Version 3.1.5 Released

Version 3.1.5 of Time Clock MTS has just been uploaded. This new release fixes up a couple minor bugs, adds a new report, and tweaks a couple of other things. Here’s exactly what’s changed:

  • Added the Late for Shift Report, this will be the subject of a later blog entry.
  • Added an employee tip total row to the Employee Tip Summary report.
  • The “Job:” label displayed in the last action text for an employee can now be changed on the Interface Settings Screen (as can most other labels on the main time clock screen).
  • Fixed up the Export to Excel functionality to stop non-printable characters being put into exported reports.
  • Fixed up the Payroll Summary Report that sometimes actually wouldn’t export the payroll summary information!

A Users Questions Answered

I just received a rather lengthy email from a potential Time Clock MTS user. They’ve spent some time considering their questions so I thought it only fair to take some time to consider my answers and I’ve decided that they can be posted up on the blog for everyone to read.

1. Installation fee per server?

No, fees are by the number of administrator computers you require and the client computers you require. Administrator computers are used to configure the software and run reports and client computers are just used to clock in and out.

2. Are there regular “required” upgrades?

No, there are no required upgrades. We do release new versions of the software once or twice a month and upgrading is entirely optional.

3. Is there a fee with each upgrade?

You get one year of free upgrades with your purchase (within the same major release number). You can continue getting upgrades after this first year is up for a fee of 25% of your initial purchase price per year. Again this is entirely optional and you can keep using your software whether you pay this fee or not.

4. Can we have One Server but Employee’s can use from any computer?

Yes. Take a look at our network time clock page to understand how this would work.

5. Can administration be done on another computer besides the Server?

Yes, the administrator software doesn’t have to be on the same computer that the database is on.

5.1 Assuming YES to the last question, could administration be done from a home computer with office access?

Only via some sort of remote login software like PC Anywhere or Log Me In.

6. How does administration set up Employee’s in system?

Via the employee management interface, you can take a look at the help topic which should help: Managing Employees

7. Briefly, what are some of the administration features?

Adding/editing/deleting employees, managing employee times, creating tracked jobs, creating sick and vacation accrual times, running various reports.

8. How do employee’s time in and out?

They can clock in and out in two ways. Either by selecting their name from a list of employees and clicking a clock in/out button or by entering their employee ID number via a keyboard and pressing the enter button to clock in or out. For security you can enable PIN numbers, use a fingerscanner or take a webcam photo of the employee clock. They can also use a barcode swipe or a mag card swipe.

9. How is time corrected? Can Employee correct their own time?

Employees cannot correct their own times. Administrators do it via the Edit Times screen.

10. Can an Employee request time off using the time clock system assuming we can have one server with time clocks at each computer?

No, there’s no system to do this. EDIT: Version 4 November 2012 added this feature.

11. Can a manager approve Employee’s time directly from the time clock system from their own computer?

There’s no time off approval system. EDIT: This feature was also added in Version 4 and later of Time Clock MTS.

12. How does the time clock track Holiday Pay?

There’s a system to create one-off and recurring holidays. Employees can be set individually to either receive or not receive holiday pay. Take a look at the Time Clock MTS Holidays topic for more information.

13. Can the time clock accrue or calculate earned vacation and sick time?

Yes. You should take a look at our articles on Setting Up Vacation Accruals, Setting Up Sick Time Accruals, and Recording Sick and Vacation Time.

14. Some Employee’s have more vacation time than others. Can the system manage this?

Yes, you can have as many different accrual schemes as you like.

15. Currently, vacation and sick time is given at anniversary dates, (not annually at start of year) can the system handle this?

Yes, you just need to make sure to check the “Use Hire Date not Fiscal Year” checkbox when you’re setting up your sick and vacation time accruals.

16. Can the time clock calculate used vacation and sick time?

Yes, see the link above about recording sick and vacation time.

17. Would Exempt and Non-Exempt Employee’s both use the time clock so system can calculate earned and used vacation and sick?

Yes, they can both use the system.

18. Can Time Clock information be interfaced with Payroll Company’s system, so we could transmit pay period information?

No, not at present. It does however integrate with Quickbooks, SurePayroll and Union Bank Online Payroll.

Reporting on Employees Who Clock In Late

The late for shift report displays all employees that have arrived for work after their designated shift start times.

The late for shift report displays all employees that have arrived for work after their designated shift start times.

The recent release of Version 3.1.5 of Time Clock MTS included a new report that allows users to easily run a report displaying employees that have clocked in late for their shift. The output of this report can be seen above. Here’s how to setup Time Clock MTS to allow you to use this report to track when your employees are clocking in late for their shifts.

  1. For each different shift start time you need to track you’ll need to create a shift on the manage shifts screen in Time Clock MTS. You can do this in Tools -> Options -> Shifts. Read more about Shifts in the online help files. Made sure to set the shift start time to the time that you want to track.
  2. Assign each employee to the shift that they work. You can do this on the Employee Maintenance -> Edit Employee screen. See Employee Information in the Online Help File.
  3. Have your employees clock in and out using Time Clock MTS as normal.
  4. Run the Late for Shift report on the Report Configuration Screen. The report can be run over one or many days, and run for one or many employees.
  5. You can now interpret the report. It will give you a day by day list of the employees that have clocked in late for their shift. Each employee late arrival will be displayed along with the employee name, their shift name, the scheduled shift start, their actual arrival time, and the amount of time that they were late.

Software for School Attendance

It’s probably no great surprise that after more than 5 years of development and being used by several thousand companies in more than 60 countries that Time Clock MTS has been used in some unusual ways. One interesting application that I am aware of is using it as Class Attendance Software in vocational education classes. One user in particular was running a vocational metal working class and wanted his students to experience a ‘work like’ atmosphere during the class. This included using Time Clock MTS to clock in at the start of the class and clock out at the end of the class. The class teacher carried through the idea of a ‘work’ environment by issuing a virtual payroll, having scheduled break times, and even using Time Clock MTS to track vacation time and track sick time.

It’s a fairly simple matter to setup Time Clock MTS to be used as class attendance software. Multiple classes could be tracked by displaying the student list in department folders, projects worked on by students during class could be tracked with the job tracking features, and the user interface could be modified to suit the school environment on the Interface Settings screen. Reports like the employee status report can easily be used to see what students are present at the class, or the job time report could be used to determine how much time students have spent working on particular projects or tasks.

In conclusion I’d like to say that while Time Clock MTS wasn’t designed specifically as class attendance software it can (and is) certainly able to be used as such. Modifying the user interface makes it a little easier for students to digest, and in the specific example I gave above it will give students in the class situation a taste of what a real work situation is like.

Employee Attendance Database

Before I started work on Time Clock MTS I’d worked at many different companies who thought that building a simple employee attendance database in preference to using paper time cards would save them a lot of time and money. Of course, when comparing the on-going costs of using a well-executed employee attendance database to those of using paper time cards these companies were exactly correct. They could justifiably expect to save time in the area of employee attendance data collection, save significant time in the processing of this data, and ideally good improvements in the reporting of employee attendance. Not only would improvements be seen in the actual labor expended but also, in the timeliness of data collection and reporting. This is because there’d be no more chasing up late timesheets from uncooperative employees by a harried payroll staff member.

These same companies also believed that they had unique requirements which meant that an off the shelf employee attendance software solution wouldn’t work for them. So in several cases I was engaged to develop a custom software solution knowing that in many cases their ‘unique’ requirements were no different to what many other companies required. The end result was that the on-going cost savings that an employee attendance database delivered were offset against high initial development costs. Thus a much longer time was required before a company saw a positive return on their software investment. In most cases they “unique” requirements of each company turned out to be just naming conventions, or reporting formats or report cycles, or the requirement to track (what turned out to be) fairly minor additional data or information along with normal employee attendance data.

Time Clock MTS Network Edition

After having been through this development process several times I resolved to build Time Clock MTS, a program that would deliver a simple feature set to allow for tracking of employee time and attendance data. The features would be broad enough to make the software suitable to a wide range of businesses of varying size. There would also be a degree of customization available within the software in targeted areas to allow companies to change it to suit what they believed were largely unique requirements. This has proven to be successful, with more than 10,000 companies currently using Time Clock MTS. These companies have from 1 to 1,000 employees and come from many different (and seemingly un-related) industry segments. As I expected, the time and attendance tracking requirements of most businesses are are similar enough that Time Clock MTS can be used to track their employee attendance without the need for a custom software solution for each company.

If it turns out that your company is considering developing a custom employee attendance database to suit what you believe are you own set of unique requirements then you’ll probably want to think long and hard before doing so. You might find yourself wasting hundreds of hours and months of elapsed time on a task that amounts to little more than re-inventing the employee attendance database wheel. Instead of doing this consider that a time clock system like Time Clock MTS can deliver on all or almost all of your requirements in one easy to use package for just $99 (US). Why not download free 30 day trial of Time Clock MTS and you will find that it can meet your employee attendance tracking needs.