TimePilot Definitions

Reverse Extraction

What's Reverse Extraction?
Reverse Extraction takes the clock-in and clock-out data that you extracted into a separate file and dumps the data back into Current Transactions. This is commonly used if you entered the wrong start or end dates of a pay period during extraction and find yourself missing some of the period's clock-ins or clock outs. Reverse Extraction gives you a chance to "start over" and re-extract with the correct start and end dates.

A little background: When your clock-ins and clock-outs are transferred into the TimePilot software, the transactions are kept in “Current Transactions.” At the end of the pay period, you “extract” the just the clock-ins and clock-outs that occurred during the time period and put them in a separate database. From there, you can run reports, make corrections to individual transactions, etc.

To visualize the concept, imagine the database is a huge pot. Every day, the TimePilot timeclocks dump more clock-ins and clock-outs into the pot. Now it’s the end of a two-week pay period, so you want to remove just clock-ins and clock-outs for the last two weeks from the pot. With the TimePilot Central software, you “extract” just those transactions and move them to a separate, smaller pot. In the smaller pot, it’s much easier to see what you have and it keeps the big pot from eventually overflowing.

So let's say you've extracted your pay period, but by mistake you only specified the start and end dates for the first week of a two-week pay period. That means that your extracted pay period contains only your employees' clock-in and clock-out data for the first week of the period, while the clock-in and clock-out data for the second week is still sitting in Current Transactions. You don't want your employees to be paid for only one week when they worked two. What do you do?

To get things back to normal, you’ll need to move the transactions from the erroneous past pay period back into the Current Transactions “pot” with the transactions from the second week, and then extract both weeks of transactions.

1. Start TimePilot Central, then click the “Periods” menu, then “Open Past Time Period.”
2. Find the erroneously extracted pay period (you’ll be able to tell by the dates) and open it. You’ll know it’s a past time period by the yellow bar across the top of the screen (the bar is green in Current Transactions).
3. Click the “Administrative” menu, then “Reverse Extraction.” Click OK.
4. The transactions that were in the extracted pay period will be dumped back into Current Transactions. Please note that if you have changed any settings in TimePilot Central since the erroneous extraction, those settings will be changed back to the way they were just before you extracted. For instance, if you deleted an employee after the first week of the pay period, that employee will be back in the list of employees, because otherwise his or her transactions would not have a name attached to them.
5. Now extract your pay period as you normally would, entering the correct start and end dates of the pay period.