Two Methods to Clock In and Clock Out

by Mark Nemtsas | Dec 23, 2012 | Tips and Tricks, Using the Software

Time Clock MTS includes two distinct methods for employees to clock in and clock out. The first uses the Employee List Interface and the second uses the Keypad Interface. Let’s have a closer look at each method of clocking in and clocking out using Time Clock MTS or you could watch the clock in video tutorial.

Clocking In and Clocking Out with the Employee List Interface

The Employee List Interface

Above you can see the employee list interface of Time Clock MTS. On the left is a list of employees. Next to each employee is a status icon showing the current status of that employee. For example, a green icon indicates an employee is clocked in and a red icon indicates they are clocked out. On the right hand side of the screen are the clock in / out buttons, below that the View My Information button and the status information area. You can use a bar code reader, a magnetic card reader, or even RFID reader with this screen to automatically punch employees in or out without the need to touch a mouse or keyboard. Using the employee list interface to clock in and out is very simple. Just follow these steps:

1. Click on the employee’s name in the list who needs to clock in or clock out. Alternatively they can use one of the data input devices (like a bar code scanner) to read an appropriately encoded barcode, magnetic card, or RFID badge and the employee will be punched in or out immediately.
2. Depending on their current status either the Clock In or Clock Out button will become active.
3. Click on the Clock In or Clock Out button to clock the employee in or out. The employee may have to enter their PIN to complete the action.
4. If the clock in or clock out action is successful the status icon for that employee will change and the status information area will show the details of the clock in or clock out.

Clocking In and Clocking Out with the Keypad Interface

The Keypad Interface

Above you can see the keypad interface of Time Clock MTS. On the left is a virtual numeric keypad and on the right is the employee badge number field (at top) and below that is the status information area. The keypad interface is designed to be used with a touchscreen. Like the employee list interface it can also be used with a barcode reader, a magnetic swipe card reader, or even a prox card. Using the keypad interface to clock in and out couldn’t be any easier.

1. An employee needs to know their Time Clock MTS badge number to be able to use the keypad interface. All they need to do is enter their badge number using the virtual timeclock keypad (or via a regular keyboard or one of the other data devices I described above). Then they need to click the Enter button. The employee may then have to enter their PIN to complete the action.
2. Time Clock MTS will then check the status of employee with the entered badge number and clock them in or clock them out as appropriate. The status information area will show the details of the employee clock in or clock out.

So, there you have it. Two different methods for employees to clock in and clock out of Time Clock MTS. Both are simple to do and quick for your employees to learn and one of them will, no doubt, be suitable for your company.

Secure Your Timeclock System Before It’s Too Late with Time Audit Logging

by kathryn@timeclockmts.com | Dec 14, 2012 | Tips and Tricks, Using the Software

Protect your business against employee fraud by using Time Clock MTS security features you may not have been aware of.

Time clock fraud by employees is a real problem. It might be happening right now within your business and you are yet to find out. Today we received an email from a company who has had to get the police involved because an employee had been systematically defrauding the company through manipulation of their time clock system. Don’t let this happen to you!

Time Clock MTS has many different security features some of which are turned on by default and some of which need to be turned on by you, the user. An important security feature of Time Clock MTS that you as the administrator can use is audit logging. This feature records the entire editing history of each clock in and clock out event tracking every change and which computer those changes were made from. If the company that has contacted us about their employee time clock fraud had audit logging turned on within their time clock software they could have provided the police with documentation to support any criminal case.

To turn the audit logging system on to monitor your employee activities go to the Tools->Options->Security Options screen and check the box for Enable Audit Logging.

Enable Audit Logging to View the Time Audit Log

Time Clock MTS includes other security features to help you prevent time clock fraud. Some of these include:

• Enabling employee PIN’s
• Biometric Fingerprint security
• Use a secure Internet Time Server
• Use a webcam to capture employee images
• Integration with your magnetic card system or RFID system

Barcode Time Clock and Attendance System

by Mark Nemtsas | Dec 8, 2012 | Tips and Tricks, Using the Software

You might think that setting up a barcode time clock is expensive and complicated. If you did think that, you’d be wrong. By my estimation you could setup an old Windows computer with Time Clock MTS, a simple USB barcode scanner, and some “home made” barcode employee badges for under $275. Here’s how I’d do it.

1. Designate a Computer to be your Time Clock Computer

Almost every business has computers these days, and in my experience it’s not unusual for one of these computers to either be highly under-utilized or retired and switched off all of the time. It’s one of these computers that you should use as your time clock station. Cost? In most cases $0.

Total Cost to Date: $0

2. Purchase and Install Time Clock MTS

Time Clock MTS can be purchased for $99 (US). This can track up to 500 employees on a single computer. Once you’ve installed Time Clock MTS, create an employee for each employee you want to track. You could also create many employees at once very easily using the method I describe here. Once you’ve created all of your required employees, print out a Badge Number Report from within Time Clock MTS.

Total Cost to Date: $99 (US)

Figure 1 -Installing a Barcode Font

3. Create Your Employee Badges

Creating barcodes is easy. And free. You can do it from within pretty much any word processor or spreadsheet these days. All you need is a barcode font. Yes, a font, just like Arial, or Times New Roman, or Trebuchet. If you do a Google search for “free barcode font” you’ll get a ton of results, and to save you the trouble I did a search and found that this barcode font is free, and works just fine. To install the font just download the ZIP file, unzip it and double click on one of the files with the ttf extension (see the image above). Windows will then auto-magically install the font.

Once the font is installed you can select it from a font selector in your word processor or spreadsheet of choice. You can see below that I created some simple barcodes in Microsoft Word. Note that the barcode font I selected is “Free 3 of 9”. Here’s the tricky bit. You need to decide whether you’re going to use Time Clock MTS in Employee List Mode or Keypad Interface Mode. The barcodes required for each mode are slightly different. If, for example you have an employee with the ID 1000 then the barcodes need to be encoded as follows:

Employee Interface Mode: +1000=
Keypad Interface Mode: 1000

As you can see the only difference is + and = characters around the employee ID on the Employee Interface barcodes. As a further example, if we have an employee with the ID 9999 then the two different barcode formats would be:

Employee Interface Mode: +9999=
Keypad Interface Mode: 9999

When you know the format you need as you create your bar codes you’ll want each barcode to correspond to a Time Clock MTS badge number, the same badge numbers we got from the Badge Number Report we printed out in Step 2 above. In the image below I’ve created badges for the numbers 1010 and 1020 (these badges are for the keypad interface because there’s no + or = characters in them).

Figure 2 -Simple Employee Badge Design

Now the design of the badge is entirely up to you, in the image above I’ve done a very simple design in Microsoft Word. Given that you’re doing this in a word processor or spreadsheet the sky is the limit really. Once the design is complete print out the cards. I’d suggest a heavy card stock of some type and using a laser printer. I’d also suggest laminating the cards if possible. In any event the cost of the cards is going to be minimal. Less that $0.50 each. For arguments sake let’s say we’re creating 75 badges for 75 employees, giving a cost of $37.50 for the badges.

Total Cost to Date: $136.50

4. Buy a USB Barcode Scanner

Barcode scanners are not expensive items these days. It’s a well known and mature technology and the bugs have well and truly been ironed out. All you need to do is ensure that the scanner comes with the right sort of interface (most likely USB) to plug into your PC and that it can read the barcode that you’re using. Barcodes come in many different types, with names like Code 39 (or type 3 of 9), Code 128, and EAN 2. The free barcode font we downloaded in step 3 is Code 39. While I do need to warn you to check that the reader will be able to understand your barcode type, in the VAST majority of cases readers support pretty much every type of barcode these days.

The actual type of scanner you buy is entirely up to you but I’d stick with better known brands simply for reasons of after sales support and reliability. I’ve used Symbol (made by Motorola) and Gryphon (made by Datalogic) USB Barcode scanners many times in the past and never, ever, had a problem with them. When I wrote this article these could be purchased from Amazon for $120 per unit with $10 shipping.

Total Cost to Date: $266.50

5. Install the Barcode Scanner and Configure Time Clock MTS

When your barcode scanner arrives all you should need to do is plug it into a USB port on your computer. Windows will most likely take care of the rest. You may need to install some drivers though, consult the documentation that ships with your scanner. Once installed the computer should view any data read by your barcode scanner as exactly the same as that entered by a keyboard. Don’t believe me? Try opening up a word processor or Windows Notepad on the computer and scan a barcode, you should see the characters the barcode represents appear in the word processor.

Figure 3 -The Time Clock MTS Keypad Interface

The final step in the process is to configure Time Clock MTS to work with the scanner. If you’ve decided to use the default Employee List mode of Time Clock MTS then you won’t need to configure the software at all. However, if you’ve decided to use the Keypad Interface then I’ve described in some detail how to set that up in the setting up the keypad interface mode article. This shouldn’t take you more than a few minutes.

Total Cost to Date: $266.50

6. Start Employees Clocking in and Out

Once Time Clock is working in your chose mode and you’ve printed out your barcode badges in the correct format then clocking an employee in or out is as easy as scanning one of the badges you made in step 3 above. When you scan the badge Time Clock MTS will read the badge number and then clock the employee with the corresponding badge number in or out as appropriate. Is really couldn’t be any simpler.

Grand Total: $266.50

There you have it, a barcode time clock system for under $275. In my experience a company will likely recoup up to $5 per employee per week when they start using a system like this. This recovery includes indirect costs such as no longer having to waste time using inefficient paper based systems and the associated time spent processing the data created by those systems. The recovery also includes direct costs by largely eliminating employee time clock fraud. $5 per employee per week? If you’ve got 10 employee’s you’ll get your $275 back in just over a month. 20 employees and you’ll get it back in a fortnight. Any more than 20 employees and you should be asking yourself why you’re still reading this and you haven’t started setting up such a system already.

Tracking Lunch Hours

by Mark Nemtsas | Dec 1, 2012 | Tips and Tricks, Using the Software

I had a good question from a user of our employee timeclock software about wanting to track the hours employees spend at lunch but still pay the employees for those hours. The solution is to make use of the job tracking features of Time Clock MTS. I thought it would be worthwhile giving a step-by-step example of how you might set this up and how employees would track their lunch hours.

Figure 1 – Adding a Lunch Job

1. Create a Lunch Job

Log into the Time Clock MTS Administrator program and go to the Tools->Options->Job Tracking screen. On the Job Tracking screen click the button to create a new job. You’ll then be shown the Add/Edit Job screen (see Figure 1). Enter some details for the Lunch Job and give it a job code that can be easily remembered. In this case I gave it the code 9999. Click the Save Job to add the job. You’ll be taken back to the Job Tracking screen where you’ll see the new Lunch Job in the job list. See Figure 2.

Figure 2 – The Job is Created

2. Turn on Job Tracking

The next step is to turn on job tracking for each employee that you want to track lunch hours for. This is done via the Employee Maintenance->Edit Employee->Employee Information screen (see figure 3). When on this screen make a selection from the Job Tracking dropdown. If you’re not going to be tracking other jobs then you should probably set this to Optional. Don’t forget to press the Save Employee button to save the changes.

Figure 3 – Turn on Job Tracking

3. Clock Onto the Lunch Job

Clocking onto the Lunch Job is simple. When the employee is ready to take their lunch break, they need to clock out of Time Clock MTS. When they do they’ll be shown the Switch Jobs screen (see Figure 4). Have them click the Switch Jobs button. The Enter Job Code screen (See Figure 5) will then be displayed where the employee can enter the Lunch Job code (in this case 9999). When the code is entered correctly click the Enter button to clock onto the Lunch Job.

Figure 4 – Switching Jobs

Figure 5 – Choosing the Lunch Job

4. Clock Off of the Lunch Job

When the employee is finished lunch and they need to clock out of the Lunch Job have them clock out as normal. Again they’ll be shown the Switch Jobs screen (Figure 4). Click the Switch Jobs button again and then when the Enter Job Code screen is displayed the employee just needs to click the Enter button WITHOUT entering a job code. This will put them back on normal Time Clock MTS time.

Figure 6 – Clocking Out of Lunch Job

5. Run Reports

Once your employees are tracking their lunch hours you can use one of the job-based Time Clock MTS reports such as the Job Time Report or the Job Punchcard Report. In this example I decided to run the Job Punchcard report which you can see in Figure 7. Towards the bottom of the report you can see that this employee booked 0.95 hours (or 57 minutes) to lunch on November 30.

Figure 7 – The Job Punchcard Report

6. Conclusions

I hope that you’ll find that process useful. It can be setup in just a few minutes and allows you to break down the time spend fairly easily. It doesn’t have to be restricted to tracking lunch hours though, you could track other break times, or even track the time that employees spend working in different roles inside your company.