You can find the Month-End Closing under Administration > System > Month-End Closing.
Initial Setup
If you have newly introduced the Absences & Overtime module and have not yet performed a Month-End Closing, proceed as follows:
Under Administration > Overtime & Absences > Settings, specify the introduction date of the module.
For each employee, enter the holiday entitlement in the employment periods starting from the introduction month – create a new employment period if necessary.
Make sure that all employees record their working hours in full starting from the introduction month; otherwise, absences will be calculated.
Example: If you only recorded a few test hours in January and are only working productively from February onwards, enter February as the introduction month.
Working Times Overview
The Working Times Overview shows all employees with their booked hours per day for the selected month. You can use this to check whether all hours have been recorded in full before closing the month.
With the Locations & Departments module, you can filter the display by department and employee category.
Color Coding
The table uses the following color coding:
Red-highlighted fields: Less than the configured percentage of the Regular Working Hours was worked. This indicates that the month may not yet have been recorded in full.
Grey-highlighted fields: Saturdays, Sundays, public holidays, and days with Regular Working Hours of 0. Hours recorded on such days are displayed in red text.
Yellow-highlighted fields: The break regulation was not complied with on this day. With automatic break deduction, the net time is shown in bold.
Color-highlighted fields: Days with an entered reason for absence are displayed in the respective absence color. The legend appears above the table. On days with paid absence or annual leave, the employee’s Regular Working Hours are displayed.
Columns: Target, Actual, Leave
Target: Daily target hours according to Regular Working Hours, summed over the month.
Actual: Working hours + paid absence hours (Paid Absence and Annual Leave) + effective time surcharge hours (if activated) – break regulation deductions.
Leave: Total hours of the reason-for-absence category “Annual Leave”.
Viewing Day Details
Click on an individual day in the table to view all project hours for the employee on that day in a pop-up window.
Via the employee name in the pop-up, you navigate directly to the Project Time Recording and can make corrections there.
Billable and Non-Billable Hours
Via Show billable/non-billable distribution details, billably booked hours are displayed in green and non-billable hours in blue.
The Working Times Overview shows net hours – automatic break deductions are already included; time surcharges are not taken into account. A red exclamation mark next to the employee name indicates that an upper hour limit for the month or the week has been exceeded.
Closing the Month
Once all hours have been reviewed, click Close month at the bottom of the Working Times Overview. ZEP then calculates and stores the balances for overtime, time surcharges, holiday entitlement, and residual holiday at the end of the month. If a residual-holiday expiry month is configured, expired residual holiday days are automatically deducted.
Note: If a break regulation is configured, it must be fully set up – otherwise, an error message is displayed instead of the button and the Month-End Closing cannot be performed.
The Month-End Closing always applies to all employees – including those not shown due to the filter selection. When the last month of the fiscal year is closed, employees automatically receive their new annual holiday entitlement if the option “Annual holiday entitlement always at the start of a fiscal year” is set under Basic Settings Absences & Overtime.
Caution: After Month-End Closing, no project hours, absences, receipts, regular working hours, or employment periods can be recorded, changed, or deleted for the relevant month – not even by administrators. Only close the month once you are sure that no further changes will follow.
Locking Employees
Lock at Month-End Closing
The Month-End Closing automatically locks all employees for the closed month. Alternatively, you can lock individual employees before the Month-End Closing by clicking the lock icon next to the respective name and confirming the dialog.
Whether employees are notified by email about lock and unlock actions is controlled under Administration > Settings > Employees. The corresponding mail templates can be found under Administration > Employees > Mail Templates.
Re-opening Month-End Closing
If you need to make changes retroactively in a closed month, re-open the Month-End Closing:
Click Re-open month-end closing. The closing is re-opened; however, all employees remain locked.
Unlock the relevant employee specifically by clicking the colored lock icon in their row and confirming the dialog.
Make the desired changes.
Lock the employee again.
Close the month again.
To unlock all employees at once, click Unlock all employees for Month Year.
Caution: Month-End Closings can only be re-opened in chronological order. If September, October, and November are closed and you want to re-open October, November must first be re-opened, then October. Afterwards, close October first, then November.