by Mark Nemtsas | Jan 13, 2009 | News
As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago I’ve finally identified a hardware vendor that produces the quality fingerprint scanners that I was looking for. Digital Persona are one of the best known manufacturers in the industry, with their hardware and software drivers rapidly becoming the standard for the biometric software industry. Their popular U.are.U 4000 USB fingerprint scanner has recently been superseded by the newly designed U.are.U 4500 model and it is this model that I have settled on. I am in the process of integrating Time Clock MTS with this scanner, and in the short term at least, this and the 4000 model are going to be the only biometric devices that will work with Time Clock MTS. Currently Digital Persona bundles up the fingerprint scanner with some software that you can use to manage user accounts on your Windows PC and that will also manage your web passwords and so on. They currently have this bundle available at just US$69.95 which is an insanely good price considering how much it cost me for a single scanner for development purposes! You can purchase the scanners directly from the digital persona website. Please note that I am not affiliated with Digital Persona in any way, and do not currently sell their hardware so if you have any problems with the scanner then you’ll need to deal with them rather than with anyone at Timesheets MTS Software. Stay tuned for a new version of Time Clock MTS that works with these fingerprint scanners very soon! Update: quite a bit has changed since we wrote this entry more than five... read more
by kathryn@timeclockmts.com | Jan 8, 2009 | New Releases, News
A minor bug fix release today. Two bugs fixed up plus some minor useability improvements. The bugs fixed were: Sick time and vacation accruals now work correctly if the ‘accrues every’ setting is set to more than 1. Sick time or vacation time taken on the last day of a report was not shown (but it was recorded correctly). This is now fixed up. Various text fields on the options screens now select the entire contents when you select the text... read more
by Mark Nemtsas | Jan 8, 2009 | How To, Tips and Tricks, Using the Software
Here’s a question I got this week that I thought was worth posting up here along with the solution: We offer our employees vacation pay but not on an accrual basis and I canʼt seem to make the software set up a specific amount of time without accrual. For example, if any employee is consider full time for one year beyond their hire date we offer 40 hrs of paid vacation to those said employees. And every year after the next fiscal year this time starts a new 40 hrs so on and so forth. This is pretty much the same scenario in regards to sick time. This is how to configure Time Clock MTS to allow for this sort of accrual scheme. Assign all employees with this sort of accrual to a single employment type. You could call the employment type to “yearly accrual” or whatever you like. In the administrator version of Time Clock MTS go to the Tools->Options->Vacation Accruals page and select the yearly accrual employment type you have setup. Check the Accrues Vacation Time check box. To start time accruing at hire date set Start Accruing Hire Date Plus setting to zero. If you want to allow for accruals in advance then set the Start With setting to some number, or otherwise set it to zero. Set the Accrue text field to the yearly allocation you wish to allow each employee. Set the For Every text box to 12 and the units drop down to Month. Make sure the Use Hire Date not Fiscal Year checkbox is checked to us the hire date anniversary to... read more
by kathryn@timeclockmts.com | Dec 24, 2008 | New Releases, News
Another minor release today containing some bug fixes and some useability improvements. Changes made include: Fixed up the tab order and text box sizes on the first login screen. Added an adjustment to the employee starting balance for sick time and vacation accruals. This allows you to set each employee with their own starting balance. This new setting is cumulative with the accrual scheme starting balance. The edit times time period selections were not quite working correctly. This has now been fixed up. A new status message is displayed on the note entry screen to tell employees if they actually have to enter a note. Fix to an error that occurred occasionally when selecting an employee from the employee list. When editing a time on the edit times screen the matching times details are also shown. Ideally it would have been nice to be able to edit both on one screen but given that time notes are per time and not per pair this didn’t really make... read more
by Mark Nemtsas | Dec 24, 2008 | News
2008 is about to draw to a close and I thought it was a good time to summarize the year. Time Clock MTS has seen it’s usual level of development activity, with more than 30 releases this year. Most of these releases contained new features to make the software easier to use and more flexible to suit varying business requirements. As always I rely heavily on the users of Time Clock MTS to let me know what they do and dont like about the software, and these opinions help shape the development of the software. Version 2 of the software was released in June. This included a complete revamp of the reporting system as well as a slew of usability improvements. One of the more interesting new features added later in the year was the use of a webcam to capture employee images when they clock in or out. The number of new companies using Time Clock MTS in 2008 grew by about 25% compared with 2007. This is despite the world financial crisis which has affected all of us in the last 6 months of this year. In fact, sales of Time Clock MTS in October and November were more than 30% down on the rest of the months of the year. November was in fact the worst sales month for nearly 3 years! I can only think that caution is the catch cry of the moment, with all sensible business owners riding out the storm by managing their expenditure and controlling their expenses. Regarding the future development of the software please watch out for the integration of... read more
by Mark Nemtsas | Nov 27, 2008 | News
We’ve released a new version of Time Clock MTS today. All of the new features are focused on improving the usability of the software. I’ve added two administrator password reminder questions. You can either answer these when you first install the software or on the Tools->Options->System Options screen. An administrator password reset screen has been added on the File->Reset Administrator Password menu. You can use this screen if you’ve answered the password reminder questions mentioned above. Added links to various help topics on the Time Clock MTS website on various screens. For example, added a link to the software registration tutorial on the Help->Registration page. Added a link to the online help on the Help menu. This is a work-around for users who don’t seem to be able to view the integrated help. Expanded the contents of the tips file. There is now a link to the integrated help file installed in the program shortcut menu when you install the software. I’ll be doing a more comprehensive post on the reset password feature later today. Stay... read more
