TimePilot Central FAQs

There’s a column in the Transaction list titled “GPS.” If an employee clocked in or out with the Mobile app you’ll see an icon that looks like the one shown at right. Right-click the icon and choose “Map Location” from the pop-up menu. You’ll get a map like the one shown below, with a pin showing where the transaction took place. Click and drag the map to see surrounding areas; use your mouse’s scroll wheel to zoom in and out.

Note: If you don’t see the GPS column in the Transaction screen, it’s probably not enabled. Right-click anywhere in the black bar containing the titles of the columns, then choose “Show/Hide Columns” from the menu that pops up. You’ll see a list of all the columns that can appear in the Transaction screen. Scroll down to GPS, check the box and click “OK.”

The names in the employee list turn red when there is a break in the correct pattern for in and out transactions. This is to alert you that the software is being prevented from properly calculating the employee’s work hours. An employee’s transactions should alternate between In and Out, with no two Ins or Outs in a row. (The In transactions are the ones with a red arrow and the outs have nothing in that column.) If an employee’s name is in red, there’s an excellent chance that they have forgotten to clock in or out and thus have two Ins or two Outs in a row. To correct this, use the Quick Buttons at the top of the screen to insert the missing a clock-in or clock-out for the employee.

Overtime will only be applied if it fits the overtime rules you have previously set. One way around that would be to manually insert an amount of time. For instance, if Bob comes in for 2 hours on his day off, but you want those 2 hours paid at an overtime rate of 2x regular pay, insert 4 hours of regular time and then add a note to the transactions in case you have to reference it later.

That’s a feature we call “Login Accounts.” When it’s set up, when the supervisor logs into TimePilot Central, they’ll see just the Company(ies), Location(s), Department(s) or Shift(s) you specified. Click here to learn how to set them up and see an example.

The vast majority of unhandled exception errors can be solved by updating your TimePilot software to the latest version. In TimePilot Central, look under the “Software” heading; if you need to update, there will be a link there. Click the link to update.

We strongly suggest processing your pay period. This takes all the clock-in and clock-out data collected between the start of the period and the end of the period and places it in a separate file along with all the settings (rounding, auto-lunch, etc.) that were in effect at the time. It’s essentially a “snapshot” of the pay period. Once it’s created, you can print reports and export to your payroll software or service. For complete instructions click here.

First, please remember that all of our clocks keep the last 12,000 clock-ins and clock-outs in the clock’s memory, even after you’ve downloaded them, so even though you don’t see the data, it’s almost always still available. Some of the more common errors include:

1. Confusing “importing” data with “Processing a Pay Period,” and processing data before the pay period is over. Importing means bringing the data collected by Extreme Blue Enhanced, Vetro or Tap clocks into the TimePilot database. That’s done several ways, including via the Cloud (Extreme Blue Enhanced, Vetro, Tap), the USB drive (Vetro) or USB cable (Tap).

   You can import your data as often as you want, but processing your data should be done only after the pay period is complete.

   To illustrate the problem, imagine this situation: Mary’s pay period ends at midnight on Friday, and she imports the data from her clocks into the TimePilot software at the end of each workday. Friday afternoon, she decides to get a jump on payroll and processes her pay period. Monday morning, she’s looking over the data for payroll and sees that quite a few clock-outs are missing. That’s because she processed the pay period before her employees were able to clock out on Friday. What should she do? Perform a “Reverse the Pay Period” (instructions here) and re-process the pay period.

2. Setting an incorrect time and/or date on the clocks. This is especially common just after New Year’s Day. For example: On January 5, 2025, Joe sets up a Vetro system. When setting the date and time on the clock, he mistakenly enters 01/05/24. His employees clock in and out as usual, but when he extracts the pay period on January 16, 2025, he receives a message saying there were no transactions during the pay period. That’s because each transaction was recorded as occurring in January 2024 instead of January 2025. What should he do? Right-click the erroneous transaction and edit the transaction to correct it. Repeat for each transaction.

When all else fails, you can start all over by re-downloading the data from the clock’s memory. This is called “setting back the pointer,” and is best done with the help of a TimePilot tech support specialist. You can contact them by phone at 630-879-6400 or online.

We have an article answering all of those questions right here, but here are short answers to each question:

1. What is Processing a Pay Period?
   Processing a Pay Period is taking the data that occurred between two times and dates—usually the start and the end of your pay period—and creating a separate database with just that data in it. When you “process” a pay period, the employees’ profiles and all of your pay policies accompany the data.
   
   
2. Why is it important?
   Each time you collect the data from your TimePilot clocks, your employees’ clock-ins and clock-outs accumulate in the TimePilot software. (You can see them in TimePilot Central.) They build up fast: If you have 15 employees clocking in or out four times a day, that’s 60 transactions a day, 300 a week, 1,200 a month, more than 14,000 a year. That’s a lot of data.
   
   That’s why we strongly recommend extracting your transactions at the end of your pay period.
   To visualize the concept, imagine the database is a huge pot—we’ll call it “Current Transactions.” Every day, more and more clock-ins and clock-outs are dumped into the pot. Now it’s the end of a two-week pay period, so you want to remove just clock-ins and clock-outs for the last two weeks from the pot. With the TimePilot Central software, you grab those transactions and move them to a separate, smaller pot. In the smaller pot, it’s much easier to see what you have and it keeps the big pot from eventually overflowing. You can also run reports and get the data ready for payroll.
   
   As we said earlier, when you process a pay period, the employees’ profiles and all of your pay policies accompany the data, creating a snapshot of your company in that time period. That’s important, because it can get pretty confusing if you change your pay policies or add or subtract employees six months down the road and haven’t processed your pay periods.
   
   Another benefit is that processing your pay periods keeps things nice and neat for your recordkeeping. You can also save processed pay periods to a CD or external hard drive for backup.
   
   
3. Am I required to do it?
   No. Some of our customers never do it. But it’s a very simple process—the instructions are here—and you can save yourself lots of headaches by taking just a moment or two and doing it.

No problem. Using the example of the pot of transactions that we used to illustrate the concept above, you just dump the extracted transactions back into the big pot and do the extraction again. We call it “Reverse Extraction,” and here’s an article that describes how it works and how to do it.

No, you won’t. The employee and transaction data won’t be affected if you re-install the program because the TimePilot program and the database that contains the employee data are kept in separate files on your computer or the Cloud, much like the documents you create with your word processing program are stored separately.

Your product number is the first four digits of your license registration number. You can find your registration number on a sticker attached to the printed warranty information that came with your product or you can find it here.

There are three things to check:

1. Check all cable connections between the computer, the TimePilot USB adaptor and the timeclock station to make sure they are secure.
2. Turn off your computer’s power-saving settings, including those for the USB ports. Here’s how:
   1. Click the “Start” button at the bottom of your screen and choose “Control Panel.”
   2. Click “System.” The System Properties box will open.
   3. Click the Hardware tab, then the Device Manager button. The Device Manager box will open.
   4. Expand the “Universal Serial Bus controllers” by clicking on the + to the left of the words (see screenshot below).
      
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   5. Right-click on the first “USB Root Hub” item that appears (See screenshot below) and choose “Properties” from the pop-up menu.
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   6. Click the “Power Management” tab and uncheck the “Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power” box. Click OK.
   7. Repeat the process above for each of the USB Root Hubs that appears in the Device Manager menu, then close the Device Manager box and click OK to close the Control Panel.
3. On some computers, the USB ports are sub-standard. If you’re going to use the TimePilot system on such a machine, you’ll need to connect the TimePilot USB Adaptor to a powered USB hub, which then connects to your USB port. The hub reduces electronic noise on the USB port. Be sure to use a “powered” hub—one that comes with its own power supply and plugs into an electrical outlet. These inexpensive devices are available at any store that sells computer supplies.

Uncheck the “Active” checkbox in the employee’s profile. This will prohibit the employee from clocking in and out but will allow the employees’ information to remain in the system for processing payroll. Marking in an employee “Inactive” is recommended over deleting an employee. If an employee is deleted, all past information associated with this employee will be disconnected.

No, but you’ll need to assign those employees the “No Shift” option when you’re setting them up in the system (TimePilot Central > Setup > Profile Setup). 

Use TimePilot Central to check the employee’s Pay Type and make sure that he or she qualifies for holiday, vacation or sick time. For example, if an employee is assigned a Pay Type that qualifies for holiday time, then any hours inserted either automatically or manually will be added to the “Regular Total” in the reports.

The Alternate ID field is used to associate employees set up in TimePilot with any ID numbering your company may already be using for the employees, such as within your accounting or payroll system. The ID is simply for your reference.

Check the pay period definition to make sure that the beginning and end of the pay period, including the time of day, are set correctly. To view the definition, start TimePilot Central, then click the “Setup” menu and choose “Company Setup.”

Also, make sure that each employee is assigned to the correct company. When a pay period is extracted it removes transactions from the list of “Current Transactions” and places it in a separate file specific to a pay period and company. The removed transactions are now referred to a “Past Pay Period” or an “Extracted Pay Period.”

TimePilot Central does not automatically refresh. To see any changes to the database, click on a different employee to display their transactions, and then click back on the original employee. Any new transactions should now be displayed.

Also, the On Site and Off Site buttons do not create a transaction in the database. To create transactions that are used to calculate time, the employee should use the In and Out buttons and not the On Site/Off Site buttons.

The “–:–” is by design and not a problem. It’s a signal to the employee that they have created an “exception.” What this means is that at some point they did one of the following:

• Forgot to clock out or in.
• Clocked in when they should have clocked out.
• Clocked out when they should have clocked in.

As a result, their transactions don’t have the necessary alternating “IN” and “OUT” pattern. (The exception should also be spotted by a supervisor using the password-protected TimePilot Central in the TimePilot software. The software will display the employee’s name in red.)

To make the correction, the supervisor will open TimePilot Central, view the employee’s transactions and make the appropriate changes to restore the perfect in/out pattern. When the supervisor clicks the employee’s name, just his or her transactions are displayed. In the list of transactions, clock-ins are identified by a red triangle to the left of the employee’s name; clock-outs are blank. A perfect set of transactions for an employee will have lines with a red triangle alternating with blank lines. TimePilot will display in red what it believes to be the incorrect transaction.

The clock will display the accumulated hours correctly the next time the employee clocks in.

Yes. Whether an employee automatically receives holiday pay is determined by the Pay Class that was assigned to them when their profile was created in the TimePilot software. If your current Pay Class includes automatic holiday pay, you’ll need to create a second Pay Class that does not, and assign that Pay Class to that employee.

When you set up your employee, you assigned them to a Pay Class that that you created that includes automatic holiday insertion. To have an employee not automatically receive holiday pay, create another Pay Class that does not include automatic holiday insertion and assign that employee to that Pay Class. As a note, the holidays are inserted into the future, so to view them in the “Unprocessed Transactions” view, you will need to change the dropdown from “Unprocessed to Date” to “Unprocessed All.”

Click the “Reports” tab on the left side of TimePilot Central 5. On the screen that appears, you’ll see five main report categories: Memorized Reports, Summary Reports, Transaction Reports, Administrative Reports and Profile Reports. In the Transaction Reports category, click the icon labeled “Transaction.”

A. When that report opens, you can customize it so that it fits your needs. To get a list of each employee’s transactions, go to the top of the screen where the employee’s name is shown. Click the dropdown arrow and select “All Employees” from the list that appears. You can change the date range of the report with the other menu items at the top of the screen. And if you click the Customize button at the top left, you can add or delete columns of data in the report.

For more on reports, see this page in the TimePilot 5 help.