Monthly Workflow

As the Secretary, or someone assisting him, what should be done each month to get the most out of Hourglass? A few simple steps will help:

  1. Send reminders. At the beginning of the month, go to the Publishers menu and click Send Reminders. This will send push notifications to everyone in your congregation who has linked Hourglass on their mobile device, and emails to those using a web browser. They will be reminded to turn in their report.
  2. Input paper reports. Some publishers will likely still turn in reports on the S-4 form. They may not have a computer or smartphone, or may not feel comfortable turning in their report in that way. So, take the paper reports and enter them for each publisher.
  3. Monitor missing reports. Let the group overseers know what time is missing for those in their group. You could provide them access to Hourglass and send them a reminder to log in, or you could email or print the missing report.
  4. Check accuracy. When most or all of the reports are in, or as you approach the deadline for submitting your monthly report to the Branch, view the Monthly Detail report. Review it for accuracy, and keep an eye out for remarks. A publisher may accidentally have entered an extra number, causing 10 hours to become 100, for example.
  5. Mark submitted. When you are ready to submit your report to the Branch, log in to jw.org and open up the field service report. In another browser window or tab, open Hourglass and go to the Monthly Summary report. Enter the values into the corresponding boxes on jw.org. Carefully ensure that the information is transferred accurately, and that on the second (confirmation) page on jw.org, the totals match. Then, click Submitted to Branch in Hourglass. This will mark all the reports that comprise the summary as having been submitted to the Branch.
  6. Enter attendance. Don’t forget to enter the attendance for the month. Go to Congregation, Meeting Attendance, click the button for the month, and enter the information from the S-3 form. Totals and averages will be calculated automatically.
  7. Update the physical file. You can manually write onto existing publisher cards, or you can print the cards onto blank 4x6 index cards. You will want to update the S-88 attendance form and the S-21 cards for each publisher and the totals. The totals are available under Reports, Service Year Totals.