by Mark Nemtsas | Jun 18, 2014 | Tips and Tricks, Using the Software
I’m getting the error Clear Administrator Connection and I don’t know why? If you’ve recently upgraded Time Clock MTS on the computers your employees punch in and out from, or perhaps you’ve had to re-install the software on a computer due to a hardware failure then you might be seeing the screen below whenever you start up the software: There’s a bit of text to read there but if we cut the chase, this screen is telling you that you’ve got the Time Clock MTS Administrator software installed on this computer and that the software is also installed on another computer. Generally you only want the administrator software installed on ONE computer. It’s almost certain that you’re seeing this screen because you inadvertently installed or upgraded the administrator software instead of the Time Clock MTS Client software. This might have been because you either installed the Administrator software from scratch on the computer OR you ran our upgrade installer for the administrator software when you should have run the client upgrader. Either way, the fix is quite simple. How to fix this? The best way to fix this issue is to uninstall the Time Clock MTS Administrator program from this computer and install the client. If you’re not sure how to uninstall a program then you should watch this video on the Microsoft Help website. Once you’ve uninstalled the software you can install the Time Clock MTS client. The latest installer version can always be found on our website download page. If you’re not using the latest version then you need to talk to your IT Staff or time... read more
by Mark Nemtsas | Jun 14, 2014 | New Releases, News
Despite me saying that version 5.0.4 would be the last bug fix release for a while we’ve decided to issue another minor release that addresses some rather serious issues with the system for getting the time from internet time servers. It appears that a Windows update sometime in the last few months broke something and we’ve had to come up with a fix for it in a hurry. Version 5.0.5 contains that fix plus some other things we’ve been working on in the background. Here’s details of the changes made in this new release: A fix to the ‘reset forgotten password’ functionality for users of the free version, those who are in the 30 day trial period, or those who have purchased and are still waiting for their permanent registration codes. Complete re-work of the code that selects the last employee time punch. This significantly reduces the number of database accesses during this process and should speed up performance for users with large databases. Made a change to the MySQL database creation script to include some new indexes on the time table. These indexes have improved the employee list refresh speed for MySQL users by about 1000% percent. Re-factored some code that handles employee time punches to increase performance and reliability. Small changes made to the licensing system to account for recent Windows environmental variable changes. Fixed up an issue with importing jobs with a job code longer than five digits. Fixed for checking time from internet time server when computer had been running a long time (30 days plus). Fix to startup process that gets the time from... read more
by Mark Nemtsas | Jun 10, 2014 | Tips and Tricks, Using the Software
I’ve had a series of support emails from a Time Clock MTS user recently complaining that some of her time punches were always being calculated as less that the actual elapsed time. They were kind enough to email through some of their payroll reports so I could check what was happening. There’s a section of one of their reports below. You can see that a number of the punches clearly have a an elapsed time of more than eight hours but Time Clock MTS has calculated the times at under 8 hours. There’s a couple of clues as to what’s going on here. First is that the two punches that are 8 hours or under are calculated correctly. And second is that the time punches that appear to be incorrect are all out by about 0.08 of an hour. 0.08 of an hour is 288 seconds or just under 5 minutes. So what could make all time punches of over 8 hours be calculated, apparently incorrectly under by 5 minutes each? Of course, the answer is the automatic break deduction feature. When enabled automatic break times will be deducted from any time punch that exceeds a given time limit. In the case of this particular use I suspected that they had the limit set at 8 hours and for it to deduct 5 minutes. I confirmed this when they emailed me their time clock database so I could check their exact settings. A screenshot of their Payroll Settings screen can be seen below. You can see they’ve got their system setup to deduct 5 minutes of time from each... read more
by Mark Nemtsas | May 31, 2014 | User Testimonials
Athens Kids Specialists are pediatric specialists of Athens, Georgia, have been using Time Clock MTS since 2010. Recently they upgraded to the latest version of the software and they were kind enough to send through a review of their experiences with our software. Thanks to Joseph Lopez of Athens Kids Specialists for taking time out of his day to do this. We started our clinic in 2006 with a nurse, a doctor, and a receptionist in a small, 5 exam room office. Payroll was easy back then — 1 hourly employee. Within the year, we had a doubling of business and expanded to a total of 10 employees in a new office. We had to keep up with overtime, different pay rates, vacation accrual, etc. The hardest part was keeping up with the huge stack of paper punch cards every 2 weeks. Tabulating them in time to authorize a direct deposit cost me my lunch break every other Wednesday. We have LOVED the Timeclock MTS platform. Its network database means that we never need to have 1 dedicated machine running just the timeclock. We had 5 machines with Timeclock MTS client so there is always a terminal available. The ability to print a punchcard report allows our employees to check for errors themselves. We also have student who report in for University credits. Adding and Removing employees is so quick and easy. Having the ability to set them into a different “Department” makes bookkeeping a breeze since they don’t show up in our actual employee punchcard sheets. Time Clock MTS has been a great value and more than paid... read more
by Mark Nemtsas | Apr 29, 2014 | New Releases, News
We’ve been largely happy with the release of Version 5 of the software with just a few minor issues that needed fixing up. The last of these have been cleared up in version 5.0.4 of the software which is uploading to our website as I write this. This will be the last bug fix release before we begin development of version 5.1 which will include some new features. Here’s the details of what has been done to this version: The Daily Hours Report now displays times correctly in hh.mm (decimal hours) or hh:mm:ss format as per the setting on the Report Settings screen. The Daily Hours Report no longer displays zero activity employees if the Exclude Zero Activity Employees check box is ticked on the Report Configuration screen. Fix to the Database Connection Wizard that was preventing connections to MySQL or SQL Server databases. A fix to the time period dropdown boxes on the Edit Times screen. The first day in the last 7/14/28 days periods was not being selected correctly. The Enter Note screen has had a 30 second timer added to it. If the employee does not enter a note within 30 seconds the Enter Note window will close and the employee punch in or out will be... read more
by Mark Nemtsas | Apr 12, 2014 | How To, Tips and Tricks
Recently we’ve had a large number of people asking us about moving Time Clock MTS away from Windows XP to a newer version of Windows (such as Windows 10 or Windows 8.1). This how-to guide gives users a step by step process to doing so. Step 1: Gather Information Before starting this process you’re going to need to gather some information. Is the computer running the Time Clock MTS Client or the Time Clock MTS Administrator program? You can work this out by going to the Help->About Time Clock MTS menu and looking at the title of the window. It’ll be “About Time Clock MTS” for the Time Clock MTS Administrator program and “About Time Clock MTS Client” for the client program. While on the Help->About Time Clock MTS screen note down the version of the software. That’s going to look something like “Version 4.1.2” and is in the top middle of the window. Log into Time Clock MTS as the administrator and go to the Help->Registration screen and copy down all of the registration details including the Registration Name, Number of Employees, Client Connections, and the Registration Key. While still logged in as the administrator go to the Tools->Options->System Options screen. Look at the middle right of the screen and you’ll see a text box called “Database Location”. That’s the path to your Time Clock MTS database and you need to note that down. Locate your Time Clock MTS installation files. Ideally you’ll have kept a copy of the installers you used to install Time Clock MTS originally. These will be called timeclock_install.exe (the administrator program installer) and... read more
