By now you have probably heard about the ransomware attack on the Ultimate Kronos Group (UKG) solutions which use the Kronos Private Cloud, making their Kronos Private Cloud solutions unavailable.  The Kronos Community blog contains more information.

This brings up the question of what do you do if your timekeeping system is attacked? 

The following suggestions assume that you are running PeopleSoft Payroll for North America.

  1. Pay based on the amounts or hours that were paid in the last period. Once you get the pay or hours into a spreadsheet you can use the CI_PY_PSHUP_LOAD component interface to load the data into the PSHUP_TXN record. The component interface simplifies the process of loading your data and performs certain validations during the process. After reviewing the data you can use the Load Paysheet Update Program to load the data to Paysheets. You can also use the Rapid Entry Paysheets to manually enter data and again use the Load Paysheet Update Program to load the data.
  2. You can manually enter time or amounts into Paysheets.
  3. Pay employees based on an average of amounts or hours that were paid in previous periods.
  4. Use their standard hours to pay the employee.
  5. Pay employees based on their scheduled hours.

In the meantime the actual hours that your employees are working will still need to be tracked.  This can be done in a word processing document, a spreadsheet, or a home-grown solution.  In this case Kronos has offered some alternatives for timekeeping as well as scheduling in their Kronos Private Cloud FAQs under the Interim Solutions for Time and Scheduling section.

Once the timekeeping solution is back up and running, the actual time will need to be entered and any rules pertaining to the calculation of time, such as overtime, shift premium, and holiday pay rules, will need to be applied to determine what the employee should have been paid.  Run an off-cycle payroll with the actual calculated hours to get the new pay amount.  Use the Reversal/Adjustment Paycheck process with option Reversal/Adjustment, to reverse what you have paid, but not void the pay. 

There are some things that you may want to keep in mind:

  • Have managers review the estimated hours before you pay it to try to catch gross over or under estimates of the current pay.
  • Review the proposed pay for new hires.  They may not have been paid in the previous pay period and will not have any hours that you can apply to the current period.  In this case you may need to use standard hours.
  • For terminated employees try to get their actual hours worked from their manager so that you can get as close to the actual pay as possible.
  • Consider only paying regular pay and paying overtime at a later date.
  • Do not reverse the paychecks you issued with the estimated amounts to process the actual amounts.
  • When processing the adjustments between the estimated amount paid and actual pay keep an eye on garnishments and deductions that are percentage based and have a limit as they may have been lower based on the estimated pay and hit the limit when the regular pay and adjustment are processed together.

Even if you may not have been affected by this current cyber-attack, it’s always a good idea to have a plan in place of what you would need to do if it does occur.