by kathryn@timeclockmts.com | Jun 5, 2011 | Using the Software
The Payroll Information Screen
Above you can see the Payroll Information screen which defines various settings pertaining to the payroll for the selected employee. In the Salaried Payments section is an innocuous checkbox, Always Pay Salary. When checked this setting means that Time Clock MTS will always pay your employees their calculated salary for a reporting period regardless of the hours worked during the reporting period. The reason I am blogging about this today is that 3 times in the last week Time Clock MTS users have emailed me concerned about apparent calculation errors in the software that were in fact entirely correct due to the Always Pay Salary setting being turned on. It’s best to look at an example to explain exactly how the software makes it’s calculations.
Setting up a Weekly Salaried Employee
First, let’s set up an employee to be paid a weekly salary. You can see the Payroll Information screen above for this sort of setup. The employee has the Payment Type set to Salary, the Salary Period to Weekly and the Salary / Period to $1000. Note that the Always Pay Salary setting is checked. We’ll go the Payroll Reports screen and run a Punchcard Report for a week (7 days) and check the results.
Punchcard Report with Always Paid Salary Setting Turned On
Above you can see a punchcard report run for the week June 6 to June 12. The employee has worked 34 hours for the week. Note that the report is showing a Total Work Time of 40 hours. However, below this is another value, Salary Work Time which is 34 hours. The first value is the calculated salaried hours, which in this case is the reporting period (one week) or 40 hours. If the report was run for 2 weeks the calculated salaried hours would be 80 hours, three weeks 120 hours and so on. The “Salary Work Time” value is the actual hours worked during the reporting period. The Total Work Time value is used for payroll calculations, so in this example the employee would be paid $1000 despite only working 34 hours for the week.
Now let’s turn off the Always Pay Salary setting and run the same report for the same time period.
Punchcard Report with Always Paid Salary Setting Turned Off
In this case you can see that the Total Work Time is the same value as the Salary Work Time, or 34 hours. This number will then be used for all salary calculations.
Conclusions
It may seem a little odd that the Always Pay Salary setting gives these sorts of results but in practice this is exactly how many work places pay their salaried employees. For example, monthly salaried employees would get paid 12 equal amounts each year, despite the different number of work days in a month. Similarly weekly salaried employees would get the same pay week in and week out regardless of overtime worked. The numbers can seem a little odd but once you understand what is happening it all becomes quite clear. Time Clock MTS can thus easily be used to monitor the attendance of salaried employees while still calculating the correct payment amounts for them, regardless of the actual hours they work.
by kathryn@timeclockmts.com | Apr 30, 2011 | New Releases, News
Version 3.1.5 of Time Clock MTS has just been uploaded. This new release fixes up a couple minor bugs, adds a new report, and tweaks a couple of other things. Here’s exactly what’s changed:
- Added the Late for Shift Report, this will be the subject of a later blog entry.
- Added an employee tip total row to the Employee Tip Summary report.
- The “Job:” label displayed in the last action text for an employee can now be changed on the Interface Settings Screen (as can most other labels on the main time clock screen).
- Fixed up the Export to Excel functionality to stop non-printable characters being put into exported reports.
- Fixed up the Payroll Summary Report that sometimes actually wouldn’t export the payroll summary information!
by kathryn@timeclockmts.com | Apr 30, 2011 | Using the Software
I just received a rather lengthy email from a potential Time Clock MTS user. They’ve spent some time considering their questions so I thought it only fair to take some time to consider my answers and I’ve decided that they can be posted up on the blog for everyone to read.
1. Installation fee per server?
No, fees are by the number of administrator computers you require and the client computers you require. Administrator computers are used to configure the software and run reports and client computers are just used to clock in and out.
2. Are there regular “required” upgrades?
No, there are no required upgrades. We do release new versions of the software once or twice a month and upgrading is entirely optional.
3. Is there a fee with each upgrade?
You get one year of free upgrades with your purchase (within the same major release number). You can continue getting upgrades after this first year is up for a fee of 25% of your initial purchase price per year. Again this is entirely optional and you can keep using your software whether you pay this fee or not.
4. Can we have One Server but Employee’s can use from any computer?
Yes. Take a look at our network time clock page to understand how this would work.
5. Can administration be done on another computer besides the Server?
Yes, the administrator software doesn’t have to be on the same computer that the database is on.
5.1 Assuming YES to the last question, could administration be done from a home computer with office access?
Only via some sort of remote login software like PC Anywhere or Log Me In.
6. How does administration set up Employee’s in system?
Via the employee management interface, you can take a look at the help topic which should help: Managing Employees
7. Briefly, what are some of the administration features?
Adding/editing/deleting employees, managing employee times, creating tracked jobs, creating sick and vacation accrual times, running various reports.
8. How do employee’s time in and out?
They can clock in and out in two ways. Either by selecting their name from a list of employees and clicking a clock in/out button or by entering their employee ID number via a keyboard and pressing the enter button to clock in or out. For security you can enable PIN numbers, use a fingerscanner or take a webcam photo of the employee clock. They can also use a barcode swipe or a mag card swipe.
9. How is time corrected? Can Employee correct their own time?
Employees cannot correct their own times. Administrators do it via the Edit Times screen.
10. Can an Employee request time off using the time clock system assuming we can have one server with time clocks at each computer?
No, there’s no system to do this. EDIT: Version 4 November 2012 added this feature.
11. Can a manager approve Employee’s time directly from the time clock system from their own computer?
There’s no time off approval system. EDIT: This feature was also added in Version 4 and later of Time Clock MTS.
12. How does the time clock track Holiday Pay?
There’s a system to create one-off and recurring holidays. Employees can be set individually to either receive or not receive holiday pay. Take a look at the Time Clock MTS Holidays topic for more information.
13. Can the time clock accrue or calculate earned vacation and sick time?
Yes. You should take a look at our articles on Setting Up Vacation Accruals, Setting Up Sick Time Accruals, and Recording Sick and Vacation Time.
14. Some Employee’s have more vacation time than others. Can the system manage this?
Yes, you can have as many different accrual schemes as you like.
15. Currently, vacation and sick time is given at anniversary dates, (not annually at start of year) can the system handle this?
Yes, you just need to make sure to check the “Use Hire Date not Fiscal Year” checkbox when you’re setting up your sick and vacation time accruals.
16. Can the time clock calculate used vacation and sick time?
Yes, see the link above about recording sick and vacation time.
17. Would Exempt and Non-Exempt Employee’s both use the time clock so system can calculate earned and used vacation and sick?
Yes, they can both use the system.
18. Can Time Clock information be interfaced with Payroll Company’s system, so we could transmit pay period information?
No, not at present. It does however integrate with Quickbooks, SurePayroll and Union Bank Online Payroll.
