Payroll for Part-time Employees Program, 1986, 1994
Campus Recreation
University of Western Ontario
London, Ontario

Technologies Used:

1986
MS-DOS
dBase
QuickSilver (dBase compiler)

1994
Windows 3.11
MS Access 2.0
Access 2.0 Developer's Toolkit
Novell Network

1986
The Campus Recreation office would have hundreds of students working part-time for them throughout the year - the regular university year and the summer months. It was very common for these employees to do several different jobs throughout the year. This meant that they were paid from different accounts depending on the jobs being performed. Usually there was not a set number of hours an employee would work each week.

Before I came along, it was common for one clerical person to take 4 days each week to complete the payroll. This was because it was completed by hand:

• gather all the timecards
• calculate the pay for each employee that week
• determine from which accounts the monies would be paid
• type up a list of the employees to be paid, the amounts, and the accounts which were to be used

Used compiled dBase III plus to create the first application to make life much easier for the clerical staff. It reduced the time to complete the payroll from 4 days to 2 hours.

Had Social Insurance Number validation implemented at the time of data entry because invalid SINs caused serious pay delays and repeated work.

Sold a copy to Faculty of Physical Education, UWO.

1994
After a few years of using this program, Campus Recreation upgraded their equipment to newer microcomputers running Windows 3.11 and networked with Novell. They agreed to have me create a Windows version of the payroll program.

Used MS Access 2.0 and the Access 2.0 Developer's Toolkit to create the new client/server Windows version of that application. Designed the user interface and data structures based on my previous application and by utilizing the new features that Access made available. The data in the dBase databases would also be moved into Access tables instead of simply linking the dBase databases to the Access mdb. This would have been done sooner or later.

The application was broken into two Access mdb's:

• one to hold the tables and the relationships
• the other held everything else

The mdb containing the tables was placed on a central server to allow access by any workstation running the client portion of the application. The tables were linked to the client.

The client portion had a routine that when it started would check for the linked tables. If the linked tables were not found, a file common dialog would be shown asking to find the data mdb somewhere on the network. Once the data mdb was found, the table links were established and the application continued to load. If the links could not be established, the application presented a message box saying this before closing down.

The tables were:

• employees: basic information such as name, address, SIN, email address
• hours: date worked, start and end times, job id (linked to Employees Table)
• accounts: university account number
• jobs: job description, account number id from which the job was to be paid

The forms were:

• main form with a subform for entering payroll information: date worked, job description, start and end times of shift; it would display the number of hours worked and the payment amount, and the total pay for that payroll
• a form for entering basic employee information (separate from main form because the clerks wanted to use their screens at 640 x 480 resolution)
• university accounts form to allow entry/changing of these
• jobs form to allow entry/changing of these, selecting from which account they would be paid, and entering the hourly pay for that job

The reports were:

• a list of employees to be paid that week; it included the accounts for each employee from which funds were to be drawn
• a year to date summary of payments to each employee

Campus Recreation still had to send a paper copy to central payroll because central payroll could not handle any electronic submissions.

The queries were:

• select the hours worked for a particular week for a particular employee
• an update for any changed information for a particular employee
• an append for any new hours worked
• select the jobs to display in the jobs form for viewing/updating
• update of changed jobs information
• append for new jobs added
• delete for jobs being removed
• update of changed accounts information
• append for new accounts added
• delete for accounts being removed
• select all hours to be placed in a history table for future reference
• delete all hours when beginning a new fiscal year

Social Insurance Numbers were validated at the time of data entry to eliminate pay delays.

The login screen and security permissions of MS Access were utilized.