Changing the Windows System Time
You may well know that Time Clock MTS can determine the internal time used for clocking in and out from an Internet time server. This is a pretty foolproof way of preventing time clock fraud as the times recorded are completely independent of the local PC clock setting. You can turn on this feature in the Time Clock MTS administrator program on the Tools->Options->Security Settings page. Just tick the Use Internet Time Server checkbox, then pick our dedicated time server (time.timeclockmts-online.com) from the dropdown box and click SAVE to save the change. You can read about how to do this in more detail in this blog entry
The above works well, but for whatever reason very infrequently it doesn’t work in a fool-proof fashion. This won’t result in incorrect employee attendance data but it can prevent employees from clocking in or out. Time Clock MTS will actually prevent employees from clocking in and out if it cannot contact the Internet time server for an hour (this is to stop employees just pulling a network cable to get around the Internet Time Server setting). Sometimes the reason Time Clock MTS cannot contact the time server can’t easily be determined, it may be network congestion, it might be firewall problems, or it might be problems with the time server itself. When these sorts of problems occur frequently it may be adopting a different solution to setting the system time using Windows itself. Here’s what you’ll need to do:
- Turn off the Use Internet Time Server setting in Time Clock MTS. This will result in Time Clock MTS determining all times from the local PC clock.
- Change the Windows settings to have the local pc clock time determined from an Internet time server. How you do this will depend on the version of Windows you are running. For example, in Windows Vista/7/8 you can do it by simply right clicking on the Taskbar clock and then selecting Adjust Date/Time from the popup menu.
- Change the Windows user account permissions that Time Clock MTS is run from to prevent changing the Windows System time. How you do this is well beyond the scope of this entry as it will vary tremendously depending on the version of Windows you are running and any sort of network management software you happen to be using.
That’s all there is to it. What you’ve done is set the local PC clock to get accurate time from an Internet time server and Time Clock MTS will get it’s clock in and out times directly from this. By adjusting the Windows user account permissions you’ve prevented employees from changing the system clock of the PC in an attempt to provide fraudulent time clock data.
