Questions About Time Clock Software in a Childcare Center

by | Apr 28, 2010 | Tips and Tricks, Using the Software

I got a question from a potential Time Clock MTS user recently, she is the director of a childcare center in the USA. Here’s what she had to ask:

Would you be able to answer these questions for me by e-mail?  I’m trying to determine if your time clock software will work for what we’d need to use it for.  We currently have about 60 students and about 25 staff.  We use a centrally located computer for everyone (students & staff) to clock in and out each day.  Each person has an ID # that they use to clock in and out. I’d like to set this up where people can clock in/out on the main computer, but I can run reports from 2 computers in the office.  We’d like to have 2 administrators.  Is that possible?

 

How many people can use this to clock in/out?  If we reach our maximum in the future, is there any way to extend the number of users?

 

Do you happen to know how other childcare centers are using this program to clock in/out students?  Do they set students up as a certain Department or something?  Any help you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

There’s a few points about this. Firstly, yes you can have multiple administrator computers, but you’ll need to purchase a license for each one and then set up the second (and subsequent) administrator computers as described in this blog entry. The second thing to note is that Time Clock MTS is most certainly used by other childcare centers, several dozen at least (plus about 6000 other companies around the world). Here’s my response to the question:

1) Two admin licenses and one client license are possible but only one of the admin PC’s at a time will be able to run the software. Cost for this setup would be US$167.

 

2) I’ll happily extend the software for you to allow up to 150 people to clock in and out. You can delete employees/children if they are no longer using the system to free up positions. Regarding other centers, I seem to recall at least one using different departments to track children/staff. A quick browse through our customer database shows around 60 or so centers using our software

Using Your Trial Period Data

by | Jan 18, 2010 | Tips and Tricks

One of the more popular questions I get asked by companies that are planning to purchase Time Clock MTS usually goes something along the lines of:

“Can I keep using the information I’ve setup in the trial version of Time Clock MTS when I purchase the software and what do I need to do to keep using it?”

The very short answer to this question is “Yes and and you don’t need to do anything“.

The longer answer is yes you can keep using the data and there’s nothing you need to other than enter your registration key when you purchase the software to keep using the data. From day one Time Clock MTS was designed to give you the minimal amount of disruption when you’re using the trial or transitioning to from the trial to the purchased version. A few weeks ago I talked about what you get when you purchase Time Clock MTS. One of these was the license code, when this is entered into Time Clock MTS the trial period is removed and the software transforms itself into the purchased version and you’ll just keep working. That’s it. Nothing else, no need to download and install anything else, no need to re-build your dataset, no need to re-configure the software.

In conclusion let me re-state, to keep using your trial data when you purchase Time Clock MTS you really don’t need to do anything!

Problems with nist1-ny.WiTime.net Time Server

by | Dec 28, 2009 | News, Tips and Tricks

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.

Time Clock MTS In Action Truck Body Refitter

by | Oct 29, 2009 | News, Tips and Tricks

It’s not often that I get to visit a company that is making use of Time Clock MTS but today I had the pleasure of visiting a local company that does use it. They are a job based truck body re-fitter and track their employee’s time against the particular job that they happen to be working on at the moment. It is vital that they keep track of the actual time spent on a job so that they do not under quote their customers and so they know how to value their current work in progress.

Their old system consisted of a pen/paper register with each job recorded in a notebook along with a job number and customer. When employees needed to book time to a job they manually recorded it on a job card for that job. At the end of the job the cards were tallied manually and the job billed accordingly. It is interesting to note that the employees had separate manual time cards that were used to determine wages. Let’s take a quick look at the inefficiencies in this system:

  1. Recording time spent on jobs took up to a minute per entry and was error prone due to bad handwriting and poor time-keeping.
  2. There was considerable duplicated effort on behalf of the employer in tallying up job sheets and employee time cards separately.
  3. The manual tallying was both time consuming and prone to error.
  4. Referring to past records was painful at best. To find a customers job record tool several minutes of scanning through the job register finding the job reference and then locating the right job card in a filing cabinet full of job cards.
  5. It was impossible to know how far through a job they were without sitting down with the job cards and tallying things up manually.

So let’s take a look at their setup now with Time Clock MTS and what improvements they’ve seen:

  1. There is just one time keeping system now that keeps track of both employee attendance and time spent on jobs.
  2. Actually recording attendance and time spent on jobs is now extremely quick and accurate.
  3. Manual tallying of times has been completely eliminated as have calculation errors and time keeping errors.
  4. The owner can determine how much time has been spent on a particular job in about 20 seconds.
  5. Archival data is easily obtained and referenced, saving 10-15 minutes each and every time they need to refer back to an old job. The company has also suggested a new report that will be added to the software to significantly improve this process even more!

I must thank the company in question for allowing me to take a look at their operations. They couldn’t be happier with the software and the return on their (US$69) investment in Time Clock MTS is extremely impressive. There are real productivity improvements in both the production and administrative sides of the business, as well as an owner who is much better informed about the current state of his business. If you’re interested in using Time Clock MTS in the same way that this company is you should take a look at the getting started with Time Clock MTS and the job tracking time clock page.

Vacation Time and Overtime Calculations

by | Aug 28, 2009 | Tips and Tricks

I got an interesting email from a Time Clock MTS user today who had found an apparent overtime calculation error in the software.

I have set up our user with Vacation and Sick Accrual information as well as OT info. Basically, we have OT set for weekly over 40 hours and also set so that Vacation/Sick and Holiday DOES effect OT. When I ran the report for last week (with a vacation day included) the report ran information saying she had 40 hours Regular and 2.8 Hours OT. It shouldn’t show any OT calculation since she had 8.0 hours vacation. Can you please tell me why the report isn’t properly calculating. It should be 42.8 hours Regular time due to the Vacation.

I asked for and received their database so I could check their data and sure enough what they reported was correct. The reason for the apparent error was one innocuous setting. The “Sick/Vac Time Affect OT” setting was checked on the Tools->Options->Overtime Settings page. Unchecking this setting and saving the changes I re-ran the payroll reports and presto Time Clock MTS reported 42.8 hours of normal time. It’s worth a quick look at the effect of this setting.

  • In this case when the setting is turned on Time Clock MTS considers vacation time to be an active part of the work week. So, the overtime limit is set to 40 hours and all time (including vacation time) is compared with this limit. Hence, it reports 2.8 hours of overtime.
  • When the setting is turned off vacation time is ignored from the overtime calculation. So 34.8 hours is compared with the overtime limit of 40 hours (resulting in 34.8 normal hours) and then the 8 normal vacation hours is added onto this, resulting in 42.8 hours of normal time.