Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Lost Your Time Clock Software License?

If your computer time clock crashes or you just need to move your time clock software to a different computer in order to make it more convenient for employees to punch in and out, then you'll need a copy of your most recent software license key. Your software license key is emailed to you shortly after purchasing or renewing your time clock software maintenance and support.

If you've lost, misplaced, or deleted your registration information, don't worry! We keep great records. Contact us with your company name and the software product you need to register, and we'll be happy to provide you with a copy of your software license key. Meanwhile, go ahead and get your time clock software moved to that new computer. Virtual TimeClock will run in evaluation mode until a valid program license key is entered.

Maggie Hofer
Time Clock Software Customer Service

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Finding Employee Time Clock Software Help and Support

It can be a frustrating thing to be using a software program and get stuck. It's even more frustrating when you can't find the help or support you need to keep moving forward. We've spent a lot of time making our Virtual TimeClock software intuitive and easy to use, but sometimes you may need assistance getting up and going again after a computer crash, or maybe you just forgot how to assign worker overtime rules. We have a large number of resources available to help you find the information, support, and help you're looking for.

Time Clock Program Help
Virtual TimeClock comes with a comprehensive built-in help system. From the Help menu, choose Virtual TimeClock Help. You can look through a complete table of contents, search an index of keywords, or perform your own topic search. This same information is also available as a User's Guide in PDF format that you can link to directly from the Help menu.

Redcort Software Web Site Help
You can also access the time clock software support web site directly from the Help menu within Virtual TimeClock. There's a ton of help, support, and information available on the web site, like documentation guides available for installing, getting started, upgrading, and using every edition of Virtual TimeClock. You'll also find a list of frequently asked questions organized by topic, an up-to-date and relevant support blog, an archive of our popular 'Tips & Tricks' newsletter, and how-to articles covering some of our most popular training topics. These are all free, self-service resources that are available 24/7.

Personalized Training and Technical Support
We have technical support and training specialists available free for all customers evaluating Virtual TimeClock and for 30 days following a license purchase. Support and training remain free for customers enrolled in our optional time clock software maintenance and support program. Customers not enrolled can purchase a support incident anytime they need personalized assistance. You can talk to a U.S. based support specialist Monday - Friday from 8AM to 5PM PST via phone or live chat. Or drop us an email and we'll respond back to you promptly the next business day.

With all of these options, you shouldn't have any trouble finding the help you need when you need it.

Jeff Morrow
Help Desk

Friday, June 18, 2010

Registering Your Time Clock Software

It's important to register your new Virtual TimeClock software soon after purchasing so you can continue to use it without interruption. For those of you who've taken advantage of the free time clock software evaluation, entering your license key turns your free time clock software trial into your permanent time and attendance solution. How easy is that?! There's nothing new to download and you don't have to rekey your employee information all over again.

After processing your order, we'll send you a custom software license key via email. Be sure to follow the step-by-step instructions in your license email for entering your new license key, since they may be different depending on which edition of the time clock software you're using. Your company name and address information must be entered into Virtual TimeClock exactly as it appears on your software license email, this includes capitalization and punctuation.

You should receive a confirmation dialog stating that your software has been successfully activated. If your license activation fails, you'll always receive a very specific message telling you the reason why. It's usually because the company name or address doesn't match, or you're trying to register a different edition of the software than what you purchased the license for.

Maggie Hofer
Time Clock Software Customer Service

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Daily and Weekly Overtime Calculations

The automatic calculation of regular, overtime, and paid leave hours is one of the main reasons businesses invest in time and attendance software. So it's important to make sure your employee time clock software configuration matches your business rules. There are some settings in Virtual TimeClock that can affect how daily and weekly overtime is calculated. These settings should rarely change, but it's a good idea to know how they impact your time card software reports if you decide they do need to be adjusted.

The Time Calculations tool window allows you to set what time rounding rules are currently in effect, how worker breaks are calculated, how the time format for certain reports and export files is displayed, how overtime is calculated for multiple daily shifts and paid leave, and how salaried worker hours are computed for job costing. We're going to take a look at the settings that directly affect daily and weekly overtime calculations.

Hours off the clock before restarting daily overtime calculations
This setting controls how daily overtime totals are calculated for multiple daily shifts. Essentially, it determines how much time a worker needs to be off the clock before shift totals are restarted. By default, a new shift will start for workers after 4 hours off the clock. This means as long as an employee clocks out and back in within 4 hours, Virtual TimeClock will still consider that as one shift and apply the daily overtime rule assigned to the employee. However, if the employee clocks out and then punches back in after 4 hours, Virtual TimeClock considers this the start of a new shift and restarts daily overtime calculations.

Include leave in weekly overtime calculations
This setting controls whether paid leave is included as hours worked for the purpose of calculating weekly overtime. This is certainly a non standard practice and will cause all paid leave hours to be treated as both regular and overtime hours. If this setting is enabled, Virtual TimeClock will no longer display leave in a separate column on your printed or exported time card software reports.

Jeff Morrow
Time Clock Software Specialist

Friday, June 11, 2010

Upgrading from a Single Computer to Network Time Clock

Business growth is usually a good thing, and it's nice to have a time and attendance system that can expand with your business. If you're using the Basic or Pro Edition of Virtual TimeClock, then you already know it's designed to provide a great single computer time clock. The Network Edition allows you to deploy network time clock stations at strategic locations within your organization, or even turn the computer of every staff member into a personal time clock. This is especially useful if you want to start job tracking, improve office communication with the built-in messaging module, or replace that old in/out whiteboard with real time tracking of who's in and who's out.

The Pro Edition and Network Edition have the same database structure, so upgrading to the Network Edition is as simple as making a backup of your database, installing the Virtual TimeClock Server software, and restoring your database. If you're upgrading from the Basic Edition, then the Virtual TimeClock Server will automatically convert your database when you restore your Basic Edition backup file. We've made it pretty easy to scale your employee time clock software to the needs of your business.

Maggie Hofer
Time Clock Software Customer Service

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Automatic Time Deductions

Virtual TimeClock employee time clock software has a great feature called Time Deductions that allows you to automatically deduct unpaid lunch or break time without requiring employees to clock out. Even better, a different time deduction rule can be assigned to each individual worker. This makes it easy to apply different time deduction rules to different types of employees. For example, maybe you want to automatically deduct lunch breaks for your warehouse workers, but require your office employees to clock in and out for their lunch breaks. New time deduction rules can be setup at anytime from the Lists menu within your time and attendance software.

Automatic time deductions are included on worker timecards with other time clock entries for the payroll period. The amount of the time deduction will be displayed in the unpaid hours column of the worker timecard.

Since employees aren't punching out for lunches, if they happen to work through their lunch break the automatic time deduction will still occur. Here's an easy way to make sure employees still get paid for working during their scheduled lunch break. First, create a new activity called something like 'Working Lunch' and set the type to manual entries only. Now, whenever an employee works through lunch you can add a manual entry for 'Working Lunch' for the time they remained at the office. This will offset the automatic lunch deduction so employee timecards reflect correct daily and weekly overtime totals.

Jeff Morrow
Time Clock Software Specialist

Thursday, June 3, 2010

Job Tracking with Virtual TimeClock

Many business owners think of employee time clock software as a secure and impartial means of keeping employees accountable for their hours worked. They just want to make sure they're not underpaying or overpaying employees. Since you're already keeping track of employee hours for payroll purposes, why not use those same hours to perform labor cost analysis or help accurately bill your clients.

The key to job or project tracking is setting up different activities within your time clock program. Activities are used to track the current status of your employees, what they're currently working on, or where they might be working. For example, you may want to use activities to track tasks, jobs, clients, or employee location. Employees may work on several jobs or projects throughout their workday and can quickly switch from one activity to another. Activities can be paid, only paid until a maximum time threshold is reached, or unpaid depending on your business workflow needs.

Here's a brief description of the activity setup window available from the Lists menu. The activity type determines when the activity is available for use. Activities that are available for both time clock and manual entries can be selected when starting a new shift or switching to a new activity from the main window of your time clock program. They can also be used for manual timecard entries. For example, when a worker misses a normal punch time, or to give a worker credit for time worked off-site or away from regular punch clock access.

Activities that are available only for manual entries are used to record timecard entries for activities like jury duty, travel time, and off-site training. These activities aren't available from the drop-down lists in the main time clock software window since they're typically only used in special situations.

The activity calculation determines whether this is a paid activity, or an unpaid activity used for tracking purposes only. Time spent on unpaid activities will display in a separate column on your timecard reports.

Combining job tracking with the timecard notes feature built right into your employee time clock creates a great way for recording and tracking information related to jobs and projects. We've got an article about managing labor costs that you may find helpful as you start tracking jobs with your time and attendance software.

Jeff Morrow
Time Clock Software Specialist