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October 30, 2009
Time Clock MTS In Action - Timing Racing Cars
Time Clock MTS Modified to Suit a Race Timing Application
It's a co-incidence that I've done two of these 'Time Clock MTS in Action' blog entries in two days. However, I got an email from a user of the software who was using it for such a novel purpose that I just had to write about it! The user in question is using the software to record lap times for a particular type of off road racing where times are only required to be recorded to the nearest second. Rather than explain it myself I'll quote the email I received directly.
As you may have realized I am using your software for a slightly different area that you may have inteneded!!!I compete in Offroad racing and we do numerous laps following a desiginated course. Each Competitior /car leaves at 1 minute intervals to complete a lap. At the end of 8 - 10 laps all the times are added together and the overall winners of each class are the shortest combined lap times.
Sorry if ive waffled on or if this is a project that you dont believe is suitable for you software, but I am confident that it has fantastic potential for other small clubs like ours, in the timekeeping area.
You'll see from the screenshot above that the user has customized the interface of Time Clock MTS to suit his particular application. Some time ago I wrote a blog entry showing you how to customize the Time Clock MTS interface by using the Interface Settings screen. He is also making use of the punchcard report with customized headers and footers to produce race reports.
Well it certainly is an application for Time Clock MTS that I had never considered. If you're using Time Clock MTS in your business and want to share your story with the rest of the companies that use the software please feel free to contact me with your story.
Posted by at 10:12 AM | Comments (0)
October 29, 2009
Time Clock MTS In Action - Truck Body Refitter
It's not often that I get to visit a company that is making use of Time Clock MTS but today I had the pleasure of visiting a local company that does use it. They are a job based truck body refitter and track their employee's time against the particular job that they happen to be working on at the moment. It is vital that they keep track of the actual time spent on a job so that they do not under quote their customers and so they know how to value their current work in progress.
Their old system consisted of a pen/paper register with each job recorded in a notebook along with a job number and customer. When employees needed to book time to a job they manually recorded it on a job card for that job. At the end of the job the cards were tallied manually and the job billed accordingly. It is interesting to note that the employees had separate manual time cards that were used to determine wages. Let's take a quick look at the inefficiencies in this system:
- Recording time spent on jobs took up to a minute per entry and was error prone due to bad handwriting and poor time-keeping.
- There was considerable duplicated effort on behalf of the employer in tallying up job sheets and employee time cards separately.
- The manual tallying was both time consuming and prone to error.
- Referring to past records was painful at best. To find a customers job record tool several minutes of scanning through the job register finding the job reference and then locating the right job card in a filing cabinet full of job cards.
- It was impossible to know how far through a job they were without sitting down with the job cards and tallying things up manually.
So let's take a look at their setup now with Time Clock MTS and what improvements they've seen:
- There is just one time keeping system now that keeps track of both employee attendance and time spent on jobs.
- Actually recording attendance and time spent on jobs is now extremely quick and accurate.
- Manual tallying of times has been completely eliminated as have calculation errors and time keeping errors.
- The owner can determine how much time has been spent on a particular job in about 20 seconds.
- Archival data is easily obtained and referenced, saving 10-15 minutes each and every time they need to refer back to an old job. The company has also suggested a new report that will be added to the software to significantly improve this process even more!
I must thank the company in question for allowing me to take a look at their operations. They couldn't be happier with the software and the return on their (US$69) investment in Time Clock MTS is extremely impressive. There are real productivity improvements in both the production and administrative sides of the business, as well as an owner who is much better informed about the current state of his business. If you're interested in using Time Clock MTS in the same way that this company is you should take a look at the getting started with Time Clock MTS and the job tracking time clock page.
Posted by at 4:11 PM | Comments (0)
Time Clock MTS Version 2.4.7 Released
I released a very minor update of Time Clock MTS today taking it along to version 2.4.7. There were two small fixes, one to a very minor rounding problem that could sometimes make durations in reports one second too short or too long. The other was an error a few people had seen when closing down the software.
A week ago I also released version 2.4.6 of Time Clock MTS that fixed up another error that occurred when closing down the software while logged in as the administrator. This was introduced in version 2.4.2 with the new employee list interface system that stopped the dreaded error 0 that I hadn't been able to fix for a long while.
Posted by at 4:05 PM | Comments (0)
October 21, 2009
Time Clock MTS 2.4.5 Released
The Job Punchcard Report
There was a very minor release of Time Clock MTS made yesterday (version 2.4.4) that fixed up an error that a very few people were seeing. Today I made another release that includes a new report, the 'Job Punchcard Report' which you can see above. This report is very similar to the Punchcard Report. It shows a list of all time punches for the employee over the report period plus the job worked on for each punch. A total for each job worked on during the report period is shown at the bottom of each employee section.
If you don't know what job tracking is in Time Clock MTS you should take a look at our job tracking time clock page for more information.
Posted by at 12:11 PM | Comments (0)
October 14, 2009
Removing Page Breaks Between Employees on Reports
We received an interesting email today that contains a little tip that could be handy to some Time Clock MTS users.
When we print a summary report of all employees it prints each employee on a separate sheet, can it print them all on one sheet (or as many as it can fit)?
My Reply:
Go to the Tools->Options->Report Settings page and uncheck the 'new employees page break' setting.
If you're wondering what page this is you can take a look at the Report Settings Help Topic for more information. Putting a page break in between employees on reports was one of the most requested features for the software, and wouldn't you know it as soon as it was changed people started asking for it to be changed back! Now Time Clock MTS has the flexibility to print reports either way.
Posted by at 11:37 AM | Comments (0)
October 6, 2009
Time Clock MTS Version 2.4.3 Released
Just a minor release today fixing up an error introduced with the last version plus two other problems that a very few users were seeing. The refresh employee list button wasn't working correctly in the client version, employee bulletins were not being displayed correctly , and one user was getting a strange error message. All of these are now fixed up.
Posted by at 12:39 PM | Comments (0)
October 4, 2009
Time Clock MTS Quick Tour Available
I've written a quick tour of Time Clock MTS in an effort to help new users understand how the software works and what some of the capabilities of the software are. The tour covers the main aspects of the software and what some of the real benefits of using it are. The tour is available from the top menu bar of the website. Individual sections of the quick tour can be found below:
Time Clock MTS Quick Tour - Overview
Time Clock MTS Quick Tour - Employee Time Clock
Time Clock MTS Quick Tour - Administrator Controls
Time Clock MTS Quick Tour - Reporting
Time Clock MTS Quick Tour - Overtime
Time Clock MTS Quick Tour - Security
Time Clock MTS Quick Tour - Network Time Clock
Posted by at 2:48 PM | Comments (0)
October 2, 2009
Time Clock MTS Version 2.4.2 Released
A new release today, I was tempted to move to version 2.5.0 because the changes under the bonnet of Time Clock MTS were pretty significant. However, I hope that you, the user, wont actually notice any changes other than Time Clock MTS being faster and more reliable. So, the software has just moved along to Version 2.4.2. The changes made to the software can seen below.
- Added a link to the animated job tracking demo on the Tools->Options->Job Tracking screen.
- Changed some of the text on the Tools->Options->System Options page to make it easier to understand.
- Added a warning to the File->Reset Admin Password menu. Some people seem to think that this is the only way to reset the admin password. Actually it's only there to be used when you FORGET the admin password. You can change the admin password at any time on the Tools->Options->System Options page.
- Made some sweeping changes to the software to try to fix up the 'error 0' message that more and more people are seeing. The error was not reproducible and I suspect wasn't fixable. So, we've completely replaced the list box control used on the employee list interface with a new (and hopefully more reliable) one. There were a bunch of code changes required to do this and to try to catch the error if it keeps happening.
The new list control is a good one and opens up some possibilities for a better user interface further down the track. Stay tuned for more.
Posted by at 9:24 PM | Comments (0)
