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.

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.

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: https://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: https://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 (https://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

Version 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.

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.

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.