Is Your Mac Getting Sleepy?

If you're running networked time clocks and clients are unable to connect to the time clock server at random times, or clients are being mysteriously disconnected, then you'll want to check the energy saver settings on the time clock server computer.

Go to the Apple menu and choose System Preferences. Select Energy Saver from the Hardware row. The first setting you'll see is a slide bar to control when the computer goes to sleep. Make sure this is set to Never. The second slide bar is for putting the display to sleep. This can be set to whatever you want because it doesn't have any affect on your time clock software. Next, you'll see a series of checkboxes. Make sure the one that says Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible is not checked.

Your energy saver settings should look something like this when you're all done:

If there's a delay when you go to clock in or out, chances are your time clock client computer is going to sleep as well. Keep it awake the same way.

Jeff
Technical Support Team
Redcort Software, Inc.

Customizing Time Clock Report Dates

The Report Writer is a great tool for customizing the different timecard reports that are built into your time clock software, or for creating new ones. You can change report options, formatting, and even what data to include. If there's a particular report you run often, you may want to set the default date range so you're not always having to change it at run time.

For example, let's say you've created a custom report called 'Last Week's Labor Hours' but every time you run the report you have to change the date range from Current Period to Last Week. Here's an easy solution. Go to the Reports menu and choose Report Writer. Choose the report you want to customize from the list of reports on the left. You'll see a Default Date popup menu at the top, right below Report Name and Report Type. It probably says Current period. Click on it and pick Last Week from the selection list.

Save the changes and now whenever you run the report the date range will automatically default to the previous week. This is just a small example of what can be done with the Report Writer, so don't be shy about exploring some of the other options.

Jeff
Technical Support Team
Redcort Software, Inc.

Setting a Static IP Address in Windows

One of the reasons time clock clients fail to connect to the time clock server is because the IP address of the time clock server computer changes. The reason this happens is because the computer running the time clock server is receiving a dynamic IP address from the router. This makes it easy on the end user since no configuration is required to set up your computer and use the Internet, but your computer may get a different address the next time the computer is turned on. That's why your time clock software works perfectly for months until you get hit with a power outage, or someone turns off the computer. When the computer is started again, clients can't connect and you get a message like the following when you launch the Server Manager.

You'll also need to set a static IP address on the time clock server computer if you plan on using Virtual TimeClock over the Internet. Here are some easy instructions for assigning a static IP address on Windows computers.

Setting a Static IP Address on Windows XP

Setting a Static IP Address on Windows Vista

Setting a Static IP Address on Windows 7

When you give a static IP address to a computer, the router may not know that address is being used so it may try to give it to another computer later. So you'll want to give your computer an IP address that's not likely to be given out to others.

Jeff
Technical Support Team
Redcort Software, Inc.

Troubleshooting Overtime

We've talked recently about how to track down missing overtime on your employee time cards. The steps went something like this:

• Check employee overtime assignments
• Check overtime rule configuration
• Check employee salary type
• Check the shift restart setting

It's the last step I want to discuss because this setting's impact on your employee time cards can be tricky. Go to the Tools menu and choose Time Calculations. In the Daily & Weekly Overtime section, you'll see a setting that says "Hours off the clock before restarting daily overtime calculations". Basically, this setting controls how much time a worker has to be clocked out before a new shift is started. A new shift resets hours worked back to zero for calculating daily overtime. The default setting is 4 hours. If this is set too low, then daily overtime won't calculate because Virtual TimeClock thinks you want to start a new shift. Your time card would look something like this:

See, no daily overtime was calculated. If it's set too high, the next shift may be included with the first one. Your time card would look something like this:

See how the entire next day is combined with the previous day's hours as overtime? It's best to leave this setting at 4 hours unless you have a compelling reason to change it.

Jeff
Technical Support Team
Redcort Software, Inc

Tracking Approved Overtime

We talk to a lot of business owners trying to solve a variety of time and attendance problems. Two of the most common we hear about are how to prevent buddy punching and how to prevent unauthorized overtime. We have some new security features coming next year that will help with buddy punching, and you can use the current shifts feature to help prevent unnecessary overtime.

You can keep track of approved overtime by using courtesy clock in and out restrictions. Remember, courtesy clock ins record the shift start time no matter how early the employee punches in. So what do you do if you have employees that need to work approved overtime either before or after their shift ends?

One method would be to create an activity called something like 'Approved Overtime' that's good for manual entries only. Since a courtesy clock in and out will automatically record the shift times as the recorded time, you'll need to add a manual entry for the approved overtime. This also makes the approved overtime hours clearly distinguishable on employee time cards.

Another method would be to prevent clocking in early or late without manager approval. However, this method only works when using clock in and out restrictions that prevent early and late punches.

Jeff
Technical Support Team
Redcort Software, Inc

Remote Connectivity Made Easy

Connecting time clocks at different locations can be intimidating for many people. Especially when you start talking about static IPs, router config, and WAN addresses. Here's a little two-step process you can use to start using your time clock software from home or another office location.

Call your ISP (Internet Service Provider) and have them do 2 things for you:

1. Have them assign the router at the location that is running the time clock server a static IP address. Make sure they tell you what it is and write it down. It may take a couple of days for them to get the static IP address for you and it may cost a couple of extra bucks a month. They can program your router to use the new address remotely, or walk you through how to do it over the phone.
2. Have them set up a port forward on the router at the location that is running the time clock server (the same router that gets the static IP address) for TCP port 56777. It will need to be forwarded to the IP address of the computer running the time clock server. Don't know what IP address the time clock server computer is using? Launch the Server Manager and you'll see the address under the TCP function. Again, they can do this remotely or walk you through it over the phone.

Once these 2 items are in place, give us a call and we can test the connectivity to make sure you'll be able to connect from home or another location. For those of you who like to read the fine print, we've got complete instructions for setting up web time clocks on the support page of our web site.

See, it's not so hard!

Jeff
Technical Support Team
Redcort Software, Inc.

Windows Backup Failing?

Virtual TimeClock has an easy-to-use backup utility that allows you to schedule automatic backups that will ensure you've got a current copy of your time clock data should disaster strike. However, your backup may fail if you're attempting to back up to a shared folder. That's because the time clock server background service doesn't have default access to the shared folder.

We've got instructions for setting up a backup to a shared folder in an earlier support blog. However, there's one thing I'd like to add. Make sure the full path of the shared folder is visible in the Backup Folder section of the Backup panel, not just the mapped drive letter. You can usually get to the full path through My Network Places.

Jeff
Technical Support Team
Redcort Software, Inc.

Seasonal Time Changes

Don't forget that Daylight Saving Time (DST) ends this Sunday, November 6. New Virtual TimeClock software users are often a little anxious when the first seasonal time change occurs after they've begun using their new time clock software. Don't worry, there's really nothing you need to do since most newer computers handle the time change for you automatically. The Basic and Pro Editions record employee punch times based on the computer's built-in clock. The Network Edition records punch times based on the  built-in clock of the computer running the time clock server. In fact, it's been several years since I talked with a customer whose computer didn't handle the seasonal time change automatically.

The only time you'll need to get involved is when you have worker shifts that cross the time threshold (DST officially ends at 2:00 AM). You may need to manually adjust their end time to account for the extra hour gained as we "fall back" at the end of DST.

Jeff
Technical Support Team
Redcort Software

Are You Still Evaluating?

Did your free time clock software trial expire even though you purchased a license? Chances are, you never entered your key codes. The Virtual TimeClock evaluation is a great testing tool because:

• It's fully functional, which means you can test every feature.
• There's nothing new to download or install after purchasing a license.
• You don't lose any of the employee data you collected during the trial period.

So if you purchased a Virtual TimeClock license and you're getting a message stating that your free evaluation has ended, grab the license email we sent you when you ordered and get those keys entered.

Registering Basic/Pro Edition
Go to the Tools menu and choose Enter License Key.

Registering Network Edition
Launch Server Manager, click on the Licenses toolbar button, and click the Enter Keys button.

Need another copy of your license? Contact us, we keep great records!

Jeff
Technical Support Team
Redcort Software

Missing Overtime?

Many new users contact us right after running their first payroll because no overtime has been calculated on their employee time cards. If that's happened to you, here are the time clock software settings you need to check, starting with the most common and ending with the least used.

1. Has an overtime rule been assigned to each employee? Go to the Lists menu, choose Users, and select an employee name from the list. Click the Wages tab and pick an overtime rule from the Overtime drop-down list.
2. Have your overtime rules been configured properly? Go to the Lists menu and choose Overtime. Select the rule that's been assigned and make sure it's configured the way you want. For example, is the weekly threshold set at 40 hours?
3. Do you have salaried workers? Salaried workers are exempt from overtime calculations. Go to the Lists menu, choose Users, and select an employee name from the list. Click the Wages tab and check if the Type drop-down list is set to Salary or Hourly. Change to Hourly of you want overtime calculations to occur.
4. Did you change how many hours an employee has to be off the clock before starting a new shift? Go to the Tools menu and choose Time Calculations. How long do you have to stay clocked out before restarting daily overtime calculations? The default setting is 4 hours. If this is set too low, daily overtime won't calculate because Virtual TimeClock thinks you want to start a new shift.

If none of these seem to solve your issue, contact us. We'd love to help get your employee time cards printing just the way you want.

Jeff
Technical Support Team
Redcort Software

Need a Static IP Address?

We occasionally chat with customers who can't get a static IP address from their Internet service provider (ISP). Usually, it's because they're in a remote area where static IP service isn't offered. Without getting too technical, a static IP address is needed if you're planning on using Virtual TimeClock over the Internet because a static IP address doesn't change. If the IP address assigned to your router changes, then your remote time clocks will no longer know where to connect to your time clock server.

Some customers that find themselves in this situation have had success with a service called DynDNS. Their service works by having you create a hostname, and then making that hostname work with your dynamic IP addresses. I won't pretend to understand how it works (I'll stick to time clock software). Let's just say that even when your ISP changes the public IP address of your router, DynDNS keeps things in sync by pointing the new IP address to a hostname that never changes.

Jeff
Technical Support Team
Redcort Software

How To Track Late Employees

Employee tardiness can be a real source of frustration for business owners and managers. Very few employees are likely to mark themselves as late when filling out paper time sheets. That's why time clock software is such a great tool for tracking the real time arrival and departure of your employees. It holds employees accountable and gives business owners several ways to monitor late employees.

Real-Time Monitoring
With Virtual TimeClock Network Edition, it's easy to see when employees are showing up and leaving in real time. Anytime an employee clocks in, goes on break, heads out for lunch, changes activities, or clocks out at the end of the day, their status is instantly updated on every time clock on the network. This makes it convenient for managers to monitor when employees are coming and going.

Late Arrival Report
Using the new shifts feature in Virtual TimeClock '11 is a great way to track late employees. Once you've configured and assigned your shift rules, the time clock will be able to compare when employees are scheduled to start work to when they actually start work. Run the Late Arrival Report from the Reports menu to get a list of who's been late, when they actually arrived, and how many minutes they were late. You can quickly run the report daily, weekly, monthly, or even for an entire year. This is a great report to have handy when conducting employee performance evaluations.

Jeff
Technical Support Team
Redcort Software

Tracking On Call Hours

We often get asked how to force certain hours to be overtime. In many companies, employees get paid a premium when performing duties after hours or when they're on call. That's easy to do when using activities, but first I want to discuss the difference between time clock software and payroll software.

The purpose of time clock software is to keep track of how many hours an employee has worked and then total those hours in an accurate and easy way for payroll processing. The purpose of payroll software is to assign rates to various types of hours to meet state and federal labor requirements, and employee contracts. For example, Virtual TimeClock allows you to assign overtime rules to employees, and those rules define when the time thresholds are met for premium pay. Because overtime calculations are based on minimum thresholds of hours worked, there's not a way to force hours under the threshold to calculate as overtime. That's where activities come in.

Since every punch time in Virtual TimeClock gets assigned to an activity (even if it's just the default activity of 'In'), it's easy to separate the number of hours that need to get paid at the premium rate, which is the job of your payroll software. Go to the Lists menu and choose Activities. Add a new activity called something like 'On Call' and make it available only when adding manual entries. Now when employee time cards are generated you'll know how much time to pay employees for on call duties at their premium rate.

Jeff
Technical Support Team
Redcort Software

Network Time Clock Trouble?

Does the Virtual TimeClock Server got you down? Virtual TimeClock is a very stable network time clock program, but changes in the networking environment where it resides can be unpredictable. Here's a common issue we see.

The TimeClock Server computer IP address has changed
This often happens after a computer restart and your computer is configured to receive IP addresses dynamically (this is commonly referred to as using DHCP). Time clock clients will no longer be able to connect and you'll receive a message like the following when launching the Server Manager.

Don't worry, it's easy to fix. Click the Configure toolbar button in the Server Manager and select your current IP address from the Network Interface drop-down menu. Save the changes and check the Status panel. You should be seeing green checkmarks, and time clock clients should be able to connect to your time clock server once again.

Blair Crump
Technical Support Team
Redcort Software

Out of Time Clock Client Licenses?

When you first connect a Virtual TimeClock Pro Client to a Virtual TimeClock Server, the time clock client computer registers it's computer name and uses one of your available licenses. If you get a new computer or need to move your time clock client to a different computer, you'll need to remove the registration of the old computer time clock. Otherwise, you'll likely receive the following message.

To remove the old computer registration, launch the Virtual TimeClock Server Manager and click the Licenses toolbar button. On the right hand side you'll see a list of registered computers. Select the name of the old computer and click Remove Client.

Blair Crump
Technical Support Team
Redcort Software

Creating Individual Time Clocks

Virtual TimeClock Network Edition offers tremendous flexibility for deploying your time clock software. Businesses typically set up their time clocks as either group time clock stations or individual time clocks. A group time clock is used by any number of employees through out the work day, like a mechanical time clock replacement that's available to employees on a conveniently located computer. In contrast, individual time clocks are set up on each employee computer work station in one of three ways.

Full In/Out Board
This is the default installation setting. Each worker name is listed in the main time clock window, along with details from the latest punch activity. Security prevents employees from clocking each other in and out, or viewing the hours of other employees. This allows you to take advantage of the the in/out board for monitoring employees in real-time and helping to facilitate office workflow and communication.

Limited In/Out Board
Each time clock has a unique set of preferences that allows you to change your time clock display, like how names are sorted and what columns get displayed. This is a great setup option because you can remove the details from the latest punch activity but still retain the value of the in/out board because the visual status indicators let you know who's in, out, on break, or out to lunch. Security still prevents employees from clocking each other in and out, or viewing the hours of other employees.

Personal Time Clock
Personal time clocks allow you to list a single employee name on each individual time clock. You lose the in/out board, but you eliminate the risk of shared passwords and buddy punching.

Jeff
Technical Support Team
Redcort Software

Including Wages On Employee Timecards

It's no secret that Virtual TimeClock is a great tool for tracking employee time and attendance. But did you know that you can view worker wages on employee timecards? You might want wage information on employee timecards for a variety of reasons like performing payroll projections, budget analysis, and even to track labor costs and trends. You can include wages on employee timecards in two easy steps.

Enter Employee Wage Information
Choose Users from the Lists menu and click the Wages tab. This is where you can enter the hourly rate of pay or salary for each employee.

Set the Wages Option in Report Writer
Choose Report Writer from the Reports menu. Select the report you'd like to include employee wage information on (Timecard Detail is usually set as the default timecard) and click the Options tab. Check the Total Gross Wages and Show Hourly Wage options.

Now when you run worker timecards they'll look something like this:

Remember, time clock software is not a substitute for payroll software. Time clock software gathers and breaks down all your worker hours into regular and overtime so they can be quickly sent to your payroll processor who will perform all the necessary tax calculations.

Blair Crump
Technical Support Team Member
Redcort Software

Managing Employee Vacation Requests

Virtual TimeClock has a pretty robust leave module that allows you to keep track of how much vacation time employees have earned and used. We hope to build upon this in a future version of Virtual TimeClock to include a full vacation request and approval system, but in the meantime you have a couple of options when it comes to managing employee vacation requests.

Send a vacation request message
The first option is to use the built-in messaging system to send a vacation request to your manager. You could use a subject like 'Vacation Leave Request' and include the dates in the body of the message. Your manager can then reply and add 'Approved' or 'Rejected' to the subject. Based on your office workflow, your manager can either add the vacation time themselves or they can copy your HR person on their reply and that person can add the leave entry when processing payroll.

Add a manual leave entry
The second option is to give employees the ability to add their own days off. This may be more security access than you want to give certain employees, but it allows them to enter their own vacation requests as actual leave entries. Managers can then review the leave requests on the employee timecards or worker leave reports and either allow them to remain, change them to unpaid time-off, or delete them. There is a risk with this option. If the vacation time isn't actually taken, then it must be deleted or else employees will get paid for the time off.

Jeff
Technical Support Team
Redcort Software

Leave Award Anniversaries

When talking about leave benefits, it's important to define the different terms and phrases involved. For example, a 'benefit year' could be based on the calendar year, a year from an employee's hire date, or even not start until 3 months after the employee's hire date. It's also important to differentiate between hire dates and award anniversary dates. They mean 2 different things in your Virtual TimeClock software. The hire date gets stored in each user record for reference, but is pretty much used for informational purposes only. It's an exact date. The award anniversary date, on the other hand, is used by Virtual TimeClock for tracking leave accrual and benefits. It's the month and day that defines the start of the benefit year for the employee.

Be careful when running worker leave reports for date ranges of 'This Year' or 'Last Year' because timecard reports always calculate time based on a calendar year. The Accrued and Used Leave report, however, is based on the benefit year for each employee. Here's how it works. The date range listed below each user name on the Accrued and Used Leave report uses the employee's leave award anniversary date for the start date and the report run through date as the end date. So it doesn't do any good to compare the amount of leave taken between the reports unless all your employees use a calendar benefit year beginning January 1.

If you need help setting up your employee leave benefits, then check out How To Track Employee Leave With Virtual TimeClock.

Jeff
Technical Support Team
Redcort Software

Time Clocks At Multiple Locations

There are a couple of options when deciding how to deploy time clock software at multiple business locations. There's really no right or wrong answer, it just depends on your business needs and how you plan on utilizing the time clock.

Networked Time Clocks
The first deployment option is to network time clocks at the two locations together. This option is best if:

• You need to monitor when employees come and go from either location.
• You want 1 time card per employee, even if they work at both locations.
• You need weekly overtime totals to be calculated on the total time worked at both locations.

Stand Alone Time Clocks
The second deployment option is to put two separate time clocks at the two locations. This option is best if:

• You have unreliable Internet service at either location.
• You pay employees from different cost centers so you need 2 separate time cards per employee, even if they work at both locations.

Contact us if you'd like to discuss time clock deployment and licensing options in more detail.

Jeff Morrow
Virtual TimeClock Product Specialist
Redcort Software

Different Pay Rates for Different Jobs

It's not unusual for employers to pay workers a different wage based on the job they're performing. A common example occurs in the restaurant business. An employee may get paid a different wage depending on whether they're waiting on tables, hosting, or part of the catering crew. We see the same thing with some of our dental time clock users. An employee may earn one rate when acting as a dental assistant and a different rate when working as a dental hygienist. What you need to know from your time clock software is how many hours were spent performing each role. It's up to your payroll software to handle the rest.

The first thing you'll want to do is set up a different activity for each of the roles you need to pay at a different wage. In Virtual TimeClock, go to the Lists menu and choose Activities. Give each new activity a name that will be easy to recognize for workers when clocking in. The second thing you'll want to do is set up the pay rates for those same activities in your payroll software for each employee.

That's all it takes. Now your time clock software reports will have a breakdown of hours for each activity that can be quickly entered into your payroll system.

Jeff
Technical Support Team
Redcort Software

Changing Time and Date Formats in Windows

No matter where you're at in the world, it's almost guaranteed you see things in a slightly different way than everybody else. There are regional variations for how we view time, dates, and even currency. Virtual TimeClock has the flexibility to display all of these elements exactly the way you want to see them. No wonder we have time clock software users in over 50 countries!

Virtual TimeClock relies on your computer's settings to know how to display dates and time in the main time clock window and timecard reports. Here's how to make changes to your date and time formats on Windows 7.

1. Choose Control Panel from the Start menu.
2. Click Clock, Language, and Region.
3. In the Region and Language section, click Change the date, time, or number format and make the desired changes.
4. Now just quit and restart your time clock to see the new format changes.

Blair Crump
Technical Support Team
Redcort Software

Setting a 24 Hour Clock on Mac

We often get asked how to change Virtual TimeClock to display in military time, or a 24 hour clock. It's easy to to do once you know how your time clock software renders time. Virtual TimeClock uses the same date and time format settings that your computer does. This means that in order to display a 24 hour clock, you'll need to set your computer to do the same. Here's how to change your time format on Mac OS X.

1. Open System Preferences from the Apple menu.
2. In the Personal section, click Language & Text.
3. Click the Formats tab.
4. Click the Customize button in the Times section.
5. Click on the hour button and choose the time format you want.
6. Now just quit and restart your time clock to see the new format changes.

Blair Crump
Technical Support Team
Redcort Software

Reporting Salaried Workers to Payroll

The purpose of employee timecards is to keep track of total hours worked. Time clock software does this very well for hourly employees. But what about salaried workers? Technically, salaried workers shouldn't have any hours to report because they're not punching the clock. But there may still be reasons to have your salaried employees use the time clock, like: allows you to replace your manual in/out board, improve office communication, track available and remaining vacation hours, accurately bill clients for labor hours, and make it easier to manage labor costs.

Timecard summary reports are often used for payroll processing because they contain one-line totals for each employee, but they typically exclude salaried workers. If you need salaried worker names to appear on time card summary reports so your payroll processor knows to give them a paycheck, then just create one manual entry each payroll period for zero hours (use the same start and stop time). This will cause the salaried worker's name to appear on timecard summary reports.

Jeff
Technical Support Team
Redcort Software

Employees Come and Go

Employees come and employees go, that's just the nature of business. Virtual TimeClock has an elegant solution for staying on top of old employee records. Changing a user's employment status is sometimes overlooked as an alternative to deleting a user that's no longer employed. Instead of deleting a user, you can change their status to 'Inactive' or 'Terminated'. They both accomplish the same thing, the only difference is that one allows you to enter a termination date.

This allows you to keep all the previous timecard records for the employee while at the same time removing their name from the main time clock software window and other worker selection lists. You can change an employee's status by going to the Lists menu, choosing Users, selecting the employee, and clicking the Employment tab.

Blair Crump
Technical Support Team
Redcort Software

New Leave Categories and Worker Leave Reports

Virtual TimeClock allows you to set up as many different leave categories as you want, both paid and unpaid. This allows you to customize your time clock software to meet the attendance tracking needs of your business. Although Virtual TimeClock already comes with some common leave categories like holiday, personal, sick leave, and vacation, you can rename them or add as many others as you want.

However, new leave categories will not show on the Worker Leave report until you add them. Go to the Reports menu, choose Report Writer, and select the Worker Leave report. On the right hand side, you'll see a list of all your leave categories. Select the checkbox next to any new leave categories you've added and save.

New leave categories aren't automatically added to the Worker Leave report because the Entries drop-down menu is already set to include only selected leave categories. The new leave categories should automatically be added to other default leave reports.

Jeff

Technical Support Team

Redcort Software

Disabling and Setting Default Activities

Since all time clock entries are recorded with an activity, employees can assign time to specific tasks, jobs, projects, functions, or locations. This makes it easy to track the status of your employees with the in/out board, or print time cards and reports sorted by different activities.

If you're using activities for job or project tracking, then you may want to disable the activity once the job or project has been completed. This helps keep your current activity list manageable while still allowing you to report on old activities. To maintain the integrity of your time clock system, activities that have been recorded against punch times cannot be deleted.

To disable activities
Go to the Lists menu and choose Activities. Select the activity you want to disable from the list of activities on the left. Now click the None button at the bottom of the Display Groups section, or selectively remove the activity from only certain display groups. Click Save when you're all done.

If you're using networked time clocks with different display groups, then you may want to set a different default activity for each time clock. This is especially helpful when tracking time spent at different office locations. You may even want to remove the default activity and force employees to pick their activity when punching in.

To set default activities
Go to the Lists menu and choose Display Groups. Select the display group you want to set the default activity for from the list of display groups on the left and click the Activities tab. Select the activity you want to set as the default when users clock in from the Default Selection drop-down list. Leave the default selection blank if you want to force users to pick an activity when clocking in, like when tracking different projects or jobs. Click Save when you're all done.

Jeff
Technical Support Team
Redcort Software

SurePayroll Time Clock Software

Virtual TimeClock has an easy-to-use interface that allows you to export your employee payroll hours for uploading into several popular payroll systems. To ensure your payroll processing is efficient and hassle-free, we work with each payroll provider to develop export formats that meet their specific requirements. Payroll integration accomplishes two things: it saves time and eliminates data entry errors because you're not having to manually key in employee hours that have already been totaled in your employee time clock software.

One of our payroll partners is SurePayroll. Payroll integration with SurePayroll means you can easily import your time clock labor hours into your online SurePayroll account. All of the set up details, including discount payroll services, can be found on our web site.

Jeff

Technical Support Team

Redcort Software

Clock Out Memos

We've talked a lot lately about using your employee time clock software as an in/out board replacement, especially getting your salaried employees involved so you know where all your employees are at and what they're working on at any given time. It's a great way to improve interoffice communication and efficiency.

When clocking out for the day, Virtual TimeClock allows you to select a memo from a list that updates the in/out board. For example, you may want to use 'Out' or 'Out for the day'. Or when I leave on Friday and I'm going to be out next week, I may want to to pick 'On Vacation' when I punch out for the final time on Friday. It's easy to add more choices if you need to. Go to the Lists menu and choose Out Memos to add or edit the names.

Another option is to use a custom memo. This doesn't become part of the master memo list, but does allow you to update your in/out board status with something a little more specific, like 'Personal Errand - Back by 3PM'. You can create a one-time custom memo from the Memo drop-down list when clocking out. Out memos update the in/out board when clocking out, but aren't permanently tied to a time clock entry like an activity is.

Jeff

Technical Support Team

Redcort Software

Personal Time Clocks

Virtual TimeClock has a number of flexible deployment options depending on your office workflow. You may want to deploy as a stand alone time clock kiosk, or network multiple time clocks together to take advantage of the real-time in/out board. I get asked a lot how to set up a personal time clock for each employee. In other words, management only wants the individual worker name to display on each employee's computer time clock. That's easy to do with display groups.

Setting up display groups for a personal time clock is a two-step process. First, create the new display group. Go to the Lists menu and choose Display Groups. Click the + button in the lower left corner of the window to create the new group. It's probably easiest to name the new group after the employee so it's easy to recognize later, like "Jeff's Time Clock". Make sure that same employee is the only one you have selected in the user list and save. Second, assign the display group to the individual employee's computer time clock. On Mac, go to the Virtual TimeClock Pro Client menu and choose Preferences. On Windows, go to the Edit menu and choose Preferences. Select the personal display group you created for the employee from the Display Group drop-down list. Now just repeat the process for your other employees.

Jeff

Technical Support Team

Redcort Software

Keeping Your In/Out Board Current

The advantage of using your employee time clock system as your office in/out board is that the status of each employee is already being recorded as they clock in and out or change activities throughout the work day. Of course, this means no more wallboards or magnets to update to see who's in and who's out. You can also cut down 'on hold' time because phone calls are routed faster when you know where people are at. Best of all, there's no need to purchase or maintain separate in/out board software. The in/out board window of Virtual TimeClock makes a great tool for receptionists and call centers to know when and where to route incoming calls or visitors.

Your employee time clock software will already be keeping track of when people are in, on break, out to lunch, or gone for the day. If you're using activities to keep track of tasks, jobs, or locations, then you'll also know what people are working on or where they're at. And this is all happening as a byproduct of your regular employee time tracking. Here's a quick way to change an employee's out status. Let's say when they left on Friday, they just clocked out but didn't mention they'd be out on vacation Monday and Tuesday. Just select the employee's name in the main time clock window, and from the Actions menu choose Change Out Status. You can pick a standard memo from the list like 'On Vacation' or create a new custom memo that says something like 'On Vacation - Back on Wed'. Now your in/out board is an even more informative and powerful tool.

Jeff

Technical Support Team

Redcort Software

Upgrading Pro to Network Edition

I hope your business is thriving despite these tough economic times. If you do need to hire more employees, your Virtual TimeClock software will scale right alongside the growth of your business. If you're running the Pro Edition, employee time clock software for a single computer, then you can add additional time clock users at no additional cost. If it's time to start running time clocks on multiple computers, then you'll want to upgrade to the Network Edition. This gives employees the convenience of clocking in and out from multiple locations, and managers the benefit of being able to monitor employees from home or process payroll while on the road.

At some point, there becomes a practical limit to how many employees can clock in and out from the same computer time clock so we've made it easy to go from Pro to Network Edition. The Network Edition will even open a Pro database, so you won't lose any of your old time clock data. You just need to decide which computer will run the time clock server software. This can be your business server computer, or just another workstation. The time clock client software gets installed on all the other computers that need a time clock. If the new time clock server will be installed on the same workstation you were running Pro on, then it will automatically find your Pro database. If it's going to be installed on a different computer, then you'll need to make a backup of your Pro database and restore it on the new server computer using the built-in Virtual TimeClock utilities. The instructions for moving your time clock will help you with this quick and easy process.

Jeff

Technical Support Team

Redcort Software

Military vs. Decimal Time Display

I often talk with customers who use the phrase 'military time' to describe how they want total hours to be displayed on their timecard reports. After a little more discussion, I realize they are using military time to describe something other than a 24-hour clock. Technically, military time refers to the 24-hour clock that keeps time from midnight to midnight. This time keeping convention is typically used in the military or in medicine so there's no ambiguity as to when events occur.

What time clock software users are usually asking for when they want hours to display in military time is to show the hours worked in decimal format. If the symbol separating the hours and minutes is a colon (:) on your employee timecards, then the total hours worked are displaying as hours and minutes. If the symbol separating the hours and minutes is a dot (.), then the total hours worked are displaying in decimal format, which is the most common format for entering employee hours into your payroll software, or reporting the hours to your payroll processor.

Virtual TimeClock uses the same 12-hour or 24-hour clock notation that your computer is set to. However, if you want to change your employee timecards to display totals in decimal format, you can make that change directly in the time clock software. All you need to do is go to the Reports menu and choose Report Writer. Select the employee timecard and click the Format tab. You'll be able to toggle the time display between hours & minutes and decimal hours.

Jeff Morrow

Technical Support Team

Redcort Software

Clearing Employee Schedules

Using shifts and employee schedules is a great way to control employee overtime by setting clock in and clock out restrictions. Shifts can be assigned to each employee for each day of the week. This is great if your employees have fixed schedules. In other words, every Monday Jeff works 8:00 Am to 5:00 PM, every Tuesday Jeff works 10:00 AM to 7:00 PM, and so on. If you have rotating employee schedules, meaning Jeff works 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM this Monday, 10:00 AM to 7:00 PM next Monday, and a different set of hours the Monday after that, then you'll want to wait for a true employee scheduling program that integrates with your time clock system.

I had a customer last week who wanted to do some testing with shift restrictions to see if they would work in his business environment. He had one employee whose schedule wouldn't work well with the restrictions so he wanted to disable shifts on her schedule. He thought he'd just change each daily schedule to 'Unscheduled' but that means she's restricted from working altogether. Here's how to handle this scenario.

Create a new shift in your Virtual TimeClock software called something like 'No Restrictions'. It really doesn't matter what the name of the shift is, just use something to differentiate it from the other shifts. Make sure no restrictions are set. Now just assign the 'No Restrictions' shift to the user schedule for each day of the week. We'll be adding a way to clear employee schedules in the next release of the software.

Jeff Morrow

Technical Support Team

Redcort Software

Changing Your Time Clock Software Admin Password

The employee time clock software administrator has unlimited access to all time clock program functions. This means a time clock administrator can edit and view hours for any employee, can open any user mailbox, and can view all user wage and employment information. We recommend not sharing the administrative password with anyone because it makes it difficult to use the built-in audit logging features of Virtual TimeClock. The nice thing is that you can have more than one time clock administrator, each with his or her own unique password.

Since all passwords are tied to a particular user account, you'll need to open the Users list window to update the administrator password. An optional way to update your admin password is to go to the Tools menu and choose Change Password. Select your name and enter your existing password, then enter your new password and confirm it.

If you've forgotten your admin password, then contact time clock software support and we'll help you gain administrative access to your employee time clock software once again.

Jeff Morrow

Technical Support Team

Redcort Software

Including Wages On Employee Timecards

It's easy to include employee wage information on worker timecards. This is helpful for reporting hourly rates to your payroll processor, or to get an idea of your labor costs for the payroll period. It's also a great way to track labor costs across different projects or jobs with your employee time clock software. There are a couple of options for how the wage information will appear on your timecard reports, so we'll take a look at how gross wages work with both hourly and salaried workers.

Hourly Workers

Hourly workers are assigned an hourly rate in the Wages panel of the Users lists window of your Virtual TimeClock software. To include wage information on timecard reports, go to the Reports menu, choose Report Writer and select the Timecard Detail report. Click the Options tab and check Total Gross Wages. Now you'll see gross wage totals for all leave, regular, overtime, and total hours worked. There's an additional option to show the hourly rate for each worker on the timecard report as well. You can choose to show gross wages on both timecard detail and timecard summary reports that are grouped by worker. You can also include gross wages on timecards grouped by activity, department, leave category, and shift, but not the individual rate for each employee.

Salaried Workers

You may be using your employee time clock software to track time spent by salaried workers on different projects or jobs. This is helpful for tracking labor costs and trends on those projects. Here's how it works. Every employee has an hourly burden. For hourly employees, the hourly burden is equal to their hourly rate. For salaried workers, the hourly burden is calculated by dividing their salary per payroll period by their average weekly hours worked. So if their salary is $1,500 a week and they average 40 hours, then their hourly burden would be $37.50. Think of it as an approximate hourly wage for a salaried worker. Worker timecards will show just the salary amount for the payroll period, but activity, departmental, and shift reports will include the hourly burden for salaried workers in the totals if the reports are set to include them. This allows you to get an accurate reporting of your labor costs for the project. The report option for including salaried worker totals is found right next to the option for totaling gross wages in the Options panel for each report in the Report Writer.

Jeff Morrow

Technical Support Team

Redcort Software

Employee Shifts and Schedules

Many of our employee time clock software users were looking for a way to prevent workers from clocking in early and picking up a couple hours of overtime each week. We introduced new functionality in Virtual TimeClock '11 to help control this unnecessary employee overtime. Shifts are a powerful and flexible way to control when time clock users are allowed to clock in and out. Users can clock in early as a courtesy, but not have their start time recorded until their shift starts. You can also prevent early clock ins altogether within a defined number of minutes before the shift actually starts. You can set the same kind of rules when clocking out.

Setting up shifts

Setting up shifts is a two-step process: First create the new shift and define your restrictions. Go to the Lists menu and choose Shifts. Second, assign a shift to the user schedule for each day of the week. Just click the Schedules button in the Shifts window. Each worker can have a different shift rule for each day of the week.

The differential setting is used when printing shift reports with the gross wages option enabled. It allows you to pay a premium when employees work certain hours.

The auto clock out setting is used to record a stop time for all users still on the clock after their shift ends. This is helpful as a backup for forgotten clock outs at the end of the day or when all workers have the same stop time.

Removing shifts

If you no longer need to use shift restrictions for an employee, then you'll need to create a new shift called 'No Restrictions' without any clock in or out rules turned on, and assign that shift to the employee schedule for each day of the week.

Jeff Morrow

Technical Support Team

Redcort Software

Did You Remember to Clock Out?

There's definitely a learning curve when starting to use new employee time clock software. It's to be expected when changing time and attendance systems, especially when employees have just been recording their time on a paper timesheet with no accountability. The transition is a little easier when coming from a mechanical punch clock because the employees are already used to going to a central location to clock in and out. They know the routine. A common question we get from new users is "How do I make my employees remember to clock out?" The best reminder will be repetition and reinforcement, but there are some tools built into Virtual TimeClock that may help during the transition period.

We introduced a new automatic clock out feature as part of the new shift restrictions to help control employee overtime in Virtual TimeClock '11. Setting an auto clock out with a reasonable grace period should take care of those forgotten clock outs by distracted workers at the end of a busy day. Here's how it works. Let's say you have a shift that ends at 5:00 PM, and you have an auto clock out set with a 5 minute grace period. As long as the employee clocks out before 5:05 PM, your employee time clock software will record the actual stop time. However, if the employee forgets to clock out, then they'll automatically be clocked out when the grace period is over, but the time clock will record their stop time as their shift end time, which would be 5:00 PM. In other words, they've got 5 minutes past their shift to clock out or the time clock software will do it for them. This can help greatly with missed punches, especially as employees are getting used to the new time clock program.

You can certainly remove the restriction if you want to after your employees have gotten the hang of the new employee time clock software and are consistently remembering to clock out on their own.

Jeff Morrow

Technical Support Team

Redcort Software

Turning On Password Protection

If you're new to our Virtual TimeClock Software and are wondering what's to prevent employees from changing their punch times, then it's likely you missed the setup step for turning on password protection.

Password protection is an easy way to control access to the many features of your employee time clock software. Although you can adjust the default security access settings, we've found that only minor adjustments are typically needed to adapt Virtual TimeClock to your business rules.

To enable password protection

Go to the Tools menu, choose Security and select the Enable Password Protection checkbox. You'll be required to enter your admin password before you can save the new security settings. If you haven't already set your time clock administrator password, then click the User Access button on the bottom of the Security window.

Setting up employee passwords

Once you turn on security, your employees will be required to enter a password when clocking in and out. Employees can quickly set up their passwords by following the Employee Quick Reference available from the Help menu of your employee time clock software program.

Maggie Hofer

Customer Service Team

Redcort Software

Overriding Automatic Lunch Deductions

Time deductions allow you to automatically deduct a lunch from employee timecards without requiring employees to clock out. For example, you may want to automatically deduct lunch breaks from your warehouse workers, but require your administrative employees to clock in and out for their lunch breaks. This works great for all those employees who take lunch at the same time (like workers on an assembly line) because they don't have to wait in line at the time clock to punch out for lunch. You can also assign a different time deduction rule for each employee, or even none at all.

Sometimes, an employee will need to work through their lunch break. Because they're not clocking in and out for lunches, your employee time clock software will still calculate the scheduled lunch deduction. Here's how you override the automatic lunch deduction:

Go to the Lists menu and choose Activities. Create a new activity called something like 'Worked Lunch' that's good for manual entries only.

Now go to the Actions menu and choose Add Manual Entry. Add a new manual entry for the worker using the activity you created and enter a start and end time (for example, 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM).

You'll still see the automatic lunch deduction on the employee's timecard, but you'll also see the manual entry for 'Worked Lunch' adding the hour back into the total hours worked.

Jeff Morrow

Technical Support Team

Redcort Software

DST and Your Employee Time Clock Software

Don't forget that Daylight Saving Time (DST) begins this weekend. As long as your computer handles the time change automatically, Virtual TimeClock will always record the correct time for you.

The Basic and Pro Editions pull the time stamp directly from the computer operating system. If you're looking for ideas to better secure your computer against time manipulation, then check out this article on keeping your employee time clock software secure. The Network Edition uses the time from the time clock server computer to record the time clock punches for all of the client time clocks. This makes it impossible to manipulate the time on the local computer to affect the timecard records of your time clock software.

If you have worker shifts that cross the time change threshold (DST officially begins at 2:00 AM on Sunday, March 13, 2011), then you may need to manually adjust their end time to account for the extra hour lost because we "spring forward" for DST. For example, an overnight shift from 8:00 PM to 4:00 AM will actually show the employee clocking out at 5:00 AM if you require them to finish their 8 hour shift. This would show 9 hours worked on their timecard instead of the 8 hours they actually worked. You'll need to modify the entry stop time back to 4:00 AM to reflect the appropriate 8 hours worked. However, if you require them to clock out at their actual shift end time of 4:00 AM, their timecard would show 8 hours worked even though they only worked 7 hours. You'll need to modify the entry stop time back to 3:00 AM to reflect the appropriate 7 hours worked. Some companies may just pay employees for an extra hour, so no adjustments are necessary.

Jeff Morrow

Technical Support Team

Redcort Software

Using Time Clock Software as In/Out Board

One of the powerful features that makes Virtual TimeClock much more than a punch clock replacement is its use as a virtual in/out board. It's easy to tell what activity employees are working on while they're on the clock, when they're at lunch or on break, and when they've left for the day. When you stop work, you'll be prompted to choose an out memo. This updates the virtual in/board by recording if an employee has left for the day or is just out at an appointment. Out memos are temporary and are not included on timecard reports.

Employees can also create a one-time custom memo when stopping work like 'Back by 3 PM'. These custom memos don't become part of the out memo selection list but are a great tool for fully utilizing the in/out board function of your employee time clock software.

Maggie Hofer

Customer Service Team

Redcort Software

Displaying Total Hours Worked

There are two ways to render total hours worked within Virtual TimeClock. Here are the differences and the reasons why you may want to choose one way over another. The time display setting gives you a tremendous amount of flexibility for how you display total hours worked in your employee time clock software.

Hours & Minutes

The first way to display total hours worked is as hours & minutes. For example, eight hours and fifteen minutes would be displayed as 8:15. The colon (:) separator is an important distinction. If you're displaying total hours as hours & minutes you can't add up the time on a calculator and expect it to be accurate. That's because you're representing the totals as time, where every 60 minutes is another hour. A calculator works from a base of ten. That's why if you try to add :15 + :15 + :15 + :15 you get .6 (a little more than half an hour) instead of 1 hour.

Decimal Hours

The second way to display total hours worked is as decimal hours. For example, eight hours and fifteen minutes would be displayed as 8.25. The decimal separator allows you to add up the time on a calculator and have it still be accurate. So now if you add .25 + .25 + .25 + .25 you get 1 hour, as expected. This is the way most payroll services and software expect hours to be entered.

The time display setting for total hours in exporting, leave accrual reports, and editing timecards is set by going to the Tools menu and choosing Time Calculations.

The display setting for all your timecard reports is set by going to the Reports menu, choosing Report Writer, selecting the report, and clicking the Format tab.

It's common to have your employee timecards display in hours & minutes, which makes them easier to read by your employees, and your timecard summary reports to display as decimal for easy input or reporting to your payroll provider.

Jeff Morrow

Technical Support Team

Redcort Software

Expired Time Clock Software Licenses

If you receive a license key verification failure when launching Virtual TimeClock for the first time after upgrading, the most common cause is from not entering your most current license key. Your employee time clock software will run as an evaluation until your current license key is entered. Just let us know if you need another copy. It's important to enter your new license key after we process your software maintenance & support renewal so you can take advantage of free time clock software upgrades and updates.

You'll also get a license key verification failure if you upgrade your time clock and you're not enrolled in our software maintenance & support program. Once again, your employee time clock software will run as an evaluation until a valid license key is entered. A member of our customer service team would be happy to send you discounted upgrade pricing for the latest Virtual TimeClock release.

Maggie Hofer

Redcort Software Customer Service Team

Preparing Employee Hours for Payroll

One of the main reasons businesses invest in employee time clock software is to help them cut down on the amount of time and effort spent processing payroll. A good time clock program will automatically total employee hours and overtime based on your business rules. Those hours can then be easily entered or imported into your payroll software, or sent over to your accountant or payroll service. Processing payroll is just one of the steps of closing out a payroll period in Virtual TimeClock. Here are the others:

• Review employee timecards
• Edit employee hours
• Process payroll
• Close payroll period

If you've never processed a payroll period, you'll want to verify your payroll settings first. Go to the Tools menu and choose Payroll Period. The first setting determines the first day of the work week for calculating weekly totals on timecard reports. The second setting determines your payroll period cycle.

Closing the period will automatically advance the current period starting and ending dates to the next payroll period based on these payroll cycle settings. We've got complete end-of-period instructions as part of the free time clock software resources available on our website.

Jeff Morrow

Technical Support Team

Redcort Software

How to Track Premium Pay for Worked Holidays

Do you need to track premium pay when employees work on a recognized business holiday? Since the premium rate of pay is handled by your payroll system, you just need to know how many hours to pay at the premium rate. That's where your employee time clock software can help you.

First, you'll want to set up a new activity. Go to the Lists menu in your Virtual TimeClock software and choose Activities. Click the + button to add a new activity. You can give the new activity a name like 'Worked Holiday' and save. Now when employees work on a recognized business holiday, they'll choose 'Worked Holiday' from the Activity drop-down menu when starting work.

When you print employee timecards for the payroll period, you'll see the 'Worked Holiday' hours subtotaled separately so you know under what category to input the hours into your payroll system to award premium pay for working on the holiday.

Jeff Morrow

Technical Support Team

Redcort Software

Upgrading to Virtual TimeClock '11

If you're already running Virtual Timeclock '09 or '10, the upgrade process to Virtual TimeClock '11 is really quite straight forward. There are a couple of things to keep in mind before starting the upgrade process.

• If you're running the Network Edition, you'll want to upgrade your time clock software server first, then the clients. The old version time clock clients won't be able to connect to the new version server until they're upgraded, so if you have a lot of clients you may want to plan your upgrade when employees aren't actively using the time clock.
• Make sure you've entered your latest license keys. Follow the activation instructions included in the license renewal email we sent you. Otherwise, you may receive a license error after first launch of the software after upgrading. You can continue with the upgrade, but your time clock software will run in evaluation mode until your current license key is entered.
• Upgrading or uninstalling the previous release of Virtual TimeClock will not overwrite or erase your time clock data.

We've got complete time clock software upgrade instructions and resources available on our website.

Jeff Morrow

Technical Support Team

Redcort Software

Troubleshooting Remote Computer Time Clocks

Just like time clock clients can connect to the time clock server software over the local area network, remote clients can connect to the time clock server over the Internet to provide the same employee time clock software functionality from a different location.

Troubleshooting Existing Remote Time Clock Client Connections

If you've been running Virtual TimeClock for some time and your remote time clock client stops connecting, there are a couple of easy troubleshooting steps you can take.

• Verify the time clock server is up and running at the main location.
• Make sure your Internet is still working.

If the time clock server software is still running at the main location and you've tested your Internet connection, then you'll need to look deeper.

The IP address of the time clock server may have changed. This will invalidate the port forward that's part of the router configuration at the main office. If the port forward is broken, local clients can still connect but not remote clients.

Troubleshooting New Remote Time Clock Client Connections

If you're having trouble connecting remote time clock clients for the first time, then there are a couple of things to check.

• The number one culprit is likely the built-in firewall on the time clock server computer. You'll need to set up a couple of port exceptions within the firewall configuration.
• The second possibility is that the port forward was never set up in the router configuration at the main office.

We've got full instructions for setting up your Internet time clock on our website.

If you're still having trouble connecting your time clock clients, contact time clock software support for assistance.

Jeff Morrow

Technical Support Team

Redcort Software

Using Time Clock Software with Windows 7

If you've installed Virtual TimeClock Server on a Windows 7 computer and are not able to connect your time clock clients, the Windows Firewall is likely blocking your Virtual TimeClock software from communicating through the firewall.

The quickest way to resolve the issue is by opening a couple of ports in the firewall.

1. Open Windows Firewall by clicking the Start button, and then clicking Control Panel. In the search box, type firewall, and then click Windows Firewall.
2. In the left pane, click Advanced Settings. If you're prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.
3. In the Windows Firewall with Advanced Security dialog box, in the left pane, click Inbound Rules, and then, in the right pane, click New Rule.
4. Follow the instructions in the New Inbound Rule Wizard. Select Port for the rule type. You'll need to set 2 rules, one for TCP port 56777 and one for UDP port 56778. Set the action to Allow the connection. Allow the rule to apply to all situations. Give the rules names like 'VTC TCP' and 'VTC UDP' to make them easy to recognize later.

Now try and connect your time clock clients again. As always, if you need further assistance please contact a member of our time clock software technical support team.

Jeff Morrow

Technical Support Team

Redcort Software