Time Clock Software Web Log

August 27, 2010

Time Clock MTS Version 2.5.10 Released

I released a new version of Time Clock MTS yesterday containing a bug fix and adding a new feature requested by one of our users. The detailed punchcard report was broken in version 2.5.9, by of all things, me fixing up a spelling error! This is now been sorted properly.

The new feature added allows you to use the keyboard shortcuts ALT-I and ALT-O to clock in and out from the employee list interface. ALT-I will clock you in and ALT-O will clock out. If you're already clocked in then ALT-I will not do anything, and similarly with ALT-O if you're already clocked out. These changes were requested by a visually impaired user who was trying to use the software with the JAWS screen reading software. The trouble is that the Clock In and Clock Out buttons on the Employee Interface screen cannot be accessed by using your TAB key. These new keyboard short-cuts ensure that the software will function happily for those using screen reading software.

Posted by mnemtsas at 10:18 AM | Comments (0)

August 17, 2010

Time Clock MTS on the Kim Kommando Show

Time Clock MTS has featured on the Kim Komando show, a popular radio program that concentrates on computers, the internet, and consumer electronics. It run on over 400 radio stations in the United States and at peak times garners well over 2 million viewers. A brief review of Time Clock MTS is up on the Kim Kommando website. As a consequence of this wonderful publicity (which I must say came as a complete surprise to me) traffic on this website was around 10 times the normal levels!

Welcome to all the potential new Time Clock MTS users who have come here after hearing about us on the Kim Komando show, please feel free to Contact Us if you have any questions or need help!

Posted by mnemtsas at 7:15 AM | Comments (0)

August 12, 2010

Time Clock MTS Version 2.5.9 Released

I've just released version 2.5.9 of Time Clock MTS which contains some bug fixes and a minor user interface improvement. Here's the details of what's changed:

A fix for some users who were continually being told they were already logged in as the administrator even though they were not.
To help users who cannot find their database file you can now press the D key on your keyboard within 5 seconds of starting up the admin software and a Windows Explorer window will popup showing the directory your database is in.
A fix was applied to the department folder view, it wasn't displaying correctly if there were disabled employees.
The last action message now clears after 5 seconds when using the keypad interface.
Some people still experience problems when the software is left running for long periods and the database connection goes stale. I've included some new code to try to re-connect to the database if the connection is lost.

Apologies for the dearth of releases lately, our attention has been pretty much focussed on Online Time Clock MTS for most of this year. It's getting close to being released commercially and once that happens we'll start working hard on Version 3 of Time Clock MTS.

Posted by mnemtsas at 2:36 PM | Comments (0)

Another Time Clock MTS User has Nice Things to Say

Well there's a flood (can 3 different people constitute a flood?) of people who want to say nice things about Time Clock MTS today. Here's another one from the GM of a plastics manufacturing company.

I just wanted to thank your customer for the great job they do in supporting your product. Whenever I have questions they are quick to respond and their advice is right on target. Your website is easy to use and very instructive for any knowledge I may need on your product. (And the MTS Time Clock program is great too! I would recommend it to anyone.) Thanks for making my job easier.

Posted by mnemtsas at 7:18 AM | Comments (0)

August 11, 2010

A Time Clock MTS User Review

Donald Hill, a business consultant from Milwaukee, Wisconsin was kind enough to write some great comments about Time Clock MTS. He was also kind enough to allow me to reproduce those comments here. You can see them below.

After comparing your Timeclockmts employee time keeping solution with many other options, it was a no-brainer to go with your solution for my food service business client with 30 to 35 employees.
No server or XP professional required, free unlimited 30 day trial, secure full-featured administrator area, simple clock in and out window, easy to add and delete employees, and a leading biometric device vendor already pre-selected to work with the software.

After installing, the experience only got better. Discovered it can automatically record a webcam photo of the person clocking in and out for verification, easily allows the data file to be shared from either a desktop PC or a Network Attached Storage (NAS), and has all the reports needed to run payroll.

Install was fast and employees really did not need any training because of the simple user interface. Point, click, done. The ability to have multiple administrator licenses is a plus to allow more than one manager to access and update employee wage rates, departments, and hours.

As a 'recovering' electrical engineer and former software programmer, appreciate seeing good code. Now that I am in the (non-tech) business development consulting field, I also appreciate being able to find a solid and simple to use program for the small-business multi-user environment. Your online ordering calculator also takes the guesswork out of pricing which helped a lot.

Great job - I suspect this software will only get better in the future

Posted by mnemtsas at 8:02 AM | Comments (0)

August 4, 2010

New Review of Time Clock MTS Posted

Matthew Smith has written a review of Time Clock MTS over at MakeUseOf.com, it's a real review of the software focussing on how to use it for job tracking. Matt takes the reader through the process of setting up the software to use job tracking and includes some pretty helpful screenshots. Here's what he says in the conclusion:

Time Clock MTS is great time tracking software to keep track of your time and the time of others working for you, in a professional manner. It has a large number of in-depth options, including the ability to export payroll reports to Excel.

If you want to read more please head over to MakeUseOf.com and read the Time Clock MTS Review that they've written.

Posted by mnemtsas at 11:14 AM | Comments (0)

May 28, 2010

Online Time Clock MTS BETA Test Period Opens

I'm happy to announce that Online Time Clock MTS is now available for testing during a completely free BETA test period. This will allow you to use Online Time Clock MTS completely free of charge while we develop and test it prior to it going completely commercial in a few months. We've tried to bring the same user friendly interface and features that you, the Time Clock MTS user have helped us develop over the years to the online version of Time Clock MTS.

Time Clock MTS and Online Time Clock MTS are not compatible at the moment, but the plan is that we'll develop a data export tool to allow you to send your Time Clock MTS data to the online version. Once that happens you'll be able to transition to Online Time Clock MTS and use that instead of Time Clock MTS (you won't be able to use both at the same time with the same data).

If you're interested in learning more about the new online application then head on over and read about Online Time Clock MTS or just dive straight in and sign up for a free online time clock account and start using it.

Posted by mnemtsas at 1:45 PM | Comments (0)

May 12, 2010

Time Clock Reviews

We're lucky enough to have had Time Clock MTS reviewed a few times by independent reviewers on various sites around the internet. I wouldn't say that any of these reviews has been fully comprehensive (it's hard to test out the full capabilities of Time Clock MTS in a short period) but these time clock reviews are useful if you're considering the purchase of a time clock program. Here's a list of the time clock reviews including Time Clock MTS that we're aware of.

If you're aware of any more reviews of Time Clock MTS about the place please let me know. If you want to know what real world users have got to say about Time Clock MTS you could take a look at our user testimonials page or take a look at a recent blog entry with a user talking about his real world use of Time Clock MTS in a machine shop.

Posted by mnemtsas at 2:02 PM | Comments (0)

April 23, 2010

Time Clock MTS Version 2.5.8 Released

A new version of Time Clock MTS was released a couple of days ago that included a bug fix, some debugging for a potentially new bug, and an interesting new feature. Details of each are below.

A fix has been added for sick time and vacation accruals where a very short accrual period was selected (such as accruing 1 hour of leave for every 1 hour of work). The bug will not have affected many users.
Some detailed debugging code has been added to track the shift clock in time restriction. One user reported that his staff couldn't clock in until 1 minute before shift start despite the limit being set to 6 minutes. Not sure what I'm talking about? Go take a look at the entry about stopping employees clocking in too early.
A new setting has been added to the Tools->Options->Job Tracking page. The 'allow employees to create jobs' setting will allow employees to create a new job when they enter a job code into Time Clock MTS that doesn't already exist. If you're not sure what the job tracking features of Time Clock MTS include try take a look at job tracking time clock page.

Posted by mnemtsas at 9:18 AM | Comments (0)

April 13, 2010

Online Time Clock MTS

You've probably noticed that things have been a little quiet around here lately, that's because I've been working hard on the new online version of Time Clock MTS. I'm happy to say that the website for this new online time clock system has been launched today and I'm hoping that Online Time Clock MTS will be released for free BETA testing within 6 weeks. Please go take a look at the Online Time Clock MTS website for more information.

What does this mean for you as a Time Clock MTS user? Well, probably nothing. Development of the desktop version of Time Clock MTS is continuing with version 3 being worked on and a number of interesting user suggested features being added. I am still hopeful of incorporating a new and much better reporting system into version 3. Stay tuned for more information as it becomes available.

Posted by mnemtsas at 3:05 PM | Comments (0)

March 3, 2010

Time Clock MTS Version 2.5.7 Released

A new version of Time Clock MTS (2.5.7) was uploaded yesterday that included some minor fixes. These were restricted to fixing up some spacing problems on the Simple Wages Report and the Time Breakdown Report. A calculation problem was also rectified on the Time Breakdown Report.

Posted by mnemtsas at 8:30 AM | Comments (0)

January 28, 2010

Time Clock MTS Users Speak Up!

I've never actually asked anyone to say something nice about Time Clock MTS, and in spite of this from time to time someone does tell me how useful the software is. It's always good to hear such things from people who actually use the software, it makes me realize I'm on the right track with things and that Time Clock MTS is a genuinely useful tool. All of the collected comments I've received from users over the last few years are over on the Testimonials page. I've popped them up there just the way I got them, typo's and all. You can also see little snippets of these happy comments on the right hand side of all the pages of the Time Clock MTS web site.

If you've got something to say about Time Clock MTS, good or bad, please contact me and let me know what you've got to say.

Posted by mnemtsas at 1:27 PM | Comments (0)

January 18, 2010

Time Clock MTS Version 2.5.5 Released

It's 2010 and I've just made the first new release of Time Clock MTS for the new year. This new version contains a couple of new reports, some user interface tweaks, and a number of usability improvements and bug fixes. As usual the changes can be found below.

Added a new report, the Simple Attendance Report.
Added a new report, the Time Breakdown Report.
Employees can now view their own job punchcard report as well as the punchcard report.
If PIN entry or fingerprint security is turned on then employees must re-validate before they can view their own timecard or job punchcard.
Changed the message shown to users when Time Clock MTS cannot connect to the database due to insufficient file permissions. Turns out the same error is returned when the directory the database is in is disconnected or if the database file is opened exclusively by someone else.
Fixed up an error that one user reported when viewing the options screen in the Time Clock MTS Client.
Fixed up an error that occurred when the employee bulletin screen was open and the software was closed down.
Changed the way that restricting an employee from clocking in too early works so that limits close to midnight are handled correctly.

Posted by mnemtsas at 1:01 PM | Comments (0)

December 29, 2009

Time Clock MTS Version 2.5.4 Released

I've released a new version of Time Clock MTS today that fixed up a small problem with the Job Time Report. Occasionally it would not show the last time from the reporting period. There's also been some detailed debugging code added to the Internet Time Server update procedure and more debugging code added to try to determine the reason for an error that one user reported yesterday.

I've also included one other fix to a problem that may not even be a problem. Some of our other products (namely Timesheets Lite and Timesheets MTS have been experiencing crashes due to broken Windows Scripting installs on Windows XP Service Pack 3. I've put in some code to catch this error if it is happening in Time Clock MTS.

Posted by mnemtsas at 7:25 PM | Comments (0)

December 28, 2009

Problems with nist1-ny.WiTime.net Time Server

In the last week or so a number of Time Clock MTS users have reported problems with the nist1-ny.WiTime.net Time Server in New York when using it to set the internal Time Clock MTS time. Investigations have confirmed that this server is no longer responding to calls for the NTP time so I've replaced it on the list of available time servers on the Security Settings page of Time Clock MTS. One of the other servers was not working too so I've deleted that and added three new servers that are confirmed to be working.

The three new servers are:

utcnist2.colorado.edu in Colorado
nist1-dc.ustiming.org in Virginia
nist1-chi.ustiming.org in Illinois

If you don't want to upgrade Time Clock MTS then you can just use one of these server addresses in the Custom Time Server option of Time Clock MTS. If you do want to upgrade you'll need to upgrade to Time Clock MTS Version 2.5.3. If you don't know how to upgrade Time Clock MTS then take a look at our Upgrading Time Clock MTS tutorial.

Posted by mnemtsas at 12:01 PM | Comments (0)

Time Clock MTS Version 2.5.3 Released

I've released a new version of Time Clock MTS today that tweaks a couple of major areas of the software, the capturing of images by camera feature and the getting the time from an internet time server security option. The details of the changes can be found below:

When Time Clock MTS contacts our web servers to check if there is a new version available it now times out the check after 5 seconds rather than 60 seconds.
Completely re-worked the way any attached cameras are accessed by Time Clock MTS when using the options page. Now the cameras are only accessed when you're on the Camera Settings page. Also, a warning message is displayed during the delay while the cameras are being connected to. This should significantly speed up the loading of the options page.
Changed the tips form so it no longer prevents access to the main application screen.
Added a button to the Welcome Screen that takes users to the employee PIN tutorial when they first run the software.
Dropped two servers (nist1-ny.WiTime.net and nist1.uccaribe.edu) from the internet time server list that were not working any longer, and added three new ones that are working.
Changed the internal frequency that Time Clock MTS checks the selected internet time server to just under 15 minutes. This means there must be at least 5 failed time checks before Time Clock MTS will prevent clock ins or outs.
If at least one successful check of an internet time server has happened since Time Clock MTS started running it will no longer lock out users if the time server cannot be contacted again.
Fixed a bug with the time server code where the previous checked time could sometimes be returned when checking the time again.
Fixed a bug within the time checking code that could result in multiple calls to the time server.
Made sure that the internal time server checking process timer started even when the checking process failed on starting up Time Clock MTS.

All of these changes should prevent some errors that some users have been seeing and will make running the software a much easier and smoother process.

Posted by mnemtsas at 10:43 AM | Comments (0)

December 11, 2009

The Time Clock MTS Newsletter

You may or may not be aware that there's a Time Clock MTS newsletter that gets emailed to interested subscribers every month or three. It usually just contains a re-hash of the Time Clock MTS goings on in the period prior to the publishing of the newsletter. It also many contain exclusive offers to subscribers and news of upcoming developments concerning the software. It's simple to subscribe to the Time Clock MTS newsletter and given that there's only been 8 issues in 18 months it wont be clogging up your inbox! You can see a sample of the newsletter below.

Welcome to the fourth edition of the Time Clock MTS Newsletter. These newsletters are released every couple of months and will keep you up to date on what has been going on with Time Clock MTS and how it can be used to help your business run more smoothly.
*Resetting Your Own Administrator Password

Version 2.1.8 of Time Clock MTS added a feature that allows you to reset your own administrator password if you happen to forget it. This new feature requires you to answer a couple of password reminder questions. Once answered correctly the Time Clock MTS software contacts the Time Clock MTS webserver for a new password, resets the password, and emails you with your new password. The password is emailed to the address used when you purchased the software. You can read more about this new feature here: http://www.timeclockmts.com/weblog/archives/2008/11/resetting-the-time-clock-mts-administrator-password.html

*Stopping Employees Clocking In Too Early

A common problem you face as an employer is employees clocking in too early in an effort to get some overtime. Time Clock MTS can restrict employees clocking in too early for a shift and help you stop this overtime manipulation from happening. All you need to do is create shifts for the employees and set the shift up to restrict clock ins before the shift start. Then using the employee maintenance screen assign employees to the appropriate shift. When an employee now tries to clock in too early they will be shown a message and will not be able to clock in. You can read more about this here: http://www.timeclockmts.com/weblog/archives/2008/11/stopping-employees-clocking-in-too-early.html

*New Report Fields Available

After reading the weblog posts about modifying Time Clock MTS reports (http://www.timeclockmts.com/weblog/archives/2008/07/customizing-time-clock-mts-reports-part-1.html) a Time Clock MTS user requested a couple of new fields that he could add to the report templates. These fields are and . These give the amount of time owing to the employee up to the end of the period for which the report is run. In contrast the fields and give the time owing to the current date.

*Integrating Time Clock MTS with Payroll Software

I am planning to add some new export reports that will allow Time Clock MTS data to be exported directly to some of the more popular payroll software packages (such as Quickbooks or Paychex). To help me decide which to do first I'd be interested in hearing back from you about what payroll software you use. Please email me at general@timeclockmts.com and let me know!

That's it for this issue of the Time Clock MTS Newsletter. As always please contact us if you need any help or advice regarding Time Clock MTS.

Till next time,

The Time Clock MTS Team

Posted by mnemtsas at 9:20 AM | Comments (0)

Time Clock MTS Version 2.5.2 Released

I've just released Version 2.5.2 of Time Clock MTS containing some reporting fixes and an enhancement to the job tracking system. Details of the changes can be found below.

Added the employee job creation setting. This allows employees to create new job when they are logging times against a job. This could be useful if your employees use pre-numbered job or service sheets and only record one or two times against a job. It will help to minimize administrative overhead and the need to have jobs pre-defined.
Fixed up the column formatting on the Simple Wages Report.
Fixed up the Job Punchcard Report, which was dropping off the last days times from the job totals.
Tried to fix up the invalid characters some users have been seeing when they export their reports to Excel.
Fixed up a problem with the departmental folder display of the employee list. When an employee was selected and the list was automatically refreshed the employee was unselected.

Posted by mnemtsas at 8:51 AM | Comments (0)

November 21, 2009

Time Clock MTS 2.5.1 Released

A very minor release today containing a couple of fixes. The first fix solved a problem where too many rows were being displayed on the employee list when there were departments defined with no employees assigned to them. This only affected users who had the show department folders on employee list feature turned on.

The second fix has loosened up some of the licensing checks in the software to stop a number of false licensing failures that users have been experiencing. Hopefully these changes will prevent properly licensed users from being inconvenienced any further.

Posted by mnemtsas at 8:24 AM | Comments (0)

November 17, 2009

Time Clock MTS In Action - Community Service Organization

Another user of Time Clock MTS has emailed me with details of how they are using the software. While their application is slightly more conventional that the other applications I've discussed to date (timing racing cars and refitting trucks) it is still novel enough to be worth discussing. You can find the (slightly edited) email from the user in question below explaining their application.

A little more information... What I said was true, we don't care about the payroll functions and are only concerned with the time clock feature, but we actually are billing for the time. Let me give you a little more information about our organization, what we do, and what our usage entails.
We are a non-profit organization dealing with people suffering from some sort of illness. We have many different programs to help these people feel confident with themselves, train them in basic job skills, and help them to obtain a job, build a resume, and eventually, lead them to independence.

As I said, we are non-profit, so a lot of our funding comes through grants and special programs. In the near future, our billing is changing and our services will be billed through a government program. When this happens, we need to track hours for all of the people that attend what we call our Clubhouse in order to bill for them.

Time Clock MTS is being used in this company at the two entrances to their 'clubhouse'. They have purchased a single client license (US$98 at the time of writing this article) and have a client installation at one door and the admin installation at the other. Let's see what the main benefits from using Time Clock MTS in this situation have been.

Currently, under the grant we are being funded through, we are tracking people as they come and go with a paper sign in sheet. When we begin billing through the government program, we would prefer a more reliable, electronic means that would also provide us with a reporting feature. Unfortunately, because our main software package doesn't allow us to import data, we then need to key in the hours tracked through your software and get them into our system for billing.
This isn't vastly different than what we are doing now, but it helps us on three fronts. First, we aren't currently tracking time - just whether a person signs in or not. Second, with the reports generated from your system, we are able to eliminate the issues of trying to decipher various handwriting styles. Third, as an added bonus, because we can assign a pin number to each person, it will speed up our data entry. In our billing system, we can look up a person by name, but it is faster to look them up by their 4 digit ID number. By assigning the 4 digit ID number as a pin in your software, it makes keying in the information faster and more efficient, even though we are actually capturing additional data.

So Time Clock MTS is providing the organization in question with a much more reliable and efficient way of collecting their club's attendance data. This data can then be imported easily into their existing club accounting system for provision to the government for appropriate reimbursement. At the moment we are working with the organization to define a report suitable for direct export from Time Clock MTS into their other computer systems to eliminate the last source of errors and double data entry. All of these gains are realized without using a large portion of the software (payroll, vacation accruals, sick time, holidays and many other things). Time Clock MTS is simple enough to use to just allow it to be used as a simple time tracker without being forced to use the more advanced functionality the software offers.

Posted by mnemtsas at 11:10 AM | Comments (0)

Time Clock MTS Version 2.5.0 Released

Version 2.5.0 of Time Clock MTS was released today. While there isn't a large number of changes from the last release I feel that the number of new features that have been added since 2.4.0 and the large improvements in reliability justify the minor version update. Changes from the last release include:

Added department folder view to the employee list interface along with a new setting to turn this on. More on this in a subsequent blog entry.
Added mouseover highlights to employees on the employee list.
A few tweaks to the way the employee list interface works to ensure it is updated correctly when editing employees or changing program settings.
A default report is now selected on the Payroll Reports screen when first running the software.

Posted by mnemtsas at 6:03 AM | Comments (0)

November 13, 2009

Time Clock MTS Version 2.4.8 Released

I released a new version of Time Clock MTS today that contained a number of minor changes designed to either fix or enable me to fix some persistent small bugs that certain users have been reporting. Changes made are detailed below.

The search for an employee label would only update to a new setting after re-starting the software. This is now fixed.
Debugging code added to try to determine reason for invalid procedure call error that one person is getting.
Fixed length of password reminder question answers text fields.
Added lots of debugging code to payroll summary report to try to figure out why some people cannot see some reports.
Fixed up a couple of reports that were still showing deleted employees as delegates.
Changed the popup message when adding an employee with an existing employee id / badge number. You cannot add an employee whose badge number is the same as a deleted employee.
Added catches for lost database connections in various parts of the software.

Posted by mnemtsas at 7:00 AM | Comments (0)

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 mnemtsas 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 mnemtsas 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 mnemtsas 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 mnemtsas at 12:11 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 mnemtsas 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 mnemtsas at 9:24 PM | Comments (0)

September 16, 2009

Time Clock MTS Version 2.4.1 Released

Just one small fix in this release. The way weekly overtime was being calculated when a paid holiday was occurring in the same week wasn't quite correct. This is now fixed up. As usual if you've got any problems please contact me with your concerns.

Posted by mnemtsas at 10:53 AM | Comments (0)

September 15, 2009

Time Clock MTS Version 2.4.0 Released

A fairly major release today fixing up some minor problems and adding a major new feature, job tracking. I'll do a detailed blog entry and static web site page on job tracking so I won't cover it in too much detail here. Stay tuned for more details on how this exciting new feature works. A brief list of the changes can be found below.

Added job tracking. This included a new job tracking screen on the Tools->Options screen, two new reports (the active job and job time reports), a new employee setting (job tracking requirements), and two new data entry screens, the job code screen and the switch jobs screen.
Various changes to stop Time Clock MTS grabbing the windows focus when it is not the active window.
Fix to web cam image capturing when using the keypad interface.
Moved the error text box on the keypad interface, it was partially hidden by another text field.
When you're logged in as the administrator you can double click on an employee in the employee list and be shown the edit employee details screen for that employee.

In the next few hours I'll have some more information posted about the new job tracking features.

Posted by mnemtsas at 11:30 AM | Comments (0)

August 21, 2009

Time Clock MTS Version 2.3.2 Released

A new minor release of Time Clock MTS today fixing up a few problems. Details of the fixes are below:

Some fixes to the way resizing of the application window works. In some cases the bottom employee on the employee list wouldn't be visible, I think this is because of the scroll bars appearing on the list of employees. This should be fixed up now, along with the maximize window button being disabled when you're using the keypad interface.
A fix to the mySQL database creation script, for some reason LONGTEXT fields were being set to VARCHAR(255). Now all fixed.
Fix to all payroll reports where the monthly pay amount was more than $9,999.99. Wages now display and print correctly.
Employees using the 'View My Information' button can no longer view the time location report and the departmental wages report.

Additionally, Time Clock MTS Version 2.3.1 (released about a month ago) included a fix for the shift restriction feature which was working for a long time and then stopped working.

Posted by mnemtsas at 9:05 AM | Comments (0)

July 8, 2009

Time Clock MTS Version 2.3.0 Released

I finally rolled over to version 2.3.0 of Time Clock MTS today. There's been a large number of improvements and new features since Version 2.2.0 so I guess the time had arrived! There were several changes from the last release (2.2.16) and it's worth discussing them in some detail here.

Added optional data logging to the software. This logging records all changes made to clock in and out times and stores them in an encrypted table for security reasons. You can view the log for any time on via the Edit Times screen. Take a look at the online help file to read more about the view time log screen.
Re-ordered the internet time server list to move a problem server to the bottom of the list. You can read more about the problem server here.
Fixed up a couple of problems with the software that I'd been trying to sort out for a while. The first is a fix to spontaneously re-setting administrator passwords and the second is a fix to overtime calculations when using the 'no double up' setting.

You might be interested to know that the new time data logging feature and the Departmental Wages Report added in the last version were added at the request of existing Time Clock MTS users. Is there a report you'd like to see added to the software? A feature that is missing that you simply cannot do without? Well just go ahead and contact me and I'll see how your request can be accommodated.

Posted by mnemtsas at 7:58 AM | Comments (0)

July 7, 2009

Problems with nist1.uccaribe.edu Time Server

For whatever reason (it's a problem with the time server and not Time Clock MTS) the Internet Time Server nist1.uccaribe.edu is taking an abnormally long time to respond to queries for the time, up to 20 seconds. This is causing Time Clock MTS to fail. In the short term if you're experiencing a problem with the Internet Time security feature of Time Clock MTS and you're using this time server then select another, the others seem to be responding properly. Note that you may need to shut down Time Clock MTS and re-start it when you change the time server.

You can of course change the Internet Time Server on the Tools->Options->Security page.

Posted by mnemtsas at 2:26 PM | Comments (0)

June 30, 2009

Time Clock MTS Version 2.2.16 Released

A new release of Time Clock MTS today that adds a new report and a new report printing setting.

The new report setting can be found on the Tools->Options->Report Settings screen. Called New Employee Page Break when set reports will print out with a single page per employee. When not set reports will be printed continuously with no page breaks.

Departmental Wages Report

The new report is called the Departmental Wages Report and is shown above. This report shows a simple break down of hours worked by employee, employees are sorted into departments and a departmental subtotal of hours worked is shown for each department. As usual you can access this report from the Tools->Payroll Reports menu.

Posted by mnemtsas at 8:30 AM | Comments (0)

June 15, 2009

Time Clock MTS Version 2.2.15 Released

A minor release today fixing up two small bugs and adding an extra screen to catch database file permissions errors. Changes are detailed below.

Fixed up a situation where the 'Generate MySQL Script' menu item would be hidden despite the software being licensed for enhanced database support.
Fixed up a problem with automatic employee ID incrementing. This only occurred when the Copy Selected Employee' menu item was used.
Added some new checks on startup to determine if database connection failure is due to insufficient file or folder permissions. If this is determined to be the case a new explanatory pop up window is displayed rather than the (not very helpful) 'Cannot Connect to Database' message.

Posted by mnemtsas at 2:35 PM | Comments (0)

June 4, 2009

Time Clock MTS How To Guides

I'm in the process of creating a new 'how to' guide for Time Clock MTS. This will be very different to the current Help File that is available online and that ships with the software. The current help file is what I'd called 'screen based'. It describes each screen and what each element on the screen does, but it doesn't really tell you directly how to do perform a given task in Time Clock MTS. The new 'how to guide' will be very task based, and any new user to the software should be able to use it to learn how to perform almost any task within the software. You'll be able to see the how to guide here in the weblog. I've created a master index on the site that categorizes each how to guide entry so that you can find what you need to do more easily. You can view the How to Guide Master Index here. I'll try to add one article a week to this guide.

Posted by mnemtsas at 10:46 AM | Comments (0)

May 26, 2009

New Time Clock MTS Site Design Posted

If you've visited the site before you'll have noticed that last weekend the design of the Time Clock MTS site changed completely. The new design is much cleaner and removes almost all of the clutter that made the last design hard to read and navigate. The new design moves most of the clutter into the drop down menus just under the Time Clock MTS logo. Using these menus now allows you to access many more pages of the website without having to dig through several levels of pages. The key menu is the Help & Support menu, you can now access very useful resources like how to reset your administrator password, and how to retrieve your license code in just a couple of clicks! I really hope you find this new design easier to use.

If you find any broken links or odd things on the site please email me and I'll get it all fixed up.

Posted by mnemtsas at 10:44 AM | Comments (0)

May 25, 2009

Time Clock MTS Version 2.2.13 Released

A minor release today with just one fix. I've finally tracked down and fixed a bug that caused the last clock in/out details for the selected employee to not display properly. There was a reasonably complex sequence of steps you had to make to actually get the bug to show up and it's taken me a while to figure out what those steps were. Finally pinned them down and fixed up the problem. It was a display only problem and didn't effect the data being recorded, despite what the screen said!

Posted by mnemtsas at 10:39 AM | Comments (0)

May 3, 2009

Time Clock MTS Version 2.2.12 Released

I've just released version 2.2.12 of the software. This version contains some new logging and a new report. When an employee clocks in or out Time Clock MTS now records the Network Name and the Network Card MAC address of the computer along with the time data. There's also a new payroll report (the Time Location Report) that displays this information along with each time. The idea behind this report is to allow administrators to detect any odd clocking behaviour among employees. For example, if your employees are supposed to clock in and out from their own computers and one employee consistently clocks in an out from another PC then there may be some buddy punching happening.

I'll write a more detailed entry covering the application of this new feature shortly.

Posted by mnemtsas at 9:14 AM | Comments (0)

May 1, 2009

Time Clock MTS Version 2.2.11 Released

A small release today fixing up a couple of issues and adding some formatting to a couple of reports.

Employees on a fortnightly salary period had their hours calculated incorrectly. This is now fixed up.
If you unchecked all of the employees on the report configuration screen and then tried to run a report by department or shift an incorrect warning was displayed and you could not run the report. This is now fixed.
The minimize button on the report display screen has been de-activated. If you clicked on this it caused a hard crash.
The punchard and detailed punch card reports now have blocks of data separated by weeks. This is just to make for easier reading of the report.

Posted by mnemtsas at 2:42 PM | Comments (0)

April 14, 2009

Time Clock MTS 2.2.9 and 2.2.10 Released

A couple of minor releases in the last few days fixing up some small problems and putting in some new logging code to try to track down some errors that have started surfacing for some reason.

Version 2.2.9

Fingerprint support was re-enabled and the method used to check for correct fingerprint driver installation was changed. This is the resolution to the hard crash that was fixed up in the last release. There were also a couple of minor feature changes including adding last 14 days selection to the edit times screen and allowing administrators to setup web camera image capture on a client by client basis.

Version 2.2.10

A fix to the type 13 mismatch error that was caused by the release of Version 2.2.10. I've also added a bunch of new logging code to try to track down why people are suddenly (and mysteriously) getting Element Not found Errors. This is particularly baffling because this area of the software has not been touched in well over a year.

Posted by mnemtsas at 8:18 AM | Comments (0)

April 9, 2009

Time Clock MTS Versions 2.2.7 and 2.2.8 Released

Many apologies for the two releases so close together, but it was critical to release version 2.2.8 due to a hard crash that some users were seeing.

Changes for version 2.2.8:

Fix to hard crash that some users were seeing. Root cause was the fingerprint scanner support. For the time being fingerprint support has been disabled. It will be re-instated within 24 hours.

Changes for version 2.2.7:

Added support for logging to an Excel worksheet. This can be enabled by running Time Clock MTS with the command line parameter ExcelDebug
Fixed a problem where the password was not being reset correctly during the 30 day trial period
Made various changes to allow easier recovery of forgotten or lost administrator passwords. Lots of users seem to lose them and I want to make sure this isn't a programming issue with the software.
Employee image capture can now be setup on a client by client basis. Previously it could only be setup if the administrator PC had a webcam on it.
Fix to the view information button to require a finger scan when fingerprint security is activated.

Posted by mnemtsas at 12:13 AM | Comments (0)

March 16, 2009

Time Clock MTS Version 2.2.6 Released

New release today that changes the way that Digital Persona Fingerprint scanner support is handled. Previously the install files for the fingerprint scanners were included in the general install file but this had beefed the install file to nearly 11 megabytes. In my opinion this was entirely too large and was probably leading to a lot of failed downloads. The fingerprint scanning feature is excellent but is currently only used by a small number of companies so I've decided to make support optional and not make the download excessively large for everyone. So, Time Clock MTS now detects if fingerprint support is installed when you try to access any of the fingerprint features within the software and prompts you to download and install the fingerprint scanner install files. Hopefully this will make things a lot easier for new users of the software and help improve download speeds and success rates.

I've been a bit remiss posting entries here when I've uploaded new versions lately so I'll just cover the changes to the last few versions quickly (because they've been very minor).

Version 2.2.5

A fix to handle non functioning time servers which I covered in detail here.

Version 2.2.4

Fix to problem with adding employees to the database for people who had installed the update file, problem was caused by release of version 2.2.3.

Version 2.2.3

Reworked all of the code that updated the Time Clock Database when upgrading to a new version of the software. Tested to make sure that MS SQL and MySQL databases were updated properly back from version 1.7.3.

Version 2.2.2

Fix to minor vacation / sick time rounding problem.

Posted by mnemtsas at 12:14 PM | Comments (0)

March 10, 2009

NTP Time Server Problem Fixed

As I mentioned in my last post the time servers

time-a.nist.gov, MD USA
time-b.nist.gov, MD USA

appear to have stopped to responding for time requests in the format that Time Clock MTS requires. I have released a new version of the software (version 2.2.5) that swaps out these two servers for two new ones that do work. The new servers are:

nist1.uccaribe.edu in Puerto Rico
nist1-ny.WiTime.net, NY USA

If you are having troubles with your time server and dont want to bother with the fix I suggested in the last entry then just update all your admin and client version of Time Clock MTS to the latest version and you should be up and running.

Posted by mnemtsas at 12:35 AM | Comments (0)

Problem with NTP Time Servers

It appears that two of the time servers included in Time Clock MTS to allow you to synchronize the time with the Internet are no longer responding with the time format the software requires. The time servers in question are:

time-a.nist.gov, MD USA
time-b.nist.gov, MD USA

To get around this just log into the software as the administrator and go to the Tools->Options->Security page and select one of the other three time servers. You will need to shut down the software and restart it to connect to these other servers correctly. You will also need to shutdown and restart any Time Clock MTS clients to start using the new time servers.

I am going to remove these servers from the list and find another couple that work. This will be done shortly.

Posted by mnemtsas at 12:09 AM | Comments (0)

February 18, 2009

New Time Clock MTS Fingerprint Scanner Tutorial Available

The release of version 2.2 of Time Clock MTS included integration with Digital Persona 4000 and 4500 fingerprint scanners. You can use these scanners to authenticate employees clocking in and out and thus elminate buddy punching and time clock fraud. There's a comprehensive page in the help file covering the use of the DP fingerprint scanners but there's nothing like a series of pictures to show you how easy it is. So, I've just built a new animated flash demo covering the use of the Digital Persona fingerprint scanners with Time Clock MTS.

Take a look at it today, it really is very simple using Time Clock MTS with the excellent Digital Persona scanners.

Posted by mnemtsas at 1:31 PM | Comments (0)

February 16, 2009

Time Clock MTS 2.2.1 Released

Just a minor release today that includes a few small fixes.

If fingerprint verification was being used and the first enrolled fingerprint was used to clock in or out the message 'not verified' was displayed in error when scanned correctly. This is now fixed.
Fixed up window sizing of the employee list screen when the maximize window button was clicked.
Reports exported to TAB delimited files are now with a .txt extension rather than a .csv extension.
Possible fix to rare occasion where enrolled fingerprints were not saved correctly.

Posted by mnemtsas at 2:02 PM | Comments (0)

February 5, 2009

Time Clock MTS 2.2.0 Released

A new version released today. One small fix to stop a constant slow down of the software over time and one major new feature. The major new feature is the integration of Time Clock MTS with a Fingerprint Scanner. This is the last word in employee security and along with the other security features in Time Clock MTS should help you to eliminate buddy punching and payroll fraud completely.

The software will only work with the Digital Persona U.are.U 4000 and 4500 fingerprint scanners. Currently I am not selling the hardware but Digital Persona recommended I use California PC as a supplier for the scanners. The price they offer is good and they should provide you with good after sales service. To get the software running with a Digital Persona scanner try taking a look at the using Time Clock MTS with a fingerprint scanner help topic.

As always please email me if you have any questions or problems.

Posted by mnemtsas at 7:02 AM | Comments (0)

February 4, 2009

Time Clock MTS goes Biometric!

Within the next few hours version 2.2 of Time Clock MTS will be released. The key feature in this new version is integration with Digital Persona fingerprint scanners that you can purchase from California PC. By using a fingerprint scanner with Time Clock MTS you'll pretty much eliminate payroll fraud and buddy punching. I bet that most companies will recoup the cost of the software and scanners in just a few weeks, with the ROI over a year likely to be in the hundreds of percent.

If you want to read more about Time Clock MTS will work with a fingerprint scanner then there's that page on the main site. Stay tuned, new release due out shortly!

Posted by mnemtsas at 4:22 PM | Comments (0)

January 21, 2009

Time Clock MTS Version 2.1.12 Released

A quick release today fixing up a couple of problems introduced in the new version yesterday and fixing up another problem with reports that I have been trying to track down for a while.

Fix to divide by zero error that occurred when running a report that included sick/vacation accrual data. Only occurred when an employee was assigned to a sick or vacation accrual scheme with a zero 'accrues every time period' setting.
Fixed up an error introduced to the calculation of working hours in the last version (did not effect payment amount)
Fixed up a problem with the 'always pay salary' setting that was added in the last version.

Posted by mnemtsas at 6:34 AM | Comments (0)

January 20, 2009

Time Clock MTS Version 2.1.11 Released

A new release of Time Clock MTS to make it fully compliant with California overtime rules and to try to fix up a few niggling problems that I've not been able to get to the bottom of until now.

A new setting on the Employee Maintenance->Payroll Information screen. Salaried employees have a new setting called 'Always Pay Wages'. With this setting turned on the wages paid to employees is calculated based on the report period rather than the hours worked. So, if a salaried employee with this setting turned on has a payroll report run across a period of a week then they will get 1 weeks wages rather than a prorated amount dependent on how many hours they worked.
A new setting on the Employee Maintenance->Payroll Information screen called 'waive automatic breaks'. When this setting is turned on the selected employee will not be allocated automatic breaks if they have been configured.
A new setting for each employee defining overtime rate 2.
A new global overtime setting for a second tier of daily overtime. When this is turned on daily overtime above the new limit is paid at overtime rate 2.
A new global overtime setting to turn on seventh day overtime. This includes a limit, under which seventh day overtime will be paid at overtime rate 1 and over which will be paid at overtime rate 2.
Three new fields added to the payroll summary report section template. These display hours worked, rate and earnings for the new overtime rate 2.
Time Clock MTS now refreshes the connection to it's database every 20 minutes.
Fix to secret question answers on Tools->Options->System Settings page.
Fix to prompt on enter note screen.
Fixed vacation and sick time starting balances not copying correctly when the copy employee command was used.

I will have a more detailed post up shortly covering the details of the new overtime settings and how these apply to California overtime rules.

Posted by mnemtsas at 9:09 AM | Comments (0)

January 13, 2009

Fingerprint Scanner Hardware Selected

As I mentioned some time back I've finally identified a hardware vendor that produces the quality fingerprint scanners that I was looking for. Digital Persona are one of the best known manufacturers in the industry, with their hardware and software drivers rapidly becoming the standard for the biometric software industry. Their popular U.are.U 4000 USB fingerprint scanner has recently been superseded by the newly designed U.are.U 4500 model and it is this model that I have settled on. I am in the process of integrating Time Clock MTS with this scanner, and in the short term at least, this and the 4000 model are going to be the only biometric devices that will work with Time Clock MTS.

Currently Digital Persona bundles up the fingerprint scanner with some software that you can use to manage user accounts on your Windows PC and that will also manage your web passwords and so on. You can read more about this here. They currently have this bundle available at just US$69.95 which is an insanely good price considering how much it cost me for a single scanner for development purposes! You can purchase the scanners directly from the digital persona website. Please note that I am not affiliated with Digital Persona in any way, and do not currently sell their hardware so if you have any problems with the scanner then you'll need to deal with them rather than with anyone at Timesheets MTS Software.

Stay tuned for a new version of Time Clock MTS that works with these fingerprint scanners very soon!

Posted by mnemtsas at 8:53 AM | Comments (0)

January 8, 2009

Time Clock MTS Version 2.1.10 Released

A minor bug fix release today. Two bugs fixed up plus some minor useability improvements. The bugs fixed were:

Sick time and vacation accruals now work correctly if the 'accrues every' setting is set to more than 1.
Sick time or vacation time taken on the last day of a report was not shown (but it was recorded correctly). This is now fixed up.
Various text fields on the options screens now select the entire contents when you select the text box.

Posted by mnemtsas at 2:15 PM | Comments (0)

December 24, 2008

Time Clock MTS - 2008 The Year in Review

2008 is about to draw to a close and I thought it was a good time to summarize the year. Time Clock MTS has seen it's usual level of development activity, with more than 30 releases this year. Most of these releases contained new features to make the software easier to use and more flexible to suit varying business requirements. As always I rely heavily on the users of Time Clock MTS to let me know what they do and dont like about the software, and these opinions help shape the development of the software. Version 2 of the software was released in June. This included a complete revamp of the reporting system as well as a slew of usability improvements. One of the more interesting new features added later in the year was the use of a webcam to capture employee images when they clock in or out.

The number of new companies using Time Clock MTS in 2008 grew by about 25% compared with 2007. This is despite the world financial crisis which has affected all of us in the last 6 months of this year. In fact, sales of Time Clock MTS in October and November were more than 30% down on the rest of the months of the year. November was in fact the worst sales month for nearly 3 years! I can only think that caution is the catch cry of the moment, with all sensible business owners riding out the storm by managing their expenditure and controlling their expenses.

Regarding the future development of the software please watch out for the integration of a fingerprint scanner with the software in the next few weeks. It's been difficult to locate a fingerprint scanning vendor who I am happy with, one that did not have burdensome licensing requirements. I've finally located one such vendor (one who happens to have top class hardware) and I am working with them now to incorporate biometric security into Time Clock MTS. Watch out for this in late January or early February. I'm also trying (without much success) to get Time Clock MTS working better with payroll software. So if you use some payroll software that can import time and attendance information why not let me know what format it requires and I'll add an export report in Time Clock MTS to suit it.

In conclusion I'd like to thank the users of Time Clock MTS who have given me valuable feedback during the year. I'd also like to thank those people who trialed the software and took the time to let me know their opinion of it even if they didn't purchase it. There's also the helper elves at Timesheets MTS Software that I'd like to thank, you know who you are!

Seasons greetings and happy holidays to all.

Posted by mnemtsas at 12:19 PM | Comments (0)

Time Clock MTS Version 2.1.9 Released

Another minor release today containing some bug fixes and some useability improvements. Changes made include:

Fixed up the tab order and text box sizes on the first login screen.
Added an adjustment to the employee starting balance for sick time and vacation accruals. This allows you to set each employee with their own starting balance. This new setting is cumulative with the accrual scheme starting balance.
The edit times time period selections were not quite working correctly. This has now been fixed up.
A new status message is displayed on the note entry screen to tell employees if they actually have to enter a note.
Fix to an error that occurred occasionally when selecting an employee from the employee list.
When editing a time on the edit times screen the matching times details are also shown. Ideally it would have been nice to be able to edit both on one screen but given that time notes are per time and not per pair this didnt really make sense.

Posted by mnemtsas at 12:07 PM | Comments (0)

November 27, 2008

Time Clock MTS Version 2.1.8 Released

I've released a new version of Time Clock MTS today. All of the new features are focused on improving the usability of the software.

I've added two administrator password reminder questions. You can either answer these when you first install the software or on the Tools->Options->System Options screen.
An administrator password reset screen has been added on the File->Reset Administrator Password menu. You can use this screen if you've answered the password reminder questions mentioned above.
Added links to various help topics on the Time Clock MTS website on various screens. For example, added a link to the software registration tutorial on the Help->Registration page.
Added a link to the online help on the Help menu. This is a work-around for users who don't seem to be able to view the integrated help.
Expanded the contents of the tips file.
There is now a link to the integrated help file installed in the program shortcut menu when you install the software.

I'll be doing a more comprehensive post on the reset password feature later today. Stay tuned!

Posted by mnemtsas at 8:02 AM | Comments (0)

November 7, 2008

Time Clock MTS Version 2.1.7 Released

Just one small change today. A new setting has been added to shifts allowing you to restrict when employees can start clocking in for that shift. It's a change that is worthy of it's own post. You can read more about stopping employees clocking too early for their shifts.

Posted by mnemtsas at 7:11 AM | Comments (0)

October 20, 2008

Time Clock MTS Version 2.1.6 Released

A minor release today fixing up a few problems and improving the way that paid holidays function.

Payroll report total hours are now calculated from rounded daily values rather than raw daily values. This fixes up some rounding errors that could lead to the weekly total being slightly different to the amount if you totaled up the daily amounts. The difference was small (usually only 0.01 of an hour).
A 'last week' time selection has been added to the Edit Times period drop down.
The punchcard report now shows time notes. If the clock in time has a note, that will be shown, if there is no clock in time note and there is a clock out time note, that will be shown.
Holidays can now be set to a specific date in a given year or can be set as recurring. Recurring holidays are those that occur on the same date every year (such as Christmas), non recurring holidays would happen on a different date every year (such as Thanksgiving or Labor Day).
The holidays list displays some extra info, such as whether the holiday is recurring and what year it is set for.
The holidays add/edit screen will now display non latin characters (such as cyrillic or Japanese) properly.

Posted by mnemtsas at 12:38 PM | Comments (0)

October 13, 2008

Time Clock MTS Version 2.1.5 Released

A new release today containing some improvements to the new error reporting started in version 2.1.4. The release also contains some fixes and improvements to reports and some other minor changes.

If an error is raised on the keypad interface (such as a note being invalid, or an invalid clock in/out) then the employee badge number is cleared from the text box.
The new error text message is now cleared when a new employee is selected or a new badge number is entered.
The warning messages on the time note entry screen (zero length note or note equal to badge number) are now displayed in the new error status area.
All report periods are now selected on rounded times rather than absolute times. Previously this was not the case, so while payment amounts were correct sometimes activity could be missing from a report.
Accruals in the accrual section on reports are now to the end date of the report rather than the run date of the report.
<SICK_TIME_OWING_PERIOD> and <VACATION_OWING_PERIOD> added to the accrual report section.
Fix to report configuration screen where the hide employee summary section check box was not re-enabled after the payroll summary report was selected.
Removed employee summary section entirely from the simple wages report (didn't make sense having it there anyway).
Enlarged the section field selection box on the report settings screen.

Posted by mnemtsas at 11:12 AM | Comments (0)

October 9, 2008

Time Clock MTS Version 2.1.4 Released

A minor release today containing one small fix, some error checking, and improvements to the software to make it easier to use with touchscreens. The list of changes includes:

Camera images are now captured on clock in/out via keypad interface.
Clock in / out errors are now displayed as a status message on the screen rather than a popup box.
A check is now made when adding time note, if the note is not added correctly then the created clock in/out is rolled back and an error raised.

Posted by mnemtsas at 11:04 AM | Comments (0)

October 3, 2008

Time Clock MTS Version 2.1.3 Released

Version 2.1.3 of Time Clock MTS was released today containing fixes to several reports and some other minor fixes to rarely occurring bugs. Today's release includes the following changes:

Fixed up the simple wages report, some content was not being displayed correctly on the report.
Fix to the punchcard and detailed punchcard reports. Both of these reports were not displaying any data from the last day of the selected date range. The hourly totals and pay calculations were correct though.
Fix to sick time and vacation time report sections that were occasionally displaying the incorrect totals.
Catch for an error that very rarely happened when a text box was selected on the employee maintenance screen.
Fix to an unhandled error that happened when the main application window refreshed and the report configuration screen was open.

Posted by mnemtsas at 8:42 PM | Comments (0)

September 23, 2008

Time Clock MTS Version 2.1.2 Released

A minor release today fixing up some problems that were introduced recently by the new setting that allows you set the time of day that your work week starts. Changes made include:

Fix to the last 7 days selection and the month to date selection on the Edit Times screen. This was broken by the new setting described above.
Fix to the last month selection on the Edit Times screen. I am not sure this ever worked *oops*.
Fixed up an issue with the last action text alignment when using the keypad interface.
Change the way the display last action works when clocking in or out. There were some cases where the incorrect action could be displayed, the new method has eliminated this problem and will result in faster operation and less database access.

Posted by mnemtsas at 10:48 AM | Comments (0)

September 22, 2008

Time Clock MTS Version 2.1.1 Released

A new release of Time Clock MTS today including some new features requested by one of our users. Features added to this new version include:

The employee list interface can now be completely customized to your local requirements via the Tools->Options->Interface Settings page. The customization will allow you to use non Latin character sets (such as Cyrillic, Korean, Japanese etc).
The last employee note is now displayed along with the last action action details for the selected employee.
If you happen to run the Time Clock MTS Client and Administrator program on the same computer you'll find that the saved window positions are now separate for each program.
The main Time Clock MTS Window can now be re-sized when you're using the employee list interface. This will allow you to fill your entire monitor with the Time Clock MTS application.

I'll cover the customization of the employee list interface in more detail in a subsequent post.

Posted by mnemtsas at 4:18 PM | Comments (0)

September 13, 2008

Time Clock MTS 2.1.0 Released

Some new features were added and minor bug fixes addressed in Version 2.1.0 of Time Clock MTS as released today. Changes made include:

Users can now set a first day of week start time. So for whatever reason, you can have your work week (and all calculations) start at 9:00AM on Mondays if you require.
You can now set any day of the week to be paid as overtime, so for example Sundays could be set to be paid as overtime if required. Note that clock ins or outs can be excluded from these calculations if you use the Exclude From Overtime setting on the Edit Times screen. Overtime will not be doubled up though, even if daily overtime limits are exceeded on a day paid as overtime.
Employee name field on employee maintenance page now will display double byte characters (Cyrillic, Japanese etc).
Employee badge number cannot be entered as a note. This is to prevent double scans of mag cards or barcodes while using the keypad interface.
Fix to employee note screen that gave an unhandled error after a zero length note was entered.

Posted by mnemtsas at 9:31 PM | Comments (0)

August 24, 2008

Time and Attendance Newsletter

Like most online businesses we too have a newsletter. I'd like to think that our time and attendance newsletter is worth subscribing to for a few reasons:

It's only published infrequently so it wont be continually clogging up your inbox with meaningless chatter.
It allows me to highlight interesting weblog topics and get people here reading, and saves you having to continually to check if I've actually written something.
It may (one day) include some discounts or offers to subscribers that are generally not available to other Time Clock MTS users.

It's easy to subscribe, just go to the Time and Attendance Newsletter subscription page and enter your email address.

Posted by mnemtsas at 8:19 AM | Comments (0)

August 13, 2008

Time Clock MTS Version 2.0.6 Released

A minor release today fixing up some bugs. These include:

Report section template fields are now added correctly for MySQL database users.
Fix to allow the employee name to be displayed as double byte characters (such as Cyrillic, Chinese or Japanese) in the last action area.
A fix to an overflow error if a string longer than 9 characters was entered via the keypad interface.

You may also notice that I've split the Tools->Options->Payroll Settings page into separate Payroll Settings and Overtime Settings pages. This is to allow for some new payroll and overtime settings that will be added soon (such as being able to flag a week day as overtime and restricting employees to clocking in/out to their assigned shift times).

Posted by mnemtsas at 3:54 PM | Comments (0)

July 20, 2008

Online Time Clock MTS

The real benefit of time clock software lays in the productivity savings you gain from gathering and processing time and attendance information efficiently, and the costs savings you gain from removing employee fraud and calculation errors. Time Clock MTS gives you these benefits in one simple to use piece of software, given that you want to collect all of your information on the one network and using MS Windows based PC's. However, if you have geographically separated locations or dont run MS Windows based PC's then it's a little more difficult to use Time Clock MTS. You can use it through the use of remote desktop tools (such as Windows Terminal Services) and Windows emulators (such as WiNe) but these add a layer of complexity that is not really desireable.

The best solution to these problems is by the use of an online time clock. I'm happy to announce that the online version of Time Clock MTS is under development and will be released within the next 12 weeks. The online Time Clock MTS is a completely hosted solution (we hold all your information and host the software) meaning you dont need to install anything on your PC's. All you'll need to do is log into your online Time Clock MTS account and clock in and out, run reports, and configure the software in the same way you do now with the desktop version. And this can be done from anywhere, using any computer that has a web browser!

Stay tuned, I'll be posting screenshots here as they become available.

Posted by mnemtsas at 8:52 AM | Comments (0)

June 26, 2008

Time Clock MTS Version 2.0.3 Released

Just a minor release today. For some reason the default settings for report section templates we not being set. This is now fixed.

Posted by mnemtsas at 11:19 AM | Comments (0)

June 19, 2008

Time Clock MTS Version 2.0.2 Released

I've just released Version 2.0.2 which contains a number of fixes to problems introduced by the last release plus adds one major new feature. Changes made include:

A new security feature which allows you to use a camera attached to any Time Clock MTS computer to capture an image when users clock in or clock out. Administrators can then view the captured image associated with a clock in or out and verify that the correct person performed the action. This should allow you to stop buddy punching.
A fix to the Version 2 database updates for SQL Server and MySQL that didn't work correctly.
Fix to the last action display text to allow non English characters to be displayed.

There were a number of other minor fixes, for more information take a look at the Release Notes page. In the next day or two I'll write a longer post covering the new image capturing feature of Time Clock MTS, what it does, how it works, and how you might use it.

Posted by mnemtsas at 6:57 AM | Comments (0)

June 10, 2008

Time Clock MTS Version 2.0.1 Released

Well Version 2.0.1 is out. I wont talk about it too much here right now. You can read about it on the Official Time Clock MTS Version 2 Release Page or take a look at the Release Notes. Over the course of the next week or so I'll cover one of the features of the new release in detail here each day, hopefully along with some explanatory screen shots.

A Note to Existing Time Clock MTS Users
If you're an existing Time Clock MTS user the software will not update itself to Version 2. Because a new registration key is required and not everyone is eligible for a free registration key I decided to make it a manual process. If you want to upgrade to Version 2 you'll need to download the admin program update installer and the client program update installer. Once you've downloaded these just run them on your installations of Time Clock MTS and it will update to Version 2.

Getting Version 2 Registration Keys
You can retrieve your own registration key for Version 2 of the software. You'll need to know your Version 1 registration key to get it. Don't worry too much if you cant pull your own registration key from our website, the database has a couple of holes in it that I am trying to fix up. Just send me an email with your current license details and if you're eligible I'll send you your Version 2 registration key ASAP.

Posted by mnemtsas at 7:55 PM | Comments (0)

Time Clock MTS Version 1.7.4 Released

Time Clock MTS Version 1.7.4 has been released. It has been released in update form only rather than as a full install. This is the last release of version 1 of Time Clock MTS. The only change to the software is a message informing users that it is the last release of Version 1 of the software and to upgrade to Version 2 you'll need to visit our website.

Posted by mnemtsas at 10:59 AM | Comments (0)

June 8, 2008

Time Clock MTS Version 2 Release Imminent

In the next few days I'll be releasing the first build of Time Clock MTS Version 2. This will contain a number of new features to make the software a lot easier to use. It will also contain a major re-vamp of the reporting area to allow you to configure all reports to suit your exact requirements. The second build of Version 2 will contain a powerful new security feature to help eliminate buddy punching. The third build will add the ability for Time Clock MTS to operate over the web, so soon you'll be able to collect data anywhere with an internet connection and process it centrally in your head office! Stay tuned for these new releases in the upcoming weeks.

On an administrative and commercial note Version 1 license keys will not function with Time Clock MTS Version 2. However, anyone who has purchased the software within 12 months of June 1 2008 or has purchased an update to their support contract will be eligible for a free upgrade. Users who do not have a valid support contract or purchased outside of this time period will be eligible for a 50% discount on purchasing Time Clock MTS Version 2 licenses. I've tried to make this upgrade process as painless as possible but of course there will be hiccups and I apologize in advance for this. You can already see if you're eligible for a free upgrade by taking a look at the Get Time Clock MTS Version 2 License Key Page. Just paste your Time Clock MTS license key into the text box on this page and click the button and you'll be told all you need to know. By the way don't try to use the Version 2 license key in Version 1 of the software, it wont work!

Posted by mnemtsas at 11:02 AM | Comments (0)

May 24, 2008

Time Clock MTS Version 1.7.3 Released

Time Clock MTS Version 1.7.3 has been released containing a number of fixes to the recent problems we've been seeing with synching the internal clock with internet time servers.

The Maryland NIST time servers have stopped supporting the older TIME protocol, and this was the cause of the recent problems Time Clock MTS had with syncing with these servers. We've changed the protocol used for these servers to the NIST format.
Time between queries to NTP Servers has changed to 30 minutes to stop flooding the servers.
Query time out has reduced to 10 seconds rather than the previous 1 minute, to stop the software locking up on startup for a minute.
Internet Time Syncing is now turned off by default to prevent this sort of problem for people who are just trialing the software.

Posted by mnemtsas at 9:15 PM | Comments (0)

May 22, 2008

Problems with Maryland NTP Servers

We have been seeing problems with time synching to the Maryland NTP time servers in the last few days. If you're seeing problems with this then please select any of the three time servers in Colorado. You can choose the time servers on the Tools->Options->Security page.

Posted by mnemtsas at 12:01 AM | Comments (0)

May 20, 2008

Time Clock MTS Version 1.7.2 Released

A couple of bugs fixed and some new features added today.

A setting has been added to allow Time Clock MTS to check for a newer version on software startup. This setting is off by default but can be turned on via the Tools->Options->Interface Settings page. Note that you'll still need to update the software via the Tools->Check for Updates menu.
When manually checking for updates and an update is available you'll now be able to view the release notes for the new version. In fact you'll be able to view the release notes for every version between the one you are currently running and the latest that is available from us.
When Excel is not installed and you try to export a report to Excel the software explains that you need Excel to be installed. Formerly it gave a less than explanatory error message.
Fix to both vacation accruals and sick time accruals. When the delay for an employee to start accruing set to accrue into the future the software calculated accrued sick time / vacation time incorrectly. This is now fixed.

Posted by mnemtsas at 6:05 PM | Comments (0)

May 19, 2008

Time Clock MTS Newsletter Launched

I've been resisting it for a while, but the time has come to launch a Time Clock MTS Newsletter. Hopefully this will be informative and interesting, as well as providing a more direct line of communication from myself to you, the Time Clock MTS user. I dont expect to release more than 10-15 newsletters a year, and as well as tips, tricks, news of new releases, and notification of new weblog posts there will also be exclusive upgrade offers for newsletter subscribers.

Emails have been sent out the to several thousand existing Time Clock MTS users inviting them aboard. Any new Time Clock MTS users will be invited to subscribe to the newsletter when they purchase the software. I'd also like to invite prospective Time Clock MTS users to subscribe. It's awfully easy to subscribe to the Time Clock MTS Newsletter so why dont you go ahead and do so?

Posted by mnemtsas at 8:14 AM | Comments (0)

May 15, 2008

Time Clock MTS Version 1.7.1 Released

Three new features added to the version released today.

A new setting has been added to allow all reports to display time activity in hours:minutes:seconds format as well as the old decimal hours format. You can turn this new method of report output on via the Tools->Options->Display Settings->Display Times As screen.
A new setting has been added to vacation and sick time accruals. This new setting allows you to use the anniversary of an employee's hire date to reset the vacation or sick time accrual instead of the fiscal year. You can turn this new method of accrual calculation on via the Tools->Options->Sick Time/Vacation Accrual->Use Hire Date not Fiscal Year page.
A check has been put in place to prevent a second instance of either the Administrator or Client software from running on the same computer.

Posted by mnemtsas at 10:48 AM | Comments (0)

May 5, 2008

Time Clock MTS Version 1.7.0 Released

A new version was released today containing three bug fixes.

The new NTP time code had a small bug in it where in some instances the time queried from the NTP server was not read properly and the old time was used instead leading to timing errors.
Another fix was put in for the Error 6 : Overflow that some people had seen when their systems were running for a very long time. I suspect this is a limitation with a timer in MS Windows that takes effect after your system has been running for more than 47 days.
Time Clock MTS determines your currency symbol ($ for example) and decimal symbol (. or ,) from some internal MS Windows settings. In some cases (for some reasons I've not been able to determine) these settings are not able to be read. This caused an error when saving Time Clock MTS settings. This has now been fixed up.

Posted by mnemtsas at 11:47 AM | Comments (0)

March 17, 2008

Microsoft Access Database Password Support

Version 1.6.2 of Time Clock MTS was released today. It contained a couple of minor bug fixes and added one very important security feature, support for Microsoft Access database passwords.

Users finding and manipulating the back end database of Time Clock MTS has always been a problem. Time Clock MTS has always included a series of internal checks to try to detect this sort of manipulation, but of course no system is perfect. By including support for Access database passwords we have added one additional layer of security to ensure that your time and attendance information is accurate. Using a database password with a Microsoft Access database encrypts the data it contains and prevents non authorized access to the database when someone tries to open it with MS Access.

To setup Time Clock MTS to work with an Access database that is password protected follow these simple steps:

Password protect your Access database using MS Access. How this is done depends largely on the version of MS Access that you have. Consult your MS Access help documentation for detailed instructions.
Run the Time Clock MTS administrator program, the software will detect that the database back end is password protected and prompt you to enter the password.
Once entered click OK and re-start the software as prompted. If you entered the information correctly then you'll connect directly to the database. If you didn't enter the password correctly you'll be prompted to enter it again.
You'll need to repeat the password entry process for every client installation you have.

That's all there is to it. If you're wondering, the MS Access database password you enter into Time Clock MTS is stored locally on each computer (which is why you need to enter the password for every Time Clock MTS Client you have). The password itself is stored in an encrypted format for extra security.

Posted by mnemtsas at 11:58 AM | Comments (0)

February 28, 2008

Time Clock MTS Version 1.6.0 Released

Version 1.6.0 was released today, it contained the two most commonly asked for features. These are time synchronization with Internet Time Servers (or NTP Servers), and allowing administrators to edit employee times when employees are currently clocked in.

Internet Time Synchronization
There is no doubt that certain employees, if given the opportunity, will try to provide mis-leading time and attendance information. With some computer based time clock systems, simply changing the system clock on the computer was enough to allow fraudulent data to be collected. Time Clock MTS has had a number of measures to get around this, and with the advent of in-built Internet Time Synchronization the last loophole has been closed. Put simply, Time Clock MTS can periodically contact a computer server on the Internet and get a very accurate time from which to derive punch times for data collected. Given that you have an Internet connection on your Time Clock MTS workstations we would strongly advise enabling this feature.

If you want more information on what an Internet Time Server is try taking a look at Wikipedia's entry on Network Time Protocols and Clock Synchronization

Editing Times while Employees are Clocked In
Time Clock MTS now provides complete flexibility and allows you to edit any employees times while they are clocked in. Previously this was not allowed to prevent the Time Clock MTS data from becoming unusable. However, Time Clock MTS now provides you with the tools to make sure the data remains usable. You can now delete a single time (rather than a pair) and change a clock in to a clock out, or a clock out to a clock in. The benefit of all this is that you can now enter forward times (eg. for vacation) while the employee is at work and you don't need to mess about with clocking them out first.

Posted by mnemtsas at 11:26 AM | Comments (0)

February 21, 2008

Time Clock MTS Weblog Launched

I've been thinking for a while about launching a weblog. The reasons for doing so are primarily to provide you with a more direct line of communications with the people behind Time Clock MTS. There's several things that I hope to be able to include in the (hopefully) weekly entries in the weblog.

Some brief news updates about what's going on with Timesheets MTS Software in general and Time Clock MTS in particular.
Extended release notes about new releases of Time Clock MTS.
Solutions to common questions that we are asked.
Tips and tricks to using the software to make your job easier.

That's probably enough for a first entry, please feel free to comment let me know what you'd like to see here.

Posted by mnemtsas at 10:52 AM | Comments (0)