Thursday, March 18, 2010

Customizing Your Time Clock Software

You've probably noticed that the main window of your Virtual TimeClock software is quite a bit different from a traditional punch clock. Not only does the time clock main window become the dashboard from which all time clock actions occur, it functions as a virtual In/Out board that provides an immediate at-a-glance status of every worker.

What you may not know is that the main time clock window display settings can be adjusted to get just the look and functionality you want. The program preferences control the display of your time clock, the ability of users to see certain menus and toolbars, and the sounds emitted by your time clock program. Let's take a look at some of the cool things you can do.

Change the Worker List Display
It's easy to change the way your workers are displayed. Choose between sorting names as First & Last Name or Last, First Name. Workers can also be shown in a single list or separate lists indicating those working and not working. When displayed in a single list, employees will have a visual indicator icon next to their name showing whether they're currently working on a paid activity, an unpaid activity, on a worker break, at lunch, or have completely stopped working.

Add and Remove Display Columns
You can also choose which columns you want to display on your time clock. For example, you may not want your workers to see what time other employees are clocking in and out so you can remove the Time column. Or maybe you're not using the built-in messaging module so you can remove the Msgs column. Likewise, the worker display list can be sorted by each of the displayed columns by clicking on the title of each column to sort in either ascending or descending order.

Add and Remove Menu Items and Toolbar Icons
Certain menu items and toolbar icons can be added or removed from your time clock to allow or limit user access to certain features of your time clock software. If you just want to provide an easy way for workers to start work, stop work, or print their timecards, then it's easy to remove the unused toolbar icons.

Customize Your Toolbar Icons
If you're using the built-in worker break and lunch functionality of Virtual TimeClock, then you can customize the icon label to fit the needs of your business. For example, you may want to change the label of the worker break icon to '10 Minute Break' to make it clear that only the first 10 minutes of the break are paid. Choose Time Calculations from the Tools menu to customize your worker break labels.

Mac OS X time clock software users can access their time clock preferences from the Virtual TimeClock menu. Windows PC time clock software users can access their time clock preferences from the Edit menu. If you're running the Network Edition of our time and attendance software, your time clock display settings are local to each computer. This makes it easy to setup a time clock with limited display in the shop, but retain a full administrative display for the manager or business owner. If you want to setup a different worker list on each time clock, then you'll want to start using display groups.

Jeff Morrow

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