The DTR, the Grace Period, and the Leave Form
You are the payroll clerk of a 40-employee municipal office. Employees are paid a daily rate of ₱576 for an eight-hour day, and late or undertime is charged at the hourly rate. The office grants a ten-minute grace period per instance; only minutes beyond the grace period are deducted.
For the current cut-off you have:
- Employee A - late 20, 15, and 10 minutes on three separate days
- Employee B - late 25 and 30 minutes on two days
- Employee C - late 40 minutes on one day
Employee C protests: the 40-minute day was covered by a half-day leave form her supervisor had already approved, but the form reached your desk only this morning. Your supervisor tells you to deduct everything now and let C file a protest afterwards.
1. Compute the deduction for each employee, applying the grace period per instance, and give the total.
Read the worked answer
Basis of the rate: Daily rate ₱576 ÷ 8 hours = ₱72.00 per hour ₱72.00 ÷ 60 minutes = ₱1.20 per minute
Employee A - three instances, grace applied to each:
- 20 min − 10 = 10
- 15 min − 10 = 5
- 10 min − 10 = 0 (fully absorbed by grace)
- Total excess = 15 min → 15 × ₱1.20 = ₱18.00
Employee B - two instances:
- 25 − 10 = 15
- 30 − 10 = 20
- Total excess = 35 min → 35 × ₱1.20 = ₱42.00
Employee C - one instance:
- 40 − 10 = 30 min → ₱36.00 (subject to validation - see next task)
Total deduction: ₱18.00 + ₱42.00 + ₱36.00 = ₱96.00
The trap: applying the grace period once per day rather than once per instance, or once for the whole cut-off. Either error under-deducts the office or over-deducts the employee. A's 10-minute lateness is deducted at zero, not at ₱12.00.
2. What do you do about C's leave form and your supervisor's instruction - and what is the deduction figure under each outcome?
Read the worked answer
The supervisor's instruction is procedurally wrong. "Deduct now, protest later" reverses the burden: it takes money from an employee first and makes her recover it. Payroll deductions must rest on a validated record before they are made, not on a record you expect to be corrected afterwards. A supervisor's instruction does not convert an approved leave into an absence.
Correct procedure:
- Verify the leave form against the DTR date: does the approved half-day leave cover the same date and the same hours as the 40-minute lateness?
- Check the approval date, not the date it reached your desk. If the supervisor approved it before or for that date, the late arrival falls within approved leave and is not undertime. Slow internal routing is the office's problem, not the employee's.
- Hold the deduction pending validation for one working day at most, and tell C in writing that it is being verified - do not simply stay silent.
- Record the outcome on the DTR and in the log, with the reason.
The two figures:
- Leave form valid → C's deduction is ₱0.00; total = ₱18.00 + ₱42.00 = ₱60.00
- Leave form invalid (wrong date, or approved after the fact) → C's deduction stands at ₱36.00; total = ₱96.00
Either way, you owe C the verification and a written reason before the cut-off closes.
3. Mid-verification you discover that A's 10-minute lateness on one day was actually recorded as 30 minutes but corrected in pencil on the DTR. What is the status of A's deduction and what do you do?
Read the worked answer
Status: A's deduction cannot be finalized on that entry.
A pencilled correction on a DTR is not a record - it is an alteration. It defeats the purpose of the document, which is to show what the bundy clock or the supervisor actually recorded at the time.
Recalculate on the two entries that are not in doubt:
- 20 − 10 = 10
- 15 − 10 = 5
- Subtotal = 15 min → ₱18.00 (coincidentally the same figure, but arrived at on a different basis)
What to do:
- Do not accept the pencil mark and do not erase it. Both destroy evidence; the second one makes you the author of the discrepancy.
- Pull the source record - the bundy clock tape or logbook for that date.
- Ask the supervisor to initial the correction in ink, with the date and reason, if the correction is genuine.
- If the correction cannot be substantiated, hold the item and carry it to the next cut-off rather than guessing in either direction.
The general rule at work: the clerk's job is to make the record true, not to make it tidy. A figure that is disputed and documented is worth more than a figure that is neat and invented - and the employee, not the office, bears the cost of a guess.