Time tracking blog

Now you can set your Timesheets to automatically round to the nearest increment of your choice upon clock in and/or clock out. All of it is customizable, so it still leaves you in control. Many of you have requested this feature because it just keeps things simple – the middle name of TSheets so to speak.  Dealing in even numbers is always better than dealing with fractions.

Read more about installing and using this add-on by following this link. Or you can check out the video below.

Does your business operate with mobile crews? If so, this new feature is sure to please. You can now clock in other users via a text message (if you are an admin or manager of those people).

All you have to do is send your text message as usual, but add @username for each user that you want to perform the clock-in/out for. Let’s view a few examples. If you’re new to text messaging with TSheets, be sure to check out our wiki page on Time Entry Using Text Messages.

• You want to clock in user1, user2, and user3 to the ‘construction’ job code – easy:
  • t in construction @user1 @user2 @user3

• You want to switch user2 and user3 to the ‘cleaning’ job code:
  • t in cleaning @user2 @user3

• You want to add a note to all three users’ timesheets (make sure you don’t put the usernames after the ‘notes’ keyword, else we’ll just include them as part of the note and only put it on your own timesheet):
  • t @user1 @user2 @user3 notes Everyone worked hard today

• You want to clock user1, user2, and user3 out:
  • t out @user1 @user2 @user3

• What if you want to include yourself in the list of people you’re clocking in or out? Just use @me to indicate yourself:
  • t in construction @user1 @user2 @user3 @me

This is a really powerful feature and we believe you’ll agree that it is a real time saver. Have a crack at it and let us know what you think!

For the past couple of months we’ve been hard at work on many different projects, one of the highlights is our new scheduling add-on. This add-on allows you to schedule users for an event and enable them (and/or managers and admins) to receive reminders to clock in/out for the scheduled event.

Please note: This add-on is still in beta and is still under development. Please be patient and submit all bugs/feedback to support@tsheets.com.

Sit back and watch the video below for a quick overview or if you want more detail, visit our in-depth article posted on our wiki.

Ready to get started with scheduling on your TSheets account?  Give us a ring at 888-836-2720 or send us an email at support@tsheets.com and ask for the ‘Scheduling Add-On’.

We’re making some simple text changes to some items in our main menu that you should be aware of.

We’ve decided to change ‘My Account’ to ‘Company Settings’.  We think this makes more sense since we’ve recently added the ‘My Profile’ menu item.

Another important menu item change to note is the changing of ‘Weekly Timecard’ to ‘Manual Timecard’.  We’ve had quite a few customers ask about manual time entry and realized that it made more sense to label this tool to better reflect it’s use.

We’ve just made a change to our Timesheet Report.  All of the line-by-line details of each employee’s time are now hidden when you first run a report, leaving you with nothing but their total breakdown of time.  This will make it much easier for you to quickly review the totals for your employees.  However, the details are still there and easily accessible – you can view the details on one employee at a time, or you can show all details for all employees with a single click near the top of the report.

Give it a try – let us know what you think!

2009-12-10
FYI – We’ve made it so that your last-chosen state will be remembered when you re-visit or re-run a report. So if you like the details to be shown, just show them once and they’ll stay that way until you decide to hide them again, and vice versa.

Thanks for all of the great feedback so far!!

Jared

This feature has been requested many times and I’m pleased to announce that employees now have the ability to maintain their own profiles (with an admin’s permission of course).

Want to watch a video instead? Skip ahead to video.

As an Employee

From an employee’s perspective using the employee profile editor is dead simple.  If this feature is enabled for your account, you’ll see a menu item labeled ‘My Profile’.  Once clicked, this launches the profile editor (see below).

Simply make your changes and click Save.  Your profile has now been updated.

As an aside, with this feature enabled, you’ll also have the ability to reset your password from the login page (previously this was reserved for admins only).

As an Admin

As an admin, you’ll need to elect to allow your employees to manage their profile or not. This can be done through the ‘My Account => Advanced => User Options’ area (see below).

From this panel you’ll be able to allow employees to maintain and edit their profiles (or not) and even restrict them to only editing certain areas of their profile (username, email, password, time zone). Simply check the boxes next to the items you wish to allow and click ‘Save’.
Note that employees currently logged in will not see these changes until they logout and then back in.

If you get stuck please reference our wiki article about allowing employees to edit their profiles.

See It In Action

Watch the video below to see the Employee Profile feature in action.

Our Manual Time Card (aka the Weekly Time Card)  is the tool used by many for manually entering their time.  We’ve made a few enhancements to it recently that you may have already noticed!

For those of you that are impatient and would rather just watch a video, click here.

First of all, what’s in a name?

Apparently a lot!  We found that a lot of new customers were confused when we started talking about the ‘Weekly Time Card’ – they didn’t understand what it was for.  However, as soon as we would refer to it as the ‘Manual Time Card’, it was usually ’nuff said and they got it right away.  So we decided to make it easy – we’ve officially renamed the ‘Weekly Time Card’ to the ‘Manual Time Card’.  You’ll see a new menu entry for the Manual Time Card now.  We’re still leaving the menu entry for the Weekly Time Card there for a little while, to let you get used to the name change, but don’t expect to see it there for more than a few weeks!

Picking a week

Let’s say you want to go a few months back to review the time you put in over the summer months – it used to be that you had to click back one week at a time until you hit the right spot.  Well, no more!  Now you can choose a week via a pop-up calendar instead of having to scan from week to week.  To open the calendar, simply click on the weekly date range at the top of the window.  You’ll see a popup calendar, where you can select any day in the week you’re targeting, and you’ll be taken there instantly.

Notes for a cell

One of the handiest features of the Manual Time Card is the ease with which you can enter notes that get tied to a particular cell’s hours.  This allows you to easily keep track of your daily activities and associate them with which client / project / task you were working on.  However, sometimes it was a little annoying when you went back to look at your notes, because there was no quick way to identify which cells had notes and which did not.  Enter the handy-dandy notes indicator!  This is not a new idea, we borrowed from the popular spreadsheet applications out there to display a triangle in the upper right-hand corner of those cells which contain notes.

Copy Last Week’s Jobs

This was one of our most requested features for the Manual Time Card.  More often than not, users are using the same job codes over and over from week to week.  You may now click on the ‘Copy Last Week’s Jobs’ button in the top left corner to quickly populate your job codes from the previous week to the current week  (I can hear you cheering through the Inter-tubes!).  Let us know what you think!

PTO Bank Totals

Lest I forget, you may also notice the blue colored total next to the ‘Vacation’ job code in the shot above.  If you have PTO Accruals enabled, and the user has the permission to enter PTO time, they’ll be able to see their remaining PTO balance next to the relevant job code.  Pretty cool, eh?

See It In Action

Watch the video below to see the Manual Time Card in action.

If you have any more questions about the Manual Time Card, please see our User Guide Page about it.

Service Outage Notifications
Recently we’ve received requests from people wanting a way to instantly find out when we’re having any sort of service outage. As mentioned in the previous post we’ve set up a Twitter status page. Want to receive instant text message alerts whenever we update our status page? Here’s how.

1. Create an account on Twitter

• Go to http://twitter.com/
• Click the big “Sign Up Now” link
• Follow the instructions
• When it asks you to find your friends you may click the “Skip this step” link at the bottom of the page
• When it asks you to “Follow” people from the list of Twitter stars you may click the “Skip this step” link at the bottom of the page

2. Linking your cell phone to Twitter

• From your Twitter home screen, click the “Settings” link at the top right of the page
• Click the “Devices” tab
• Enter your cell phone number, check the box allowing Twitter to send you text messages, and click save
• Send a text message to Twitter (40404) with the confirmation code on your screen
• Great, you’re phone’s linked to Twitter!

3. Requesting text message alerts when we post updates

• Go to the TSheetsStatus Twitter page
• Click the “Follow” button
• Click the new cell phone icon that shows up where the follow button was

You’re done! Now whenever we post any sort of service issue you’ll instantly be notified via text message.

Quick Update
Yesterday afternoon our primary Text Message number, 68398, quit working. This was caused by a power outage at a major telecommunications datacenter that affected much of the city of Bellingham, WA. You can read the news article here: http://bit.ly/4iX3Iv

We Have A Backup Number!
Last time we had a text message outage we told you we were working on a backup plan. Well, we’ve got it. TSheets’ new backup text message number is 313131. It works exactly like our other 68398 number. There are two small things to note:

• You might need to send a text message with just the letter “T” to 313131 it before it will allow us to send replies to your phone.
• If you include the word “stop” anywhere in your text message it will unsubscribe you until you send another text message with just “T” in it.

Please continue to use 68398 as the primary number for texting to TSheets, but let everyone know about the backup number too.

Want Instant Notifications of Outages?
We have setup a new TSheets Status page on Twitter where we will be posting TSheets outage notifications in real time. You can even set it up to send you a text message anytime we post an update to that status page if you’d like. Here’s the URL: http://twitter.com/TSheetsStatus

• 2009-10-23: Status Update: Our primary 68398 number is working again!

Hot on the heals of our new PTO code management tool updates, we’re pleased to announce and roll out our PTO Accruals Add-on!

We’ve had several clients using this feature for the past couple of months and have finally deemed it ready for release. You’ll notice this option on your account if you have a Business or Platinum account.

What is it?

The PTO Accruals Add-on allows you to use your TSheets account to track and accrue paid time off hours for yourself and your employees.  Currently we only offer yearly accruals, but have plans for monthly and pay period type accruals in the near future (if you’d like this sooner, let us know).

We’ve built it to allow you to set company defaults as well as personalized PTO settings and balances for individual employees.

How do I use it?

The easiest way to explain how to use PTO Accruals is by showing you.  Sit back and enjoy the short video below.

We hope you find this new feature helpful. Please let us know if you need help during setup or have any questions along the way.

If you’re one our our legacy customers, please contact us to learn how easy (and affordable) it is to upgrade to our new Business or Platinum accounts.