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