TimePilot Definitions

Transactions

What's a transaction?
A transaction occurs when an employee clocks in or out. The TimePilot systems collect quite a bit of data with each clock in and clock out, including:

  1. The employee's name.
  2. The date of the transaction.
  3. The day of the transaction.
  4. The time of the transaction.
  5. How the transaction was performed: Did the employee use their iButton or the timeclock's keypad? Was the transaction inserted by a supervisor or by the software, as an Auto Lunch transaction?
  6. The name of the timeclock at which the transaction was performed.

In the TimePilot software, transactions are stored in one of two places: Current Transactions and Extracted Pay Periods. Current Transactions are the transactions that have been collected by the system during the current pay period. At the end of the period, you "extract" the transactions that occurred during the pay period into a separate file (database).

Extracting a pay period is an important part of using the TimePilot software. Click here for details and instructions. The transactions in this Extracted Pay Period can then be used to create reports or used by your payroll service or software.

If you don't extract your transactions when a pay period is complete, the transactions pile up fast. An average employee might have 40 or more transactions in a 5-day workweek.

Example: One day's transactions for one employee:

  1. Clock in at the start of their shift.
  2. Clock out for morning break.
  3. Clock in after break.
  4. Clock out for lunch.
  5. Clock in after lunch.
  6. Clock out for afternoon break.
  7. Clock in after break.
  8. Clock out at the end of their shift.

Total for the day: eight transactions.

TimePilot timeclocks that keep transactions in their memory, like TimePilot Extreme Blue Enhanced, can hold up to 12,000 transactions. For a 15-employee business with 8 transactions per day per employee, that's 100 days' worth of transactions. TimePilot timeclocks that are cabled to a PC or network server are limited only by the size of the hard drive on the computer they're cabled to.

For more about transactions and why it's important to extract them, click here.