the colors green, yellow and red.

If the plus or minus hours collected by you exceed the limit at which a reduction of your plus hours or the compensation of your minus hours in the remaining contract period becomes critical, your traffic light changes to the yellow view.

If the accumulated plus or minus hours exceed the limit above which it would no longer be possible to reduce your plus hours or compensate for your minus hours in the remaining contract period, your traffic light changes to red.

You will be informed about the changes in your traffic light status in the TiC mailbox. If the traffic light changes to the red view, your costlocation manager or its deputy and the personnel department receive an automatic notification by e-mail.

Here you will find the table showing when your traffic light status changes.

Fig. 3

If you have already recorded working times with TiC in the past, you will also be shown a list of previous employment relationships in the home screen.

Fig. 4a

By clicking on the Bookings button next to the relevant employment relationship, you can access the monthly overview and view the bookings at that time.

Employees can display overviews of their booking activities. The button "booking report" opens a window in which the specific booking period for the desired overview is entered.

Fig. 5

You will see a listing of each individual booking in the query period appears. This overview can now be printed or saved as a Pdf file.

Fig. 6

Via the button Let’s go in the block Archive working times it continues into the monthly overview of your working times. Here you can see and enter your working times.

When you start the application, the system always displays the current booking month.

Fig. 7

The overview starts with the block monthly navigation. Below, the individual calendar weeks of the month are listed in blocks with the working days Monday to Saturday. Days from the previous or following month are highlighted in light blue.

You can recognise bookings that have already been made by the coloured bars in the weekdays. If you move the mouse over one of these bars, the detailed view of the booking opens, showing you the booking date, the booking period, the author, the cost centre and the contractually defined monthly working time for this cost centre.

Fig. 8

The monthly navigation is divided into three parts:

Fig. 9

On the left-hand side you will find your current monthly balance, your contractually agreed monthly working time and the balance carried forward from the previous month(s).

In the middle of the navigation you can use the right and left arrow keys or the selection field between them to switch to the view of past months or to future monthly views (only months within your employment contract).

To the right of the arrow keys, a color legend shows the different booking types (work: blue, sick: green, parental leave : purple, vacation: orange) as well as the marking colors for holidays: yellow and days from previous and following months: light blue .

The balance compares your working time already performed in this month (actual time → left) with the contractually agreed working time (target time → right). The balance always shows only the working times performed in the current month.

Existing plus or minus hours from previous months of the employment relationship are displayed in this field.

Note that your plus or minus hours should not exceed 50% of the monthly working time.

The beginning and end of the daily working time is recorded in a 15-minute grid. Click with the mouse button on a grey box in the day on which you want to enter working times. The booking window opens. Enter your working time in the Start and End fields.If you work for several cost centers, select the cost center for which you want to enter the working time.

Fig. 10

If you do not leave your workplace or your place of work during a break and do not exceed the legally regulated break times on this day, do not book a break. In this case, a break of 30 minutes is automatically deducted from the attendance time in the TiC recording system for working times of more than six hours and 30 minutes, and a break of 45 minutes for working times of more than 9 hours and 15 minutes.

Fig. 11

If you leave your work center or usage site for a break, enter the start of the break as the end of record. When you return from the break, enter the rest of the working time with start and end as the new time segment. In the following example, the employee worked from 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. on Friday and left the work center for a break from 12:15 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. on Friday.

Fig. 12

Enter your working times with the status Working.

If you regularly work on the same day of the week (for example, according to a duty roster or other agreements) and are sick on this day, enter the working time that you would have worked with the status Sick.

If you will not be on duty for a longer period of time due to maternity or parental leave, you can use this booking type to enter your contractual working hours for the months of your absence in TiC in advance. This way, your time account will not slip into a minus balance during your absence and you and your cost center management will not receive automated reminders and warnings due to missing booking activity and/or reaching the red traffic light status.

On days on which you have taken leave, enter the working time that you would have worked with the status Vacation.

If you regularly work on the same weekday (for example, according to a duty roster or other agreements) and a public holiday falls on this weekday, enter the working time that you would have worked with the status Work.

In many university institutions, the working hours of employees (auxiliary staff) are not fixed or allocated to a regular working day. Here the internal regulation often exists that the holiday is credited proportionally to the working time to be performed.

Example: If you normally work 10 hours a week, you can work a fifth of your regular working time - here 2 hours - less in the week in which a holiday is due and enter this in TiC with the status Work.

Please check with your costlocation manager beforehand to find out which holiday regulations apply in your institution.

For reasons of insurance cover, work on Saturdays should only be carried out in consultation with your superiors. You will receive the following information when booking:

Note: You enter working hours for a Saturday. Working hours at the University of Cologne are generally spread over the weekdays Monday to Friday. For insurance reasons, work on Saturdays may only be carried out in consultation with your superiors.

Working on Sundays is generally not permitted.

With your registration at TiC you reach the overview with all your costlocation.

Fig. 20

After your registration and successful nomination as a deputy, you will be taken to the overview with your costlocations.

Fig. 21

This overview lists all employees of your costlocation who record their working times with TiC.

Fig. 24

The names of the employees are listed alphabetically. Employees who have not yet registered in TiC and recorded working hours are displayed at the end of the list with .

The following is a detailed explanation of the booking overview from left to right:

Fig. 25

On the far right in the costlocation overview, the two symbols or and or are displayed. with which you can perform the following actions:

You confirm the monthly balance of an employee with two mouse clicks as plausible. With a click on the after the booking month, the lock will lock an . The employee can now no longer record working times in this booking month. An empty calendar page also appears in the view. By a further click on the now displayed calendar page you declare the hours worked by the employee as plausible. Now you get this view: . The Minimum Wage Act does not stipulate specific deadlines or other requirements as to when or how often the recorded working hours of employees subject to TiC should be checked and released. It is recommended that cost center managers and their deputies check the times of their employees subject to tic once a month, preferably on the month following the booking month, and confirm them as plausible.

If changes are still necessary after your confirmation, you can reopen the lock and the corresponding month by clicking and cancel your confirmation of previous bookings.

Before you confirm the hours of your employees, you can view the individual working time bookings in more detail by clicking on the booking month.

Fig. 26

You are now taken to the monthly overview of your employee. You will find the structure and explanations of the view in the chapter month overview and navigation.

Employees subject to TiC are required to record their working hours until the tenth day of the following month. After that the booking window closes and no more bookings can be made. Has an employee missed the period described? you can reopen the booking window for the employee by clicking on . The employee can now add or correct working times.

After the changes have been made, you can reopen the booking window by clicking on the again. and then click on the calendar page to mark the entry for the corrected month as plausible.

With the click on the button Initial carry the possibility exists, to deposit already existing plus and minus hours of your employees in TiC. You will only use this function to start the application in 2020, or if the WHB and WHK are not yet TiC-liable, during their of the current employment relationship decide to voluntarily participate in TiC.

In the Initial Carryover window, select the type of carryover (time credit or time debt). Hours and minutes can be set to the right. Then click on Save.

Fig. 27

You will find the "Favorites Switch" functionality in the upper right corner of the booking overview for your cost center.

Fig. 28

The use of the Favorite Switch function is always useful if you have several (super) substitutes to administer your TiC-obligated employees. By clicking on the button, it changes from to . You will now only receive the automated e-mails of your employees for whom you have set a favorite star.

Please note the following:

If you have activated the favorites switch but have not declared any employees of the cost center as favorites, you will still receive the emails for all employees of the cost center.

If you use the favorites switch with several (super-)deputies, make sure that all employees of the cost center have been declared favorites by at least one substitute. This is because the automatic e-mails to employees who have not been assigned a favorite star by any of the substitutes will continue to go to all substitutes (or the cost center management).

When changing the deputy authorizations, please remember that the favorites may have to be reassigned.