by Mark Nemtsas | Jun 19, 2013 | Tips and Tricks, Using the Software
I thought it would be worthwhile looking at the major factors that should be considered by any company when deciding whether a particular employee time clock software package is going to be suitable for them. Over the last few years I’ve had thousands of emails from companies who are looking for a new system to track their employee time clock data and this list of six review points is based on what I’ve learned from those emails.
Does the Time Clock Software Run on Your Computers?
Most companies have a mix of computers, new and old, a mix of different versions of Windows, with some (or more likely) most computers cluttered down with years of installed software and Windows service packs. Getting software to run on these older computers can be somewhat hit and miss. These points must be considered carefully especially if such a computer (or computers) have been ear-marked as the potential candidates to become the new employee timeclock computers. So, the question to be asked is, will the software you’re evaluating run on these computers? Don’t take the vendors word for it (they’ll almost never say their software won’t work on your computers). Take advantage of their free time clock trial (they do have one don’t they?) and verify that the software will run on all the computers you plan on installing it on.
Upfront and Recurring Costs
The next point to consider when reviewing your potential new software is the up-front and any recurring costs. Upfront costs are just those to purchase a license to use the software. On-going costs could include a fee to keep the software working each year, a fee for on-going technical support, and a fee for maintenance (access to software updates). It’s not unusual for software vendors to have a low up-front cost and then backend the deal with high ongoing costs so beware of getting caught out. I’d suggest calculating software costs out to a period of five years to work out the real cost of ownership of your new employee time clock software.
On-Going Technical Support
Any timeclock program for your employees is going to become an integral part of your company so you want to ensure that the time clock vendor is going to be there to support you during this time. This support should take many forms. The first (and most important) point to consider when evaluating a potential timeclock program is the quantity and quality of help documents, getting started guides, and tutorial videos. You’re going to want that sort of information at your fingertips when you are trying to sort out problems setting up features within the software. Things such as complex overtime arrangements, or vacation accruals, or time rounding, or one of dozens of other requirements companies have of their attendance systems should be well documented and easy to understand.
The second point to consider when evaluating technical support is the quality of the support you receive direct from the time clock software vendor. At some point you’ll probably want to contact them during your software trial period to evaluate both the timeliness and quality of their response. Remember you could end up using the same employee timeclock software for years so you need to ensure that the support staff are people you can work with.
Features of the Time Clock Software
Ensuring that the features that a time clock program will meet your requirements is potentially the most important factor when evaluating that software. Look beyond your need for employees to simply clock in and out and track their hours worked. Look at your deeper on-going requirements and determine what time clock needs you have that you’ll be using all the time. Great time clock software will allow your employees to accrue and track vacation and sick time, it’ll allow them to take and track breaks, and it’ll allow them to clock in and out of different jobs that you need to track. One the administrative side of things you’re almost certainly going to want the the software to do all of your overtime calculations for you and you’ll need some sort of built in time clock security to stop time clock fraud. The manager of the new time clock system should be involved in evaluating the new time clock system and be allowed to voice their needs for features they’d need the most. Be sure not to make decisions in isolation to the people who will actually be living with the software day-to-day.
Ease of Use
There’s no getting away from the need to track employee time and attendance if your employees are to be paid to keep them happy and you’re making sure you’re not paying them too much (to keep your business happy). If done well, and with a minimum of fuss then it will hardly be noticed, but if done poorly it can certainly negatively effect the internal workings of your company and make your employees less than happy. With this in mind when you’re choosing an employee attendance system you should ensure that it is easy to use. There are two key usage areas that you must examine closely when trialling the software. First, make sure it’s super easy for employees to clock in and out. If your chosen employee timeclock system adds even a few seconds per punch in and out then those seconds add up across the weeks of the year. And that time is wasted money. The second area to examine closely are the administrative and reporting functions. Adding new employees, editing time punches, adding time taken off, and tracking sick time should be easy and intuitive. Running payroll reports should be a snap. Make sure the software allows you to filter reports by date, employees, shifts and departments so that you can monitor your different cost centers easily. And finally make sure the software can export reports to payroll systems and your spreadsheet software of choice.
Quality of the Time Clock Reports
The last point to look at when you’re evaluating potential time clock software is the quality and quantity of reports available. There should be simple reports available allowing to review employee lists, employee PINs, active job lists, and at least one report that can quickly show you who is or is not at work. Then of course there should be payroll based reports that describe how many hours employees have worked, overtime worked, and of course pay owing. In more advanced systems you’d want to see reports such as job cost reports, weekly and monthly time breakdown reports, vacation and sick accrual reports, and detailed audit trail logging of employee time punches. Also, as I’ve mentioned previously, ensure that your chosen software can export reports to a variety of different formats and can create export formats suitable for export to your payroll system of choice.
I hope you’ve found this list of six key factors to consider before purchasing an employee time clock software system useful. If you’ve got any questions please feel free to Contact Us.
by Mark Nemtsas | May 31, 2013 | News
This weekend I’m rolling out changes to the pricing structure of Time Clock MTS. Gone will be the old (and frankly confusing) system that required you to choose from a large number of different client packages decide on the number of employees that you wanted to track. Instead there are going to be just three options when purchasing Time Clock MTS.
The Network Edition
The Time Clock MTS Network Edition will be just $199 (US) for 20 time clock client computers and 1 time clock administrator computer. You will be able to track up to 500 employees using the Time Clock MTS Network Edition. The price of $199 (US) represents about a 60% price drop over the old pricing structure.
The Network PLUS Edition
The Time Clock MTS Network PLUS Edition will be $399 (US) and allow for 1 administrator computer and up to 100 time clock client computers. To support more than 20 time clock clients it will require the use of one of the Enhanced Backend Database options. The price of $399 (US) represents a 50% price drop over the previous pricing structure.
The Stand Alone Edition
The Stand Alone Edition allows you to install Time Clock MTS on one computer and track up to 500 employees. We’ve maintained the price of the Stand Alone Edition at $99 (US) but the ability to track up to 500 employees gives a saving of around 60% versus the old cost.
If you’re an existing Time Clock MTS user and you’ve got any questions about these pricing changes or want to talk to me about a potential upgrade then please contact me.
by Mark Nemtsas | May 30, 2013 | Tips and Tricks, Using the Software
There’s nothing worse than buying boxed software and getting back to your office and realizing your computers don’t have the right version of Windows, or are too old, too slow, or need more memory to run what you’ve bought. You might even find that you need a permanent Internet connection to use some software and in the case of employee timeclock software that’s not something that’s always desirable. Being able to try a prospective time clock system BEFORE you buy it will help you determine if the software will run on the old PC you’ve earmarked as a clock in computer. You’ll find out quickly if it’s compatible with the version of Windows, and if your PC hardware will cope with the software. And you’ll find all of this out before you have to spend a cent.
1. To ensure your employees can use the software
It’s important to take advantage of a free time clock software trial to ensure that the employees who use it every day will be able to understand how to clock in and out. Not all software is the same and some is most definitely harder to use than others. With this being the case if your employees don’t know one end of a computer mouse from the other it’s important that they be given the opportunity to see the software that they need to clock in and out of every day. If you’ve got a lot of employees and they are wasting time every day because the software is hard to use then you are just needlessly wasting time and money. Being able to trial your time clock software before purchasing will allow you to discover important usability issues like these before it’s too late.
2. To test the fit through an entire payroll cycle
Reading a glossy software brochure is one thing and watching an online video demonstration of a prospective time clock system is something else. But both are like a picture of a beautiful meal. They give you an appetite but it’s not until you taste that you really know whether a meal (or an employee timeclock) is what you really want. Free time clock trials should give you the opportunity to try (taste) the software through an entire payroll cycle to see if it really does meet your needs. For example, can it cope with employees who forget to clock in or out. Can it generate reports quickly and easily as payroll deadlines approach. And can it save you money while it’s doing all of this for you. Only a time clock trial that runs for at least one full payroll period will tell you if it’s going to meet your needs or not.
3. To see how you live with the time clock software day to day
We’ll indulge in another metaphor here. Downloading any old time clock software, clocking in and out a few times and making a decision in a few minutes is akin to buying a suit by pulling it off of the rack looking at the size and saying to your self that will fit! You don’t know whether it’s a GREAT suit until you get it home, wear it to work, see how it sits on your shoulders and understand what needs adjusting. Sadly you don’t get this chance with a suit, you have to buy it and get it adjusted and then live with it. If your time clock software comes with a free trial you don’t need to buy it to understand how it fits. Your company can live with it day to day and understand how it will fit in your day to day operations and decide if that fit is a good one or a poor one. Given that a good time clock program will become an integral part of your staff management processes it’s essential to ensure that the fit is a GREAT one. So take full advantage of a free time clock trial before you purchase anything.
4. To ensure ongoing reliability and data security
It’s a sad fact of life that a lot of software is shiny and beautiful on the surface but under a thin veneer doesn’t really work too well at all. Often it’s not possible to find usability problems, bugs, or data calculation issues until you’ve used the software for a while. If your prospective employee time clock program offers a free trial then this will allow you find out if any such hidden nasties are lurking just below the surface.
5. To ensure a good fit with your payroll rules and overtime requirements
Our experience suggests that the two most complex parts of any employee time clock system are coping with overtime and dealing with vacation and sick time accruals. Often a workplace has several different sets of accrual and overtime rules that are applied to different employees. It’s not until you get into the guts of a time clock trial that you’ll understand whether it will be able to cope with the way your company accrues leave or pays for vacation. You can imagine the trouble you’d be in if you purchase some software and don’t find out until later that it won’t do proper seventh day California overtime!
by Mark Nemtsas | May 24, 2013 | Tips and Tricks
It seems to be the week for new Time Clock MTS users asking great questions. Here’s a few questions I’ve just been asked about the Time Clock MTS Client software plus some great suggestions.
Question : The client version icons go blue after a short time; on the admin stations the icons next to the staff names stay green or red based on their clock in status; do you know why there is a difference?
Answer : This is the clients going idle to stop them clogging up the network. Whenever an employee clicks their name it will update their status. Look here for more information: The Time Clock MTS Client Idle State
Question : We also wonder why the client version does not allow for robust administrative privileges like the trial version (after logging in as administrator, of course).
Answer : The client does allow you to run reports and so on but not configure software options, add employees, and so on. This is a design choice in the software.
Question : Can you change it so that you can have multiple administrators logged in at the same time?
Answer : 3) No, you can only have one administrator logged in at once. But as I said above you can run reports from the client computers.
Suggestion : I would like to suggest that the administrators be given access to change the formatting of the “canned” reports without having to export into excel. For example, we have a few fields that we would like bold; it would be great to be able to go into the report settings and input some html code to make those fields format to our preferences.
Answer : Selective formatting of reports is under development right now.
Suggestion: We would also like to see the administrators have power to change certain defaults on the interface screen. Currently each staff member would have to go in to change certain settings (for example punchcard vs. job punchcard, view employee information etc.) when viewing or printing their time sheets. We would love it if we could set defaults so they have fewer things to choose.
Answer : Employees can only view three different reports. This provides them with a good amount of information without overwhelming them with the entire list of several dozen different reports.
by Mark Nemtsas | May 7, 2013 | Using the Software
There’s two mains reasons that you’d want to track the time your employees spend working on jobs. The first, is to be able to recognize and track how and where your employees are spending their time in your business. The second, is to track the time your employees spend working on external projects so that you can bill their time. Generally the two reasons require different types of software. The first generally requires a simple clock in / out interface that is quick and easy to use. The second is usually required of staff in more professional positions who are expected to submit a weekly timesheet for billing purposes.
Time Clock MTS
If you have a small staff of less than four employees and require some sort of simple job timesheet and a payroll time clock then Time Clock MTS is the tool you’ve been looking for. You can install it on a single computer, setup your employee and job list, and have your employees clock in and out of jobs as many times per day as you like. It’s then a simple matter for you to run a payroll report like the Simple Wages Report to work out your payroll requirements. And reporting on the time they’ve spent working on each job is a simple matter of running the Job Time Report. All this for free if you use Time Clock MTS to track less than four employees on a single computer. Other time clock systems with job tracking charge hundreds of dollars for the same functionality. Can you afford not to give it a try?
Employee Time Tracking Software
If you’re looking for project time tracking software that produces output suitable for detailed project management or for billing of external clients then you’ll want to take a look at Timesheets Lite. Timesheets Lite is pure time tracking software for recording time spent working on projects and includes many different project management style reports. It does not contain any payroll features like Time Clock MTS. Timesheets Lite allows you to install a project timesheet on each of your employee’s computers which they can use to record the time they spend working each day on various projects. There’s a free 30 day trial available to allow you to try it out without restriction.
Free Timesheet with Multiple Jobs
Our final free job timesheet resource is a free Excel timesheet with job tracking template. This free Excel timesheet template allows employees to record their clock in and clock out time against a project selected from a pre-defined list. The template includes a simple mechanism for reporting the time the employee spends working on each job over the period of the timesheet. The Excel timesheet template is free to download and modify as you see fit.
