Duplicate punch issues have been causing select University of Wisconsin-Platteville student workers to not be paid during the correct pay period this semester.

“After a period of time, people got sloppy entering their times and didn’t realize the implications that it has,” Director of Human Resources Jeanne Durr said.

The majority of students who work on campus use a time-clock on a computer in order to clock in and out.

If a student has multiple jobs on campus and one or both of those jobs do not have time clocks available to them, they will track their hours, then tell their supervisor what times they started and ended work.

The supervisor is then in charge of going online and logging the time they worked.

Sometimes a supervisor will put in the wrong hours and the time will overlap with the time they ended their other job.

This is considered a duplicate punch.

There were quite a few duplicate punch errors throughout this past pay period.

“I think most of the time it isn’t because someone isn’t working the hours they worked; they just aren’t being specific about the in and out-time,” Durr said.

Payroll recently sent out a campus-wide email addressing the duplicate punch issue.

“We sent out the email saying, ‘You need to be careful about the duplicate punches. Here’s what is happening and here is what we would like to see happen,’” Durr stated. “People are a lot more attentive to that now because they want to make sure their student employees are getting paid.

Several thousand students are employed near the beginning of each semester.

With all of those new employees, Payroll has to get all of their paper work in so they are authorized to work.

Also, they have to give them access to a time clock.

This causes a lot of issues to happen towards the start of each semester with Payroll, such as duplicate punches.

“Once the beginning of the semester is over, it’s usually pretty smooth after that,” Durr said. “Our goal is to make sure people get paid on time and correctly. We’ve addressed it, and I think it will get better from now on.”

Payroll and Benefits Specialist Tina Osterholz, Systems Administrator of Dining Services (Meal Access Office) Cynthia Reuter and Assistant Director of Dining Services Deb Putnam were also contacted about the subject of duplicate punches but were unable to provide information about the issue.