Contents
Summary
This is an overview of what is covered in the training for iTrent Manager guidance
- different claim types
- how to approve a claim
- rejecting a claim
- entering claims via the employee’s record
- entering claims via fast input
- viewing claims that have been entered
What claims should I use?
Casual claims – casual claims must always be entered on a casual record and a scale point must be entered. If a scale point is not chosen, the system will default to SCP1. Ensure you choose Casual Claims Schools DCC or if you are an academy it will just say Casual Claims Schools. If a casual claim is claimed against any other position than a casual it will error.
Overtime – overtime can only be entered on a non-teaching contract. If overtime is entered on a teacher contract or a casual or supply contract it will error!
Full-time teacher – claim extra work on the Teachers Claim Template as an OSLA (Out of School Learning Activities). You can choose Teacher’s OSLA claims which will pay the normal hourly rate that the teacher’s contract is on or Teacher’s OSLA miscellaneous rate, where you can input an hourly rate. If a teacher uses an overtime claim, then it will error.
Part-time teacher – any extra work undertaken must be claimed as supply teaching on a supply teaching contract. If they do not have a supply teaching contract a starter form will need to be sent into payroll and a contract will need to be set up before you can enter a claim. If they put in an overtime claim it will error.
Supply miscellaneous – if you have a teacher that enters supply miscellaneous claims, we will require an hourly rate for payroll to set this up. Payroll will then have to enter a full-time equivalent on their record so that it reports to Teachers’ Pensions correctly.
If a teacher has more than one hourly rate a separate assignment will be required for that rate of pay. If you do not enter an hourly rate the claim will error.
Higher grade work – should be entered on a non-teaching contract. The higher-grade enhancement pays the difference between the normal hourly rate on the contract and the hourly rate entered on the claim. If an hourly rate is not entered the claim will default to SCP1 and this will error on the payroll.
The system will not pay the higher-grade work if the SCP entered, is equal to or lower than the scale point on the contract. When claiming higher grade work on overtime, please remember to also claim the overtime under the overtime claim form as well as the higher-grade work.
Employees entering a claim
iTrent is a self-service system so to get the most from the system we recommend you encourage employees to use employee self-service (ESS). Using ESS doesn’t prevent you from entering a claim on behalf of an employee, so you can have a mixture of both if you feel there are employees within the school that will need assistance with their claims.
Life cycle of a claim entered via ESS:
When an employee enters their claim they will need to submit it on the claims page and then enter their password and submit it again.
- When submitting a claim on the Time and Expense Submission page if the employee presses return or enter rather than clicking the submit button it will cancel out the password that has been entered and either display an error message saying invalid password or the screen won’t change at all. Please get them to ensure they click submit once they have entered their password.
- When an employee enters a claim and submits it via ESS, the claim will go to the relevant person for approval.
- For a majority of schools the claim will go to those in the time and expense workflow role (WFR) for the school, the only exception to this is those that have a reporting line structure, which is very few schools. You may have 1 person or multiple people in the time and expense workflow role. If you have more than one person you will all receive the email notification to advise there is a claim waiting to be approved.
- It will also appear in the to-do list for everyone in that workflow role. Once one person has approved the claim it will automatically be removed from the others to-do lists.
- For those that have a reporting line structure the claim will still need to be approved but it will go to the employee’s reporting manager rather than the workflow role.
Workflow email notification
The email notification will show you basic details:
- Reference.
- Start date of the claim.
- Position.
- Element (Claim Type).
- Cash amount – Important to note that if there is no amount for the cash value then that means the claim has been entered incorrectly and will pay £0.
This is an example of a workflow email when a claim errors. You can see from this notification that the position is a teacher and the claim entered is for overtime. Overtime cannot be entered on a teaching contract, therefore it has errored and has no cash amount. This claim must be rejected back to the employee for them to re-enter the claim using the correct claim form.
- You have 2 options in the email which are to ‘View Details’ or ‘Authorise’.
- If you select ‘Authorise’ it will take you to the log-in screen and once you have entered your login details it will flash up on the screen that the claim has been authorised and will disappear. It does it so quickly you could quite easily miss it!
- We recommend you ‘View Details’. You will still be required to log in but it will then display the claim on screen for you to check the details before authorising it.
- If you have a number of claims to approve you might not want to log in to iTrent each time from the email notification and may prefer to work from your To-Do list. However, we do recommend that you check your email notifications to pick out any claims that have no cash value so that you can reject the claim back to the employee for them to correct it.
To-do list
Open ‘to do list’
View claim from ‘to do list’ – click on the arrow to open claim
- You are unable to amend the claim for the employee as they will not receive any notification of the amendment meaning there won’t be an audit trail.
- When you reject the claim, you have the option to put a reason in the box. When the claim is unauthorised the employee will receive an email notification to advise them it hasn’t been approved. If you have put a reason in the box it will appear on the email which is a good opportunity to advise the employee what they need to do next. For example, if they have claimed 6 hours and it should be 5 hours, you could put ‘Claim should be for 5 hours not 6 hours. Please amend and re-submit’.
- When viewing a claim you can also check at this point if the correct claim has been entered.
Entering claims on iTrent manager
When you enter a claim on behalf of an employee via an iTrent Manager Access the employee will be able to view the details of the claim on their ESS.
To enter a new claim you go to the person’s record, select ‘New Time and Expense Claim’, choose the claim type and you will then be required to enter their personal reference details again.
We are currently investigating whether we can get the ‘New Time and Expense Claim’ link added to the main home page and also change the ‘Person search’ to include other search options such as Surname. It’s a work in progress and we’ll let you know when we have an update on whether that is possible. In the meantime, if you have found the person and then forgotten their number, you can open up a second screen.
Please note if you load a second screen and then close down the one you logged in to first iTrent will display a message saying ‘Potential Security Violation’. If you ever get the ‘Potential Security Violation’ message, then please log out/exit all iTrent screens and then try logging in again. This should resolve the issue.
To open second screen:
- To enter the claims through iTrent Manager click on employee details from the home screen and search for employee
- From the menu options choose ‘Time and Expense Claims’ and then ‘New Time NS Expense Claim’. Make a note of the employee number or open a second screen.
Choose Claim type from the list in the left-hand margin. For the example below we have chosen overtime to go on a teaching assistant post. The employee has two positions – teaching assistant and casual. Please ensure you choose the correct position otherwise the claim will error. Click on ‘NEW’.
Choose which page your claim will come under and click on the arrow by the element column, choose which element is appropriate, enter the date, reason for claim is optional, leave the cost code blank (unless it needs to be paid from a different one to which the position is set at).
Fast input claims
Fast input is an ‘add on’ to iTrent which was built after we went live. We had some schools that asked us for a way of inputting multiple claims without having to start a new form for each employee.
It works and it does the job however as iTrent is an employee self-service system it is not what the system was designed for and therefore isn’t the best part of the system.
A few points to note when using fast input:
- The employee will not see the claim on their ESS.
- You can’t enter mileage claims.
- Claims can time out.
- No way of getting a printout of what you have entered after you’ve submitted it – can print before.
- Fast input cannot be used whilst the contracts are locked.
- No validation to pick up duplicated claims.
- You can’t attach a receipt.
Please see the links below for guidance on fast input:
Cost codes
- The following rules apply to spine point claims only.
- Cost codes for casual employees require the last two digits of the item code only.
- You are unable to change the manage activity code for a casual position, if the casual has completed work at a different school, they need another casual assignment to be set up for your school.
- You are unable to change the cost code for casual claims at misc rate, higher grade work claims and invigilation claims at misc rate when using fast input.
For more information on cost codes, please refer to the costing guidance documents below: