by Mark Nemtsas | Jul 11, 2008 | How To, New Features, Tips and Tricks
Time Clock MTS Versions 2.0.1 and higher include a new setting to allow you to force a time pair to be paid as overtime. You can do this via the Tools->Edit Times menu. Just select the time pair you want to force as overtime and click the Edit Time button and you’ll be shown the Edit Time screen. To force a time to be paid as overtime all you need to do is select the ‘Force Overtime’ option for the time, and click the Save Time button to save the change. For overtime purposes this time will now be forced to be paid as overtime regardless of other overtime settings. Let’s examine how this would work with some examples. Example 1 No daily overtime, weekly overtime limit set at 40 hours. Employee works a 5 day week of 8 hrs, 8 hrs, 8hrs, 8 hrs, and 6 hrs for a total of 38 hrs. The last day of 6 hours happens to fall on a holiday for which the employee is entitled to overtime rates. The Time Clock MTS Administrator has flagged the time pair as ‘Force Overtime’. Time Clock MTS will report this week as 32 normal hours, and 6 hours of daily over time. Example 2 No daily overtime, weekly overtime limit set at 40 hours. Employee works a 5 day week of 9hrs, 9 hrs, 8hrs, 8 hrs, and 8 hrs for a total of 42 hrs. The employee has agreed to fill in for someone else for 4 hours on the last day and the employer has agreed to pay them overtime rates for doing... read more
by Mark Nemtsas | Jul 9, 2008 | How To, Tips and Tricks, Using the Software
Version 2 of Time Clock MTS included a complete re-work of the way reports functioned, and allowed you do configure the appearance of reports to suit your requirements. In this weblog entry I’ll cover the basic elements of customizing reports, in subsequent entries I’ll take a look in detail each aspect of doing so. Report Structure Each Time Clock MTS report has the same basic structure, this is best illustrated by the following simple diagram. <Report Header> <Company Header> <Employee Header> <Employee Details> <Report Data> <Employee Summary> <Employee Accruals> <Payroll Information> The first 2 report sections are displayed once per report, the last 6 sections are displayed for each employee you choose to run the report on. All of these report sections except the <Report Data> section can be customized to your requirements. The report data section contains the data for the report that you are currently running. How Are Report Sections Customized? Reports are customized by configuring each report section using the Tools->Options->Report Settings page. You can read more about this page in the Report Settings help topic. In basic terms you use this screen to customize report sections by selecting a report section, and configuring the section template using either free text or by inserting data fields using the Add Field button and drop down. What is a Section Template? A section template is simply the text that defines the format of a Report Section. A section template can contain any text you like and can contain Data Fields. Each section template has a number of Data Fields that can be added to it. What is a... read more
by Mark Nemtsas | Jul 2, 2008 | Tips and Tricks, Using the Software
A common question I get is how exactly does payroll time rounding work? So I thought it would be worthwhile to cover it in some more detail to help Time Clock MTS users. How is Report Rounding Turned On? You can turn on report rounding on the Tools->Options->Payroll Settings page. For more information take a look at the Time Clock MTS Payroll Settings help topic. How Does Rounding Work? Rounding is applied to time information at report time only. The rounding used is just normal arithmetic rounding. Here’s an example, let’s say we have the time rounding set to 15 minutes and the normal clock in time for your employees is 7:30 AM. In this example, anything on or before 7:37:29 AM is rounded down to 7:30 AM, and anything on or after 7:37:30 is rounded up to 7:45 AM. What Does the Least Quantity Checkbox Do? Checking this box over-rides the rounding scheme as shown above. The most basic way of explaining it is that all clock ins are ROUNDED UP and all clock outs are ROUNDED DOWN. So, in our example above any employee clocking in after 7:30:00 AM will have their time rounded up to 7:45:00 AM. Let’s say the normal clock out time for the above example is 4:30:00 PM. When the Least Quantity check box is marked, any employee clocking out between 4:30:01 PM and 4:44:59 PM will have their clock out time rounded down to 4:30:00 PM. The practical effect of the Least Quantity check box is that the hours worked are minimized. What Effect Does Rounding Have on Stored Time Information? None,... read more
by kathryn@timeclockmts.com | Jun 26, 2008 | New Releases, News
Just a minor release today. For some reason the default settings for report section templates we not being set. This is now fixed. read more
by Mark Nemtsas | Jun 20, 2008 | New Features, Using the Software
A key problem with any time clock system is that of employees that clock in and out for each other. This is known as ‘buddy punching’ and is the main method by which employees try to manipulate their time card information. The use of magnetic cards, proximity devices, and PINs can help reduce buddy punching, but of course it does not prevent employees sharing their card, prox device, or even their PIN with a co-worker and still providing fraudulent data. There are a couple of ways of eliminating buddy punching, one of these is capturing an employee image at the time of clocking or out. Using a computer along with Time Clock MTS and cheaply available web cameras allows you to have a very secure time and attendance solution that can largely eliminate buddy punching and help reduce your payroll costs accordingly. Camera Hardware Requirements You don’t need anything special to allow Time Clock MTS to capture images when employees clock in and out. Time Clock MTS will work with almost any sort of USB or integrated web camera, if your version of Windows can detect your web camera then Time Clock MTS can probably use it. Software Requirements There are no additional software requirements, if you have Time Clock MTS Version 2.0.2 or newer then you have all the software you require to use a camera with Time Clock MTS. You can always download Time Clock MTS from here. Setting Up Time Clock MTS to Use a Web Camera Just make sure your web camera is plugged into your computer and then run Time Clock MTS and log... read more
by kathryn@timeclockmts.com | Jun 19, 2008 | New Releases, News
I’ve just released Version 2.0.2 which contains a number of fixes to problems introduced by the last release plus adds one major new feature. Changes made include: A new security feature which allows you to use a camera attached to any Time Clock MTS computer to capture an image when users clock in or clock out. Administrators can then view the captured image associated with a clock in or out and verify that the correct person performed the action. This should allow you to stop buddy punching. A fix to the Version 2 database updates for SQL Server and MySQL that didn’t work correctly. Fix to the last action display text to allow non English characters to be displayed. There were a number of other minor fixes, for more information take a look at the Release Notes page. In the next day or two I’ll write a longer post covering the new image capturing feature of Time Clock MTS, what it does, how it works, and how you might use... read more
