Version 3.0.6 Released

by | Jan 9, 2011 | New Releases, News

I’ve just finished uploading the first release of Time Clock MTS for the year. It includes a couple of minor fixes, tweaks to reports, and added a new report. The details of the changes are shown below.

  • Total rows have been added to the Simple Wages Report and Time Breakdown Report. This is one of the first examples of cross pollination of ideas between our Web Time Clock system, Online Time Clock MTS and the desktop program Time Clock MTS. A user of the online system suggested the change to similar reports there and I’ve made the same change to the desktop product.
  • A new report, the Detailed Punchcard with Full Notes Report has been added. This is the same as the regular Detailed Punchcard Report but shows the full text from all time notes rather than just the first 60 characters.
  • The mouse cursor now turns to an hour glass when exporting reports to MS Excel to give an indication that something is happening.
  • A fix has been put in place to stop Excel throwing an error when the new window is clicked while a report export process is underway.

Time Clock MTS Version 3.0.5 Released

by | Dec 22, 2010 | New Releases

Yesterday I uploaded a new version of Time Clock MTS that includes one new feature and adds some data logging to the Web Cam Image Capture areas of the software. The new feature can be found on the Interface Settings screen and allows you to password protect Microsoft Excel spreadsheets generated by employees when they are allowed to view their own timecards. This could be useful if you have remote employees submitting their timesheets via email and you want to prevent them from editing the spreadsheets before sending them. The password used to protect the spreadsheets is the current Time Clock MTS administrator password.

Version 3.0.4 Released

by | Nov 30, 2010 | New Releases, News

I’ve just uploaded version 3.0.4 of Time Clock MTS. This new version fixes up a couple of problems with job based reports that were included with the release of Version 3 of Time Clock MTS. The new job selection drop down on the Report Configuration Screen wasn’t selecting the right job, this is now correct. The second change modifies the Job Punchcard Report to include both the Clock In and Clock Out notes on the report.

Thanks to a user who is making heavy use of the time clock job tracking features of the software in his rust repair/collision repair workshop for bringing these problems to my attention.

Version 3.0.3 Released

by | Nov 4, 2010 | New Releases, News

Just a minor release today, I’ve fixed up the code that generates the mySQL database creation script (found on the Tools->Generate mySQL Creation Script menu) to remove the double quotes around each line. Another problem fixed was with the departmental folder view on the employee list when the software was connected to mySQL or SQL Server.

Stay tuned for a detailed blog entry on setting up Time Clock MTS with mySQL, mySQL is free and provides a real improvement over the standard MS Access database backend. It’s well worth the effort to get Time Clock MTS using mySQL as a backend database.

Version 3.0.2 Released

by | Nov 1, 2010 | New Releases, News

I’ve just made the first minor release of version 3 of Time Clock MTS. This release fixes up an error with vacation and sick time accrual starting balances. In some situations the employment type starting balance for both sick and vacation time was being ignored. It was a simple fix and my thanks go out to the Time Clock MTS user who pointed out the problem and kindly supplied their data so I could track it down and test the fix. As always I welcome all communication from the many users of Time Clock MTS and if you do find a problem with the software please don’t hesitate to Contact Us.

Version 3 Released

by | Oct 21, 2010 | New Releases, News

I’m happy to announce that Version 3 of Time Clock MTS has been released today. There’s a lot of new features in the software, a number of bug fixes, and some new logging code to make any new errors easier to track down. You can find details of the changes below.

New Features

  • The Tools->Interface Settings screen now allows you to select either small or large fonts for the Employee List Interface.
  • The Edit Times screen now remembers column widths if you adjust them.
  • The number of hours credited to an employee on a Public Holiday can now be set on an employee by employee basis. So, for example, you could set holidays to credit 8 hours and then go through and modify your part time employees to credit them with less hours. This is adjusted on the Employee Maintenance->Payroll Settings screen.
  • The Daily Time Report has been added. This shows all clock in and out events in time order split up by days.
  • A new Report Section Template field has been added. This allows you to display the actual hours worked for a salaried employee who is set to always be paid their salary regardless of hours worked.
  • A new Report Section Template field has been added. This shows the time worked less any accruals during the report period.
  • The Bulk Add Time screen has been modified to allow you to add up to 7 different times at once.
  • The Export Data functionality has been completely changed. You can now define any report format you like and export it to any text format you like. This will be the subject of a later blog post.
  • The Report Configuration screen now includes a Job Number selection, this allows you to run any of the job based payroll reports for all jobs or for one particular job.
  • The Actual versus Rounded Time report has been added. This new report displays the actual time versus the rounded times across a report period. Obviously this report is only useful if you have report rounding turned on.
  • The Time Clock MTS Client can now be set to only display the employees from one department. This is set on the Tools->Options->System Settings screen of the client software.
  • Employees on Sick or Vacation time are now shown with a purple icon on the Employee List Interface.
  • Employees that are out on sick time or vacation time are shown as such in the Last Action area on the employee list interface.
  • The Employee Status report now shows if employees are out on sick or vacation time.
  • If you want to bring employees in the Time Clock MTS system with existing accrual balances you can now set initial balances and dates.
  • Comments for times are now shown on the Job Punchcard report.
  • Employee contact details now include the employee email address.
  • The Time Clock MTS administrator software can now be connected directly to an existing database without needing to move it. Useful if you’re moving the computer your admin software is installed on or if you’ve installed a second admin computer.
  • The job number is shown along with the job name on the sub totals area of the Job Punchcard Report.

Bug Fixes

  • The Departmental Wages report is now fixed up for employees with very long badge numbers.
  • Enabling the web camera on the client software no longer triggers a 401 error.
  • The Force Overtime setting now works correctly if Daily Overtime is not set.
  • The main screen of the software no longer disappears occasionally when running long payroll reports.
  • The Job Punchcard report is now working correctly, formerly the job numbers were not changing correctly.

Other Changes

  • A reminder is shown to new users of the software when they first clock someone in or out that it is possible to have employee passwords or PIN’s.
  • The password reset screen provides a much clearer indication that it is only to be used when you’ve forgotten your password.
  • The client software now includes a reminder that users are running the client version and that you need to run the admin version to see all the menus and run reports an so on.
  • Fingerprint support for Windows 7 has been added.
  • The Windows version is now sent with all error message emails.
  • Some new data logging has been added to the Add Single Time screen to try to track down an error that some people are seeing.
  • Time Clock MTS will no longer allow you to move the Time Clock MTS database into a folder that already contains a database. Designed to stop people accidentally over-writing their data.

Phew! That’s a lot of changes, I’ve been working hard on this for a while and I hope you find that it was worth all the effort. Thanks to those users who suggested a lot of these changes, I think they’ve really improved the useability and flexibility of the software. There’s still a few things to be added in the next month or so that will round out the Version 3 upgrades. Stay tuned to the blog too because I’ll be expanding on a number of these changes to explain in more detail how to use them and how they can be useful to your business.