Time Clock Software Year-End Procedures

It's easy to get distracted at the end of the year, so here's some information to help you stay on task and quickly close out another successful year with Virtual TimeClock.

• Carry over unused leave awards and update any new leave award benefits based on your business payroll rules.
• Enter 2010 paid holidays, they won't show on worker timecards until the payroll period in which they occur.
• Check your scheduled backup, especially if you've recently upgraded or moved your time clock software.

Happy New Year!

Jeff Morrow

Redcort Software

Got Overtime?

If your business is required to track daily and/or weekly overtime, you'll need to make sure you assign an overtime rule to new workers. After creating the new user record in your Virtual TimeClock software, click on the Wages tab. You'll be able to select an overtime rule from the Overtime drop-down list.

Need to setup a new overtime rule? No problem, we've got instructions posted in a recent newsletter.

Merry Christmas from the entire time clock software support team!

Jeff Morrow

Redcort Software

Time Clock Software Users: To Delete or Not to Delete

You have several options when it comes to dealing with Virtual TimeClock software users that are no longer part of your organization.

You can remove them from any display groups they belong to. This will remove their name from the time clock worker list, but they'll still appear in all timecard report selection lists for admin users.

You can mark their user record as inactive or terminated. This will automatically remove them from any display groups they belong to, and remove them from all timecard report selection lists. The historical record of all hours and overtime worked will be maintained and can be easily accessed by simply making the user active again.

You can delete the user. This should be a last resort as all of the historical timecard entries, leave awards, and messages are completely and permanently removed. A hard copy of all hours for the worker should be printed before deletion. Deleting a user is irreversible, so use it with care.

Jeff Morrow

Redcort Software

Using Time Clock Software to Track Students

We have lots of educational institutions using Virtual TimeClock. Some use it as a time and attendance system to track staff for payroll purposes. Others use it to track student worker hours. Still others are using our time clock software to track time spent by students in learning labs.

I recently worked with a large school district in Texas who is using Virtual TimeClock to track hours spent by special education students in tutoring labs. They have drastically reduced the amount of time spent on mandatory state reporting of compliance with the individualized educational plan for each special education student within the district.

I'm constantly amazed by how versatile Virtual timeClock is.

Jeff Morrow

Redcort Software

Virtual TimeClock Out of Licenses

This seems to be the time of year for getting new computers. We've had a number of customers this week who've installed their time clock software on a new computer and tried to connect their time clock client, only to get a dialog stating that they're out of licenses.

Uninstalling Virtual TimeClock from the old computer doesn't free up the license. You'll need to remove the old client registration from your time clock server. Just follow the instructions in this FAQ to update your proper time clock client count.

Jeff Morrow

Redcort Software

Virtual TimeClock '10 Sneak Peek

I recently cornered an engineer by the water cooler, walked discreetly back to his desk and got a sneak peek of Virtual TimeClock '10. Get ready for full time and attendance tracking with some of these gems:

1. Track paid and unpaid leave.
2. Optionally include paid leave in the calculation of overtime.
3. Customize your timecard reports to include a separate paid leave column.
4. Track paid and unpaid tasks.
5. Create custom reports for unpaid leave and tasks.

Remember, this is unofficial and there's more to come... but I just had to share. Check out my previous post to see what you're missing if you haven't upgraded to Virtual TimeClock '09 yet.

Jeff Morrow

Redcort Software

Twelve Reasons to Upgrade to Virtual TimeClock '09

I've answered a lot of support questions over the years, and received a lot of requests from users on how to improve Virtual TimeClock. I'm amazed by how many of those requests are addressed with the latest release of our time clock software. In the spirit of the 12 days of Christmas, here are 12 reasons to upgrade to Virtual TimeClock '09:

1. Run the TimeClock Server as a background process.
2. Assign overtime rules on a per worker basis.
3. Create an unlimited number of leave categories.
4. Manage workers by department or location with Display Groups.
5. Enter timecard notes to track mileage, tips, jobs, or late arrivals.
6. Assign time deductions on a per worker basis.
7. New optimized SQL database is up to 100 times faster.
8. Create custom reports based on selected workers AND selected tasks.
9. Instantly modify a current time clock entry from the main window.
10. Add manual & leave entries for multiple workers at the same time.
11. Simplified reopening of closed payroll periods.
12. Runs as Intel native Universal Binary on Mac.

Jeff Morrow

Redcort Software

Backup Your Time Clock Data

Theft, flood, fire, hard disk failure, and viruses. The words that strike fear into the heart of all business owners. It seems like every week we're listening to a customer describing one of these very real disasters and begging us to bring their time clock data back. Unfortunately, we can't restore what no longer exists.

I can't stress enough the importance of backing up your time clock software data. The Virtual TimeClock backup utility allows you to easily and quickly perform a one time manual backup, or schedule daily or repeating backups. The backup utility will compress your database, and also add a date and time stamp. Just follow the instructions posted on our website to help secure a little peace of mind.

Quickly restoring your employee time clock database from a backup file could mean the difference between minor inconvenience and major payroll hassles.

Jeff Morrow

Redcort Software