Kronos Information & Instruction

What is Kronos?

Kronos is a tool for tracking an employee’s time worked and benefit leave time used. Kronos records your punches, applies applicable state and federal laws and Handbook rules and sends the data to MMSD’s Human Resources Information System (Munis). Munis  processes this data and prints your paycheck.

All employees in the district who are paid hourly and are eligible to be paid overtime are required to use Kronos to track their time.  Teachers, Administrators, PR-I, PR and some LTE do not use Kronos to record their time.

Kronos Basics

Each employee is responsible for his or her own timecard.

Employees must punch in at their start time and out when they are done.

Each employee must enter his or her own benefit leave time after the time has been approved by their supervisor (PI, FI, etc.) – use the time clock or log-in to the computer.  This is not a function of the secretary or supervisor.

It is the employee’s responsibility to follow-up with the secretary or supervisor to enter missed punches for them.  Please follow your location’s procedures.

Under no circumstances is it okay to punch in or out for another employee.

You must punch out and in when/if you leave your work location during an unpaid lunch break.  You may punch in once you’ve returned, even if it’s before the completion of your lunch break.  Kronos will deduct your full unpaid lunch break for you.

You must punch in and out if you have prior approval from your supervisor to shorten your lunch.

You may use any combination of the phone, badge reader (time clock), and computer to record your time.

Grace Periods & Overtime

A grace period is the amount of time before or after your start or end time that will not impact your hours worked for pay purposes.   Kronos rounds to your start or end time to pay you.

Each Employee group now has a 5 minute grace period before and after their start and end time that is on the Kronos schedule.

Examples:  A custodian’s start time is 6:00 am.  If he punches in at 5:54 am, he will be paid for an extra 5 minutes that day.  If he punches in at 5:56 am, they will be paid starting at 6:00 am.

An EA’s end time is 3:00 pm.  If she punches out at 3:05, she will be paid ending at 3:00 pm.  If she punches out at 2:55 pm, she will be paid until 3:00 pm.

It is important to understand how the grace periods work in order not to incur overtime.  Overtime is only available with your supervisor’s prior approval.

Employees are required to start work at their scheduled time and work until their scheduled end time regardless of grace periods.   Punching in after your start time is still considered late.

The system also uses rounding rules.  All punches outside your scheduled start and end time will round to the nearest 5 minutes.

Have Questions? Contact Payroll or payroll@madison.k12.wi.us