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