by Mark Nemtsas | Nov 27, 2015 | News, User Testimonials
The Severn Area Rescue Association (SARA) is close in-shore boat rescue and land search organization in the south west of the UK. It is run entirely on donations and they are using Time Clock MTS to track the activity of their volunteers and kindly supplied us with the information below explaining their use of the system.
We are a Lifeboat and Mountain rescue charity based in the UK, up till now we have used a signing in book then have to work out the attendance by going through the book and trying to count the times. This was very time consuming for our volunteers and sometimes we had problems trying to read the names.
Now we can just run a report of who and when our volunteers clocked in. We do not use the overtime and wages facilities due to being all volunteers, but this great bit of software has helped us cut our volunteers hours for admin.
Pros:
Easy to set up and use by our volunteers. Easy to run reports saving us many hours of admin time.
Cons:
For us it would be good if we could disable some of the facilities we don’t use. Otherwise none.
A mobile app for Iphone and android phones would be good so out volunteers can log admin / fundraising hours when not at the Lifeboat station.
Summary:
Great easy to use software with great support. Helping us to cut our volunteers admin times enabling them to concentrate on saving lives and training. We recommend this software to any charity or business looking for a clocking in system.
by Mark Nemtsas | Oct 30, 2015 | New Releases, News
A release today that addresses a problem that’s been hanging about for a while that we’ve struggled to get to the bottom of. There’s a couple of other little tweaks and some enhancements to make some processes easier.
Enhancements
- The Registration menu was disabled when not logged in as the administrator and this proved a little confusing to new users of the software who didn’t realize they needed to be logged in as the admin to register the software. The menu item is now permanently enabled and simply prompts the user for the admin password when it is selected.
- Users are now prompted to confirm exiting the fingerprint enrollment screen if there are unsaved changes.
Fixes
- Some users were seeing an overflow error if they left the software running for a long period. A fix has been put in place for this.
- Changed the way the employee data was passed to and from the fingerprint enrollment screen in an attempt to solve the bug that stopped employee fingerprints from saving despite what appeared to be a successful enrollment process. Fix appears to have worked.
- Put in place logging on the fingerprint enrollment screen to get to the bottom of why some enrollments were not saving correctly.
by Mark Nemtsas | Oct 1, 2015 | New Releases, News
Another minor release today. Version 5.1.4 fixes up few issues and adds one small enhancement.
Fixes
- The MySQL database creation script menu item now displays correctly for users of the Network PLUS Edition.
- Fixed a crash that happened on the employee/administrator screens for managing time off requests. Could happen when the mouse was moved off the screen and no time off request items were displayed.
- Put a work-around in place to re-register the software when the registration details were dropped mysteriously and users were presented with an expired trial message.
Enhancements
The path to captured web-camera images can now be set on the administrator computer whether there’s a camera plugged into it or not.
by Mark Nemtsas | Aug 18, 2015 | New Releases, News
Version 5.1.3 of Time Clock MTS has been released. There’s five fixes included in this release, here’s the details of those fixes:
- Fixed a rounding error on the Edit Times screen that could result in the wrong week day being displayed if the time was close to 12:00AM and time rounding was turned on.
- Fixed an error that prevented inactive bulletins from being displayed on the Manage Bulletins screen.
- Fixed a problem with the header of the QuickBooks export file.
- Forced all times for QuickBooks export to use the hh.hh (decimal hours) format. hh:mm:ss seemed to work in some cases but not in others so the safest approach was taken.
- Fixed up problem with the “Show Payroll Information” checkbox on the Report Configuration screen being deactivated if the Job Punchcard Report was selected when the screen was first opened.
by Mark Nemtsas | Jul 28, 2015 | Tips and Tricks, Using the Software
I like to post up the longer Q&A emails I get from prospective Time Clock MTS users. Here’s a good one I got last week:
1. Can a staff member be entered into more than one department?
No, each employee can only be in one department. If you want to track the time employees spend working on different jobs then I suggest you take a look at the job tracking system. See here:
Job tracking in Time Clock MTS
2. An employee wants extra taxes taken off their pay check (dollar amount). Is this possible?
Time Clock MTS doesn’t do any tax or deduction calculations.
3. We use ADP for payroll right now. Is it possible to connect with them to export payroll?
Sure. ADP can import CSV files and Time Clock MTS can product CSV files of pretty much any format. Just take a look the export data formats help page here:
Exporting Data from Time Clock MTS
4. What details will be shown on the “excel spreadsheet”?
Any report can be exported to Excel. The data shown will depend on what report you’re running.
5. For an employees overtime and double time to calculate on the reports, their schedule will need to be entered. Is this correct?
No. There’s no scheduling system in Time Clock MTS. Overtime is set from weekly limits which are set on the Tools->Options->Overtime Settings screen.
6. Is it possible to have 2 companies set up on one system? We have a company with approx. 50 employees and one company with 3 employees.
No, it’s not possible within the same data file. However, it’s a fairly simply matter to change which data file you are connected to using the Tools->Options->System Options screen and clicking the CHANGE button.
7. Does this program keep track of (or know) when stat days are? How will staff working these days be paid 1.5?
There’s a system to put your own paid holidays into the software. Paid holidays are paid at normal rate.
8. If we are networking, will it need to be linked by cords or it it wireless?
It can be either.
9. If we are networking, will we need a drive at each station?
Sorry I am not sure that I understand that question.
10. I was reading that the price of the program is for 1 year. Is that correct? So does that mean no support after one year also?
No, the price gives you a lifetime license to use the current major release of the software (version 5) and one year of email support and access to software updates. After a year you can renew your support/updates contract for a further year but your software will keep working whether you renew or not.
