Virtual TimeClock Gets New Website

I hope you've found the information in this Virtual TimeClock support blog helpful over the years. I'm pleased to announce that Virtual TimeClock has a new and improved website so you can find future time clock support blog entries directly on our Virtual TimeClock software website.

Jeff
Tier 2 Tech Support
Redcort Software Inc.

Version 5 Time Clock Upgrade

We still occasionally have customers upgrading from version 5 of Virtual TimeClock. If that's you, then you'll need to download the separate version 5 time clock data converter from the website. It takes about 30 seconds to convert the average size data file and you get to maintain all of your timecard history from prior versions of Virtual TimeClock. The data converter will even locate your current version 5 data file for you. If it finds more than one, it will ask you to select the file you want to convert.

Database conversion failures are very few and far between. If you get a conversion failure notice on Windows, it's probably because you didn't quit your version 5 Virtual TimeClock program. Simply quit the time clock and run the conversion again.

Jeff
Tier 2 Tech Support
Redcort Software Inc.

Time Clock Departments

Virtual TimeClock makes it easy to assign users to departments so you can generate reports with departmental totals for hours and wages. In fact, your time clock program already has built-in reports that separate hours by people, activity, department, and shift. All time worked by employees gets credited to the department to which they're assigned. This works great until you start having employees performing work in different departments and you're trying to maintain each department as its own cost center.

The solution is to use activities to represent the different cost centers because activities get selected when clocking in. So when Jeff from the Warehouse department works in the Call Center department, his Call Center hours will be properly accounted for. Both departments and activities can be set up in the Configure control panel.

Jeff
Tier 2 Tech Support
Redcort Software Inc.

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.