by Mark Nemtsas | Apr 30, 2011 | How To, Tips and Tricks, Using the Software
The recent release of Version 3.1.5 of Time Clock MTS included a new report that allows users to easily run a report displaying employees that have clocked in late for their shift. The output of this report can be seen above. Here’s how to setup Time Clock MTS to allow you to use this report to track when your employees are clocking in late for their shifts. For each different shift start time you need to track you’ll need to create a shift on the manage shifts screen in Time Clock MTS. You can do this in Tools -> Options -> Shifts. Read more about Shifts in the online help files. Made sure to set the shift start time to the time that you want to track. Assign each employee to the shift that they work. You can do this on the Employee Maintenance -> Edit Employee screen. See Employee Information in the Online Help File. Have your employees clock in and out using Time Clock MTS as normal. Run the Late for Shift report on the Report Configuration Screen. The report can be run over one or many days, and run for one or many employees. You can now interpret the report. It will give you a day by day list of the employees that have clocked in late for their shift. Each employee late arrival will be displayed along with the employee name, their shift name, the scheduled shift start, their actual arrival time, and the amount of time that they were... read more
by kathryn@timeclockmts.com | Apr 28, 2011 | Using the Software
It’s probably no great surprise that after more than 5 years of development and being used by several thousand companies in more than 60 countries that Time Clock MTS has been used in some unusual ways. One interesting application that I am aware of is using it as Class Attendance Software in vocational education classes. One user in particular was running a vocational metal working class and wanted his students to experience a ‘work like’ atmosphere during the class. This included using Time Clock MTS to clock in at the start of the class and clock out at the end of the class. The class teacher carried through the idea of a ‘work’ environment by issuing a virtual payroll, having scheduled break times, and even using Time Clock MTS to track vacation time and track sick time. It’s a fairly simple matter to setup Time Clock MTS to be used as class attendance software. Multiple classes could be tracked by displaying the student list in department folders, projects worked on by students during class could be tracked with the job tracking features, and the user interface could be modified to suit the school environment on the Interface Settings screen. Reports like the employee status report can easily be used to see what students are present at the class, or the job time report could be used to determine how much time students have spent working on particular projects or tasks. In conclusion I’d like to say that while Time Clock MTS wasn’t designed specifically as class attendance software it can (and is) certainly able to be used as such.... read more
by Mark Nemtsas | Apr 28, 2011 | Tips and Tricks, Using the Software
Before I started work on Time Clock MTS I’d worked at many different companies who thought that building a simple employee attendance database in preference to using paper time cards would save them a lot of time and money. Of course, when comparing the on-going costs of using a well-executed employee attendance database to those of using paper time cards these companies were exactly correct. They could justifiably expect to save time in the area of employee attendance data collection, save significant time in the processing of this data, and ideally good improvements in the reporting of employee attendance. Not only would improvements be seen in the actual labor expended but also, in the timeliness of data collection and reporting. This is because there’d be no more chasing up late timesheets from uncooperative employees by a harried payroll staff member. These same companies also believed that they had unique requirements which meant that an off the shelf employee attendance software solution wouldn’t work for them. So in several cases I was engaged to develop a custom software solution knowing that in many cases their ‘unique’ requirements were no different to what many other companies required. The end result was that the on-going cost savings that an employee attendance database delivered were offset against high initial development costs. Thus a much longer time was required before a company saw a positive return on their software investment. In most cases they “unique” requirements of each company turned out to be just naming conventions, or reporting formats or report cycles, or the requirement to track (what turned out to be) fairly minor... read more
by Mark Nemtsas | Apr 22, 2011 | Using the Software
If you’re running a very small business you’re probably looking for a cheap and easy way to track your employee attendance. Better still you’re probably wanting a free way of tracking employee attendance. Ideally the free method of tracking your employee hours would be accurate, easy for your employees to use, and generate easy to understand reports when you have to process your payroll. If you’re looking for all of this then you’re in luck, Time Clock MTS provides you with a free attendance software download that allows you to track up to 3 employee’s time and attendance information. You can track sick time and vacation time, track time spent working on projects, and generate any number of reports in just seconds. And you can do this forever, with no charge, with just two limitations. Limitation one is that you can only track three or fewer employees. Limitation two is that you can only install and run the software on one computer, so you cannot make use of the multi computer time clock features of Time Clock MTS. So if you’re looking for a free attendance software download then Time Clock MTS is probably exactly what you’re looking... read more
by Mark Nemtsas | Apr 22, 2011 | Tips and Tricks, Using the Software
If you make use of the security feature in Time Clock MTS that allows you to use an internet time server to set the time that Time Clock MTS uses then very occasionally you might get this error message: You cannot currently clock in as synchronization with the Internet Time Server has failed at startup or for at least 1 hour after startup. Re-start the software to try to synchronize again or talk to your Time Clock MTS administrator. In simple terms this message means that Time Clock MTS has been unable to connect to your selected time server for a period of time and for security reasons has prevented employees from clocking in or out. The cause of this error is usually one of two things. The first is that you’ve just got a temporary network problem and given a bit of time the issue will resolve itself. The second reason is that the time server you’ve chosen for Time Clock MTS to synchronize itself to is either experiencing extreme load or has been disabled completely. Here’s a couple of things to try if you believe your message is due to the second reason: 1. Try connecting to our own dedicated internet time server instead of a third party server. We’re committed to maintaining this time server so you’re assured it will always be available. 2. Rather than using Time Clock MTS to get a time from an internet time server use Windows itself to do this and then lock down the Windows permissions to prevent users from just manually changing the system time. To learn how to... read more
by Mark Nemtsas | Apr 16, 2011 | Tips and Tricks, Using the Software
Time Clock MTS was designed to be a flexible barcode attendance system for small and medium sized businesses. Here’s what you need to do so that you can use Time Clock MTS as your Barcode Attendance System. Decide if you’re going to use Time Clock MTS in Employee List mode or Keypad Mode If you’re going to use Employee List mode then you’ll need to read the instructions on this page. If you’re going to use the Keypad Mode then keep reading the page you’re on now. Install and run Time Clock MTS. Log into Time Clock MTS as the administrator and go to the Tools->Options->Interface Settings Screen. Change the Data Entry Mode setting to “Keypad”. Save the changes. Log out of the administrator mode of Time Clock MTS and you should see the Keypad interface of the software (see the screenshot above). Get a suitable barcode reader. Time Clock MTS requires a barcode reader that has a ‘keyboard wedge’ or a ‘software wedge’. This means that it can be plugged into either the USB port or old style PS2 keyboard port of your computer and output characters to your computer exactly the same as a computer keyboard. Sometimes the reader will come with some software that needs to be installed to allow this to happen. Configure the barcode reader to put a return character at the end of each scanned barcode. Most readers do this by default but you might need to change the settings of the reader via the configuration software that comes with it. Log back into Time Clock MTS as the administrator and create your... read more
