Time tracking blog

The future of time tracking has arrived! Receive alerts and be informed when overtime has almost been reached. That’s right! Now you can stop overtime before it wreaks havoc on your payroll!

The Basics

There are a few notes that you should know about the overtime alerts before you dive right in:

1. Everybody is allowed one weekly and one daily alert. If you create any new alerts that interfere with older ones, the new ones will override the old.
2. The authority chain goes as follows: Employee > Group > Company.
3. The alerts will “assume” that the first day of the week is on Sunday if you don’t have your Week Starts On day set.
4. When you type in the number of hours the number will be rounded to the nearest whole number (ex. 37.5 = 38; 37.1 = 37).

How It Works

Everyone knows how frightening overtime is – and it can stack up quickly! Whether it’s skipping a lunch here, staying late enough to finish up a phone call another day – everyone is susceptible to the dangers of overtime. So the TSheets developers came up with a plan to warn people when they are approaching overtime. Not only can you warn the employee, however, you can send alerts to their manager or to the administrator.

Basically, what happens is our system is programmed to run a check every 15 minutes, and alert anyone that meets the requirements of being clocked in past their set limits. Chances are you will not be alerted at 5:00 on the dot that your employee has reached 8 hours, instead you will be alerted sometime between 5:00 and 5:15 that your employee is X number of minutes over 8 hours. (Don’t worry, the number will be accurately displayed. For example, an email sent at 5:05 will say that employee X has been on the clock for 8 hours and 5 minutes).

The best part? TSheets doesn’t calculate the time by the set hourly time – it will alert you to the time specific to your employee! So if an employee came in 30 minutes late TSheets will take into account their number of clocked hours, not the typical 9 to 5 work day – so nobody gets sent home early!

Lets Get Started

The Overtime Alerts are set up as an add-on. This means that they are optional for your account; but free to use if you wish to take advantage of it (for Business accounts and up, if you have a legacy account contact us for your upgrade options). It also means that you will have to install the add-on before you will be able to use it, below is how to obtain the alerts and get them rolling.

Installing the Add-On

1. Log on to your account as an administrator.
2. Click on the “My Account” link on the left hand side of your main menu.
3. Navigate to the “Add-Ons” tab.
4. Scroll through the possible add-ons until you find the one labeled “Overtime Alerts”.
5. As soon as you click on the “Install” button a new box will pop up – this is the preferences box.
6. Here you will set up the alerts to match what you want.
7. Save your changes.

To make things easier on everyone we have the ability to set up our sample alerts automatically. Before you set up any alerts at all you will be presented with a blue box (shown above) that will allow you to click a button and have our two most popular alerts set up for you. One of these alerts will inform you when an employee has reached 8 hours in one day and is still on the clock, the other alert will let you know when an employee has reached 38 hours in a week.

Setting Up Your Alerts

1. Open the preferences box for your Alert Add-on.
2. Click the “Add Alert Rule” button.
3. You will be presented with a box to fill out parameters for this alert.
4. Choose who this alert is for: “All Employees”; “One or more Groups”; “One or more Employees”.
5. Fill out the “Who” box – as you type you will be presented with suggestions; click on the appropriate one. (Only applicable if you did not choose “All Employees”).
6. If you are choosing to make this rule for more than one person click the “Add Another” button below the “who” box.
7. Type in the number of hours you want to be alerted at.
8. Select if that is the number of hours per “day”; “week”; or “never”.
9. Select who you would like the alerts to go to and how you would like to have them received.
10. Click the save button.
11. Repeat this process for as many rules as you need, once you are done click the “Done” button in the bottom right hand corner.
12. Rest easy! Your overtime hours will be closely monitored.

Questions or comments? Please post them below.

Michael Hunger was searching for a way to track his day.  He finds that task tedious and inconvenient.  Some of his suggested time tracking methods came in the form of software:

• Spreadsheets
• Plain text files
• Browser based time tracking
• Outlook/iCal
• Popup applications/widgets asking for the current task (hmmm…has he not yet found TSheets?)

And others in the form of the physical:

• Sticky Notes
• Paper
• Tally sheets
• Notebook
• Diary/filofax

All are ok solutions.  Naturally, we’re a bit preferential to the application/widget genre, but let’s hear the man out.

What Michael stumbled upon in his daily ‘blue hour’ (time he spends reading in a café before work) is a childhood toy that we all know: Lego.  He quickly realized that events in iCal look remarkably like building blocks of time.  The transition from playing with his daughters legos to iCal’s block of time to Lego as time tracker is simply genius.

With a box of 600 legos purchased from Amazon, Michael set out to track his day in a colorful desktop form.  What he found was that there was a wide variety in color, length, and width of the 600 pieces.  By using the ‘one row’ blocks, Michael builds he day (literally) by segmenting 1, 2, 3, and 4 studded pieces to represent 15 minute blocks of time, 15, 30, 45, and 60 minutes.  By stacking these individual blocks of time on top of each other, he builds a project (color) coded map of his time throughout the day.

Using a ‘one row’ piece to represent the day, Michael lays bricks on top of this ‘day ruler’ so that he can see what he did, and where in his day he did it.  Each day of the week is then coded by a rainbow color scheme.  Red, orange, yellow, green, and blue represent Monday – Friday.  At weeks end, he then uses his lego blocks to enter the data in a timesheet software package.

Michael has found that by using the Lego time tracking system, he can even pre-plan days by using temporary bases and allotting time via the same color coded method.  Benefits include (in Michael’s own words):

• it works (for about 4 months now)
• I have something to play with while pondering stuff
• it looks great
• it’s incredibly fast with no overhead
• planning is possible

He is however quick to point on the one disadvantage:

coworkers coming to your place and disassembling your time tracks

He’s recently updated the original post with an announcement of a small java application that will work in conjunction with a webcam or phone so that the time block is automatically entered in the week’s end timesheet.

This is a fine example of independent ingenuity when it comes to personal time tracking.  Certainly this will work while sitting in a closed environment (read…office), but has little practical application in the mobile work.  You might be hard pressed to pull out your Lego block set while sitting in economy on the next flight to Atlanta.  The Lego system can and will only work for personal time tracking, as just with the time clock or paper and pencil sheets, there are almost certainly time fudgers that would take advantage of the system.

As always, TSheets remains your one stop, easy to use, corporate wide time tracking solution. With widgets, gadgets, and iPhone apps, we’ve got more ways to track time than hours in the day!

Now….off to the TLabs to talk to the Time Scientists about the Lego app integration….

Small businesses need quality timesheet software to track time and attendance. In the past, time and attendance was tracked by wall-mounted time clocks or paper timesheets, but this method has been replaced to increase accuracy and allow for remote time tracking.

Timesheet Software, What Is That?

Businesses can benefit greatly from timesheet software for tracking their employees’ time and attendance. timesheet software (web-based software in particular) is rapidly replacing wall-mounted time clocks and installed software applications.

Timesheet Software Replaces What?

No longer do your employees need to worry about filling out paper timesheets. Your bookkeeper doesn’t have to spend hours trying to read employees’ hand writing to total out the entire company’s timesheets. Disjointed solutions like MS Excel spreadsheets for tracking time go away. This leaves a common environment where employees manage their time. This negates the need for managers to spend hours calculating timesheets for each individual. A simple report tells the story, leaving them to move on to more important tasks.

Will Timesheet Software Really Help Me?

Whether you are an individual interested in making sure your time is spent wisely or an employer looking to make your company more profitable, using some kind of timesheet software is a necessity. Having an accurate time tracking system is an invaluable asset to your company and personal life.

Many companies start with using some sort of honor system, whether it is a paper timesheet or an excel document that employees manually enter their time into. Until recently it was very expensive for employers to afford more accurate methods of tracking employees’ time and attendance. These employers don’t take into account the amount of money they are loosing from traditional rounding methods and the amount of money they are spending on the extra time it takes to collect, compile, and calculate their employees’ time. These two items alone have the potential of saving thousands of dollars every year. TSheets offers a free personal version of their timesheet software, while business owners can use it for as little as $9.95 a month.

What is time recording software?  Would some kind of time recording software be right for you or your company?  How will your employees react to the implementation of a new software system?  These are a few of the issues that surround the integration of time recording software like TSheets and these are a few of things that we’ll be addressing.

What is Time Recording Software?

According to wikipedia time recording software is accounting software that is used to maintain timesheets for each person in a company.

Is Time Recording Software Right for Me?

Whether you are an individual interested in making sure your time is spent wisely or an employer looking to make your company more profitable using some kind of time recording software is a necessity.  Having an accurate time tracking system is an invaluable asset to your company and personal life.

Many companies start with using some sort of honor system whether it is paper timesheets or an excel document that employees manually enter their time into.  Until recently it was very expensive for employers to be able to afford more accurate methods of time recording.  The things these employers didn’t realize were the amount of money they were loosing from traditional rounding methods and the amount of money they were spending on the extra time it took them to collect, compile and calculate their employees’ time.   These two items alone have the potential of equating to thousands of dollars every year.  Now individuals can record their time for free and a business owner can use a time recording software for as little as $9.95 a month.

The Impact of Time Recording Software

If you’re an individual just looking to manage your life better, a time recording software will bring clarity into where your time is being spent and how you need to change your routines.  If you’re an independent contractor your clients will appreciate the accuracy and the clear look into what they’re spending their money on.  If you are a business owner, time recording software will bring a higher level of efficiency and profitability to your organization.

What About Your Employees?

At first it may be kind of difficult for your employees to get into the habit of accurately recording their time.  It requires some initial discipline and a change of routine, but once they get used to clocking in and out each day it will become second nature.  They may complain in the beginning stages of implementation, but as they realize that this is the new model and this is how they’re getting paid their attitudes should change.  Of course this is change, and there are always those that are used to the way things were that will tend to feel a bit nostalgic when new ideas come.

Here’s a nice note from one of our customers who is using TSheets‘ timesheet software for his telemarketing company.  Thanks Nick!!

To Whom It May Concern:

Results Telemarketing provides business-to-business telemarketing services for companies across the country. We have employees in our Phoenix corporate office and in various cities.

Managing hours worked and calculating totals for payroll started to become too time consuming to do manually and we were also thinking that there were errors in estimates that were costing us unnecessary dollars.

We began a trial of TSheets a few months ago and were pleased with the results. After the first week, we clearly spotted and corrected time and attendance issues. The software has been very easy to use for both management and employees and the reports help us to identify potential problems.

“After the first week, we clearly spotted and corrected time and attendance issues.”

Nick McCallion (Results Telemarketing)

The TSheets support staff is readily available and has always helped us promptly and with professionalism whenever we have questions.

I can confidently say that the savings from only paying actual hours worked and from the reduction in administrative time has paid for TSheets many times over.

We will continue to expand our use of TSheets and highly recommend it to any business that wants to automate this task and reduce payroll costs.

Nick McCallion
Sales Director
Results Telemarketing
602.264.2540
www.resultstelemarketing.com

Do you have a story about improving the effectiveness/productivity of your company that other business owners should know about?  You can either share it below or let us know and we’ll post it on our blog.