by kathryn@timeclockmts.com | Apr 15, 2011 | User Testimonials, Using the Software
I don’t read or speak Portuguese but Google translated this review of Time Clock MTS in Portuguese for me pretty well. The author seems to have some nice things to say about the software and certainly went to some effort with the review, taking the reader from software installation right through to the point of running reports. One thing the author didn’t pick up on is that you can translate all the labels on the front screen of Time Clock MTS into any language you like, so he could have made it look a little more Portuguese with just a few seconds effort! You can do this on the Interface Settings Screen. Read more about what other time clock users have done in Ukranian time clock, or any other language even those using Japanese or Chinese... read more
by Mark Nemtsas | Apr 15, 2011 | How To, Tips and Tricks
At last count nearly 50 churches were registered users of Time Clock MTS and we know that many of these use Time Clock MTS to track student attendance at Sunday school. The tracking requirements for a Sunday school are not too dissimilar to that needed for regular school attendance software but it’s worth some effort looking at how to use Time Clock MTS as Sunday school attendance software effectively. Customize the User Interface Using the Interface Settings Screen customize the main user interface to suit the Sunday school environment. Your students will likely be offended to be called employees, so change those labels to ‘students’, you might like to change the ‘clock in’ and ‘clock out’ to less work oriented terms too. I’d suggest ‘Arrive’ and ‘Depart’. Create Jobs to Track Lessons or Classes If you want to track your student attendance to various lessons then I’d suggest making use of the job tracking features of Time Clock MTS. So, if for example, you had a series of lessons on the various books of the New Testament you could assign each a code and have your students clock in and out with this code as they attend each different lesson. At the end of the series of lessons you could offer those students who missed out catch up sessions. Determining who missed out is very simple, just run the Job Time Report. Create Departments for Each Teacher If you run a larger Sunday school you might find it useful to track student attendance by teacher. To do this create a department representing each teacher and assign students to each... read more
by Mark Nemtsas | Apr 15, 2011 | How To, Tips and Tricks
A quick browse through our customer database shows at the time of this post that 68 schools (not including colleges and universities) are using Time Clock MTS. It’s safe to assume that some of these, at least, are using Time Clock MTS as school attendance software. I thought it would be useful to look at how you could configure Time Clock MTS to track and record the attendance of students within schools. Change the Time Clock MTS Display Labels Above you can see the Tools->Options->Display Settings screen. You can use the ‘Main Screen Labels’ options to change the text shown on the main screen of Time Clock MTS. We originally designed this to allow users to translate the main screen into other languages but we are aware that some users are using it to make the software more user friendly to their particular business. If you’re using Time Clock MTS as school attendance software then you can easily make it more student friendly by changing these terms. The image below shows what the result can be when making the software more school friendly. Record Student Contact Information The Manage Employees screens in Time Clock MTS allow you to record the student name, contact information, and alternate contact information. This is immediately useful if a school needs to contact a student, their parents, or notify someone due to an unexplained school absence. Track Students by Class Student attendance by class could be easily tracked using the departmental tracking features with Time Clock MTS. Simply create a department for each student class and then assign each student to the correct class... read more
by kathryn@timeclockmts.com | Apr 6, 2011 | Using the Software
NOTE: This feature, the first day starts at setting applies to Versions 4 and earlier. It was removed from the software in Version 5 and later. We received this question from a user of the free version of Time Clock MTS. Both employees punch in and out for each the morning and afternoon work periods. The problem is that now I’m finding that when I run a Punchcard Report for the period March 16 through the 31st, the first period, say from 8:00AM till lunch (usually around 1PM), does not appear. Only the afternoon period appears on the report. This does not happen for January or February. I have read on your web site that you suggest having shifts start at 12AM to avoid this, but to prevent early clocking in we have had the shift start at 8AM for quite a while without seeing this problem. I hope you can assist me with this. It’s not unusual for us to get emails from users reporting the same sort of behaviour. In every case it is linked to the First Day Starts At setting on the Payroll Settings screen. This setting actually changes the time at which Time Clock MTS considers a day to start. So, if you set it to 8:00AM then any time before 8:00AM is considered to be the day prior. The setting shouldn’t be used if you just want to define when your shift begins or end and in almost every case shouldn’t really ever be used at all. Some time ago I covered in detail what you might use this setting for and why... read more
by Mark Nemtsas | Apr 6, 2011 | Tips and Tricks, Using the Software
Here’s a question we just got from a Time Clock MTS user: I seem to have another problem that I’m not sure we can solve. The guys that are using the time clock are pretty computer savy. I’m sure one of them changed the date on the computer that they sign in on – the time that is used is off of the that computer not the time on the “client” computerm(or my computer)… I have not “called” them on it yet and won’t unless it happens again, but I went out and it is very easy to change the clock and clock in or out then change the clock back to the regular time. Do you know of any way to LOCK the time on the computer they are signing in on? Or any other way around it? There’s a few ways to prevent this sort of thing from happening, here’s the solutions I suggest in the order that I consider best to worst. Setup your Windows system to get the system time from an Internet Time Server and then put in place a system policy to remove permissions for your Windows users to change the system time. Configure Time Clock MTS to get it’s time from an Internet Time Server. We’ve recently setup our own dedicated time server, so we suggest you make use of it for maximum reliability. Turn on the “Do Not Allow System Clock Changes” setting and require the administrator password when the software is started. You can change both these settings on the Security Settings Page. This will prevent users from closing Time... read more
by kathryn@timeclockmts.com | Mar 27, 2011 | New Releases, News
Time Clock MTS Version 3.1.4 has just been released. This release adds the new Tips Summary Report, cleans up the changes made when we Setup the Dedicated Internet Time Server, and the Time Breakdown Report now displays times in HH:MM:SS format properly. As always, if you’ve got any questions or you find any problems with this new release please contact us for... read more
