Clocking In Before Payroll Period Is Closed

I had an interesting call from a new customer the other day. He was worried because they hadn't closed the payroll period yet but employees were already clocking in under the new period. I told him not to worry because the time clock software was smart enough to know what period the punch times belonged in.

Remember that closing payroll periods performs two important functions. First, it totals and saves hours and overtime for all workers using the current payroll settings. This is important because wages, overtime, and time deduction rules may have changed. Secondly, closing the period advances the 'Current Period' to the new period dates based on your payroll frequency.

If you've never closed a payroll period, verify your payroll period settings in the Configure window.

Jeff
Technical Support Team
Redcort Software, Inc.

Tracking Flexi-Time

Flexi-time in some parts of the world usually refers to accumulated overtime hours that an employee can build up and exchange for the equivalent amount of time off. Basically, you need to keep track of time worked over a defined threshold. That’s no problem with Virtual TimeClock because you can create overtime rules to accommodate just about anything.

Some of the international customers I've chatted with recently track flexi-time monthly even though overtime is calculated on a daily or weekly basis. So when you run employee timecards for an entire month, the overtime will be calculated separately. This can then either be paid out or entered as a leave award. I recommend creating a new leave category called “Flexi”. You would just have to manually add the hours to Flexi every month for each employee and when they use the Flexi time, you would add it to their timecard as paid leave.

Jeff
Technical Support Team
Redcort Software, Inc.

Tracking Timecard Changes

Virtual TimeClock keeps a record of events caused by both system and user activity. It automatically keeps track of when administration is turned on, when modifications to employee timecards are made, when manual and leave entries are added, and when payroll periods are closed. The program audit logs will tell you when the event occurred, the user who triggered the event, and what happened. The audit logs list the before and after details of timecard entries, which allows you to compare the original and the modified information. This can help management determine if the changes were made according to your business rules. It's also easy to export your program logs directly to your desktop for further analysis. You can open them with a text editor and search for keywords, dates, or users.

If you're running Virtual TimeClock Network Edition, then you'll want to check the logs on your TimeClock Server. Launch Virtual TimeClock Server and click Logs on the toolbar. If you're running Virtual TimeClock Pro, then you can check your program logs from Configuration.

Jeff
Technical Support Team
Redcort Software, Inc.

Port Forwarding on Netopia

It's easy to set up Virtual TimeClock at multiple office locations or even connect to your time clock from home or when you're on the road. As long as you've got an Internet connection, no problem. We've got instructions for using Virtual TimeClock over the Internet in our Remote Connectivity Guide. We've had some customers who use a Motorola Netopia DSL modem have some trouble setting up remote time clocks. The trouble stems from differences in terminology and a restriction of the Netopia.

First of all, the Netopia doesn't use the common description of 'port forwarding' or 'port mapping' to describe the process of opening up the network communication port that the time clock server needs to communicate with other time clocks over the Internet. The Netopia calls it a 'pinhole'.

Secondly, the Netopia has a limit on the external port number so you won't be able to use the default port of 56777. We've had success setting the external port to 48999. You should still be able to keep the internal port at 56777 to match the default TCP port of your time clock server.

Jeff
Technical Support Team
Redcort Software, Inc.