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Joplin City advances electronic time‑tracking pilot; automatic payroll import remains pending
Summary
City staff said a finance‑department pilot of the TCP time‑and‑attendance system has gone live for finance staff, but an automatic import/export between TCP and the Central Square payroll system is not yet complete; full rollout is planned group‑by‑group after technical fixes and training.
Leslie Husley, a city staff member, gave a progress report on the city’s move from paper timesheets to the TCP electronic time‑and‑attendance system and the work needed to integrate it with the city’s payroll software (Central Square).
Husley said the city piloted the finance department on Sept. 27 for biometric enrollment and training; the finance group went live on Jan. 25 and the city exported its first actual hours for the February payroll. She said the download of hours from TCP into Central Square and the upload of employee and accrual data back into TCP required programming coordination between the two vendors.
"We learned that we needed to restrict users from editing their own time," Husley said, describing audit controls that will prevent supervisors or payroll staff from changing their own entries. She said exempt employees will not clock in and out; nonexempt employees will use time clocks, an app or computers and some positions will be geofenced (for example, lifeguards) to prevent off‑site clocking.
Husley described remaining technical obstacles: the automatic import/export between TCP and Central Square was not fully operational for new employees and accruals, and, because accruals were not pulling automatically, one employee’s comp time went negative during testing. Mark (IT staff) can make manual corrections, but Husley said the city needs the automatic processes working before expanding the pilot.
The city is preparing training materials, internal process guides and schedules across roughly 800 individual employees who will need training. Husley said the plan is to train and pilot group by group, with broader piloting and supervisor training expected in September–October 2025 once the automatic import is completed and clocks and biometric enrollment are in place.
Council members thanked staff for prioritizing accuracy to avoid payroll errors and for pacing the rollout alongside other city work such as audits and grant management.
The project remains in implementation with key vendor coordination outstanding; staff said they will provide further updates as the automatic imports and broader piloting proceed.
