Importing New Time Clock Employees

You can import your new users into your employee time clock software by either creating a comma separated value (CSV) text file or exporting your employee list from QuickBooks. Let's talk about importing a CSV file. You can use a spreadsheet program like Excel and Numbers, or a text editor like Notepad and TextEdit to create and format the import file. You accounting program may also be able to export a list of employee names. Each line within the file represents a user and each comma within a line represents a field for that user. Fields are imported in the following order:

Last Name, First Name, Middle Name, Address, City, State, Zip Code, Home Telephone, Employee Number, Social Security Number, Password, Wage, Department Name

Unused fields may be empty as long as each line contains exactly 12 commas separating the 13 fields. Passwords must be unique. Virtual TimeClock will check the import file for duplicate passwords and compare passwords in the import file to the passwords for existing time clock users. If you're importing users into departments, the departments must already be set up in Virtual TimeClock with the exact department name.

Happy importing!


Jeff
Tier 2 Tech Support
Redcort Software Inc.

Setting Up Manager Security

Virtual TimeClock has a pretty sophisticated 3-tiered security system. At the top of the tier you have time clock administrators, who have unlimited access to everything in the time clock program. On the bottom tier, you have employees that can clock themselves in and out, view their hours, and send internal messages to other time clock users. Of course, you can give employees more or less access to some of the other time clock features based on your business workflow. Managers make up the middle tier. Again, there's a ton of flexibility here. Managers can quickly view and edit timecards for employees in their display groups. You can also grant managers more or less access to other time clock features. For example, you may want managers to be able to edit employee timecards but not add new timecard entries.

All this can be configured in the Display Groups Configure panel, including manager actions, access to configuration panels, and what reports managers can run. Manager settings can even be different for each display group.

Jeff
Tier 2 Tech Support
Redcort Software Inc.

PIN Time Clock Entry

Virtual TimeClock has an interface that allows employees to clock in and out by using a numerical PIN. They can enter their assigned PIN using one of the following methods:

• Use the built-in keypad on your keyboard
• Use the mouse to click the onscreen keypad
• Combine a touchscreen monitor with the onscreen keypad
• Replace manual PIN entry with an RFID reader
• Replace manual PIN entry with a barcode scanner

If you're using the PIN interface on a group time clock, you may want the program to launch in a maximized window so the rest of the desktop is hidden. Right mouse click the Virtual TimeClock desktop shortcut and click Properties. Click the Shortcut tab and change the Run popup menu to Maximized.

This will only work on Windows and the PIN window will revert back to its regular size if you turn admin on and back off.

Jeff
Tier 2 Tech Support
Redcort Software Inc.

Tracking Labor Costs at Different Locations

Do you use a time clock at different stores or office locations? Do you need to keep track of how much time employees spend at each of your locations? If the answer to either of these questions is "Yes" then you need to consider using activities.

Activities are used to track all time on the clock, whether paid or unpaid. Activities can be anything you want to track time for, and can be named whatever you want. Your time clock software has a default activity called ‘In’ that gets used each time you start work. As soon as you create a new activity, employees will be prompted to pick one from a list as soon as they start work for the day. They can continue to switch from one activity to another with the click of a button. If you have multiple retail locations, you'll want to create an activity representing the name of each store so you can determine your total labor costs per cost center by running the built-in activity reports.

New activities can be created and assigned to specific display groups from the Configure control panel.

Jeff
Tier 2 Tech Support
Redcort Software, Inc.