TimePilot Tips

Q. The change from Daylight Saving Time to Standard Time is Sunday, November 4. Do I need to change the time on my TimePilot clock?

A. It depends on how you use your clock and what clock you have. Generally, except for TimePilot Extreme, clocks that are permanently connected to your PC or network will make the change automatically, as long as your PC or network is set to make the change. Clocks that are used without a permanent connection need to be updated manually. Here's a list:

TimePilot Vetro: If you use Vetro in Standalone Mode (you collect the clock-ins with your USB drive), you'll need to change the time manually. If your Vetro is cabled to your network, the change will be automatic.

TimePilot Tap: If you use Tap as a portable clock (not permanently cabled to your PC), you'll need to change the time manually. If you use your Tap as a desktop timeclock and keep it cabled to your PC, the change will be automatic.

TimePilot Extreme: The change is automatic (it's handled by Extreme Data Manager).

TimePilot PC: The change is automatic.

TimePilot Standard: The change is automatic.

TimePilot iPhone App: The change is automatic.

For instructions on how to change the time on your clock, please see your user manual.

Q. My TimePilot software says it has an update, but I'm worried about losing my data when it updates. Will this happen?

A. Uninstalling the software will not delete any of your data. Your database is stored separately from program files by default. It's the same principle used by Microsoft Office: files created by Word or Excel are kept in a different folder than the program itself, so if you have to re-install the program your Word or Excel files aren't in jeopardy.

Q. TimePilot Central is showing clock-ins and clock-outs that date back to August. How do I get rid of all but the current dates?

A. The past dates can either be extracted to a past pay period or deleted. Please see this article from the May issue of the newsletter or Page 36 of your user manual for information on extracting past pay periods.

Q. How do I change the name of my Vetro clock?

A. Changing the name of your Vetro clock is done within the Vetro Data Manager. In TimePilot Central, go to Setup > Vetro Data Manager. Right-click the image of the clock whose name you want to change, then choose USB Functions > Change Clock Settings. From there follow the directions on the screen.

Q. After collecting the data from our Vetro, when we insert the USB drive into our PC, nothing happens. What should we do?

A. When you insert the USB drive into your PC, the first thing the software does is look for a small file called "V4520" on the drive. If that file is missing, the data won't transfer. To correct the problem, you'll need to put that file back on your USB drive. It's a quick and simple process. Here's what to do:

  1. Go to Start > All Programs > TimePilot IV > TimePilot Utilities > TimePilot Support Utility.
  2. In the box that appears, click "Initialize USB Drive" and follow the instructions that appear. The V4520 file will be loaded on to your USB drive and you'll be good to go.
 

Stop the train!: When we switch from Daylight Saving Time to standard time and the clocks fall back one hour next weekend, all Amtrak trains in the U.S. that are running on time will stop around 2 a.m. and wait one hour before resuming. Overnight passengers are often surprised to find their train at a dead stop and their travel time an hour longer than expected. At the spring Daylight Saving Time change, trains instantaneously become an hour behind schedule at 2 a.m., but they just keep going and do their best to make up the time.

Source

Look both ways: According to a Carnegie Mellon Institute study (corroborated by the University of Michigan), it was determined that pedestrians were three times more likely to be killed by a car just after making the switch from Daylight Saving Time to Standard Time. Scientists have speculated that drivers go through a biologic adjustment period as dusk approaches, and when we go off DST, darkness falls before this adjustment is made.

Source

Time after time after time: "Time" is the most used noun in the English language. It's also the most used noun in this newsletter—it appears as a noun 36 times! And it appears as a noun or a part of another word (like "TimePilot") 84 times!

Source
Welcome!
TimePilot newsletter No. 19

Whether you're a current or future TimePilot customer, we're glad to see you.

Every month we'll offer news about TimePilot products, tips on how to use them more efficiently, some of the "cool stuff" our employees have come across and a special deal available only to those who receive this newsletter!

In this issue:

  • TimePilot Tips: Daylight Saving Time and TimePilot.
  • TimePilot Best Practices: How to use TimePilot Central more efficiently.
  • Cool Stuff: GorillaPod Mobile.
  • The Deal: $20 off Blue Dot Receptor.

TimePilot Best Practices

Inside TimePilot Central

If you use TimePilot on a daily or weekly basis, you probably spend a lot of time with TimePilot Central. The TimePilot Central screen contains lots of data; sometimes you can become more efficient by simplifying things.

In TimePilot Central, there are several ways to do this:

The quickest way is to display only the columns you need in the Transaction List. You can have as many as 32 columns of data for each transaction. Few people need that much, so TimePilot gives you a way to weed out the columns you don’t want. Here’s how:

With TimePilot Central displaying All Transactions,  right-click the green bar at the top of the transactions. A pop-up box will appear listing all 32 columns, with checkboxes for each. Remove the checks (by clicking on the box) for any category you don’t need to see.

You can also customize the columns you see when you view an individual employee's transactions. Just repeat the process above after double-clicking an employee's name to see just their transactions.

Now that you’ve pruned your columns, let’s say you want to see the latest clock-ins and clock-outs at the top of the screen. Just click the “Date” header and the transactions will re-sort themselves, with the latest at the top. If you don’t like what you see, click the Date header again to re-arrange them to put the latest at the bottom.

A refresher: In the first column, you’ll see either a red triangle, a “+” sign or nothing at all. The red triangle indicates a clock-in, nothing at all indicates a clock-out, and the “+” means a supervisor has inserted a clock-in or clock-out or a block of time.

If all is well, when you click on an employee’s name in the employee list to view just his or her transactions, you should see a pattern of alternating red triangles and blank spaces. Because the human brain is faster than software at distinguishing patterns, we designed the “triangle-blank-triangle-blank” pattern to be easy to spot.

If you see two triangles or two blanks in a row, that indicates that the employee probably has forgotten to clock in or out. In this case, the software will also give you a second hint: the employee’s name in the employee list will be in red.

If you spot a transaction that needs to be corrected, there are a couple of ways to do it:

  • Double-click the transaction. A window will appear that lists all of the transaction’s details, and you can make the changes there. There’s also a space for Notes, so you can attach a comment to the transaction; for instance: “Late arrival excused by John Smith.” A small icon that looks like an envelope will appear next to the transaction in the list. (Don’t see it? Make sure you display the Notes column as described at the start of this article.)
  • Right-click the transaction. A pop-up menu will give you a variety of choices: Among them are Modify, Delete, Insert an “In” Transaction, Insert an “Out” Transaction and Insert Time Amount (a block of time: a vacation day, for instance).

There’s one other option in the right-click pop-up menu that may be especially useful around this time of year. It’s called “Adjust Transaction Dates and Times.”

Let’s say that you forget to update the time on your TimePilot Vetro clock in standalone mode (you use your USB drive to collect data) to account for the November 4 change from Daylight Saving Time to Standard Time. Five days later, after downloading the hundreds of clock-ins and clock-outs that have been recorded by your Vetro, you realize that they’re all an hour later than they should be.

You could double-click each of those hundreds of transactions and make the change individually, but that’s going to take quite a while. Why not do it all at once? All you have to do is “Adjust Transaction Dates and Times.”

Here’s how:

  1. Click the first transaction you want to change, then scroll down, hold down the Control key on your keyboard and click the last transaction you want to change. This will highlight all the transactions that appear between the two transactions you clicked.
  2. Move your cursor anywhere within the highlighted area, then click your right mouse button. The only choice available to you will be “Adjust Transaction Dates and Times.” Click it.
  3. For this example, we want to subtract 60 minutes from each of the highlighted transactions, so enter -60 in the Minutes field and click OK. The software will “back up” all the highlighted transactions by an hour.

Now that the transactions are corrected, don’t forget to change the time on your clocks!


This month’s special offer
to TimePilot newsletter readers:

Blue Dot Receptor

 

 

For users of TimePilot PC, this device gives you an extra layer of security by allowing your employees to clock in with a tap of an iButton instead of clicking the image of a timeclock on their screens. For users of TimePilot Vetro and TimePilot Standard, it can be used to set up iButtons at the PC. This product is included in the TimePilot Extreme Starter Kit and is used to set up iButtons for the system.

Special price for newsletter readers:

Just $39!

(save $20 over list price)

To learn more about the deal, click here, visit www.TimePilot.com/newsletter/newsletter4.htm or call us at 1-630-879-6400.

Every once in a while, our employees come across “cool stuff.”
This is where they share their finds.

GorillaPod Mobile

Most modern smartphones have high-quality still and movie cameras. If you've got an iPhone 4 (now a couple of generations old), you've also got a 5 megapixel still camera and a high-definition video camera in your pocket. To take advantage of them to the fullest, you need very steady hands. Or a Gorillapod Mobile for iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S.

The GorillaPod Mobile is a desktop tripod that will hold your phone steady, but its legs are also bendable, so you can adjust the tripod's height or even hang it upside down from a pipe or a railing. It's also good for watching videos on your iPhone.

It's $19.95. For details, check out the manufacturer's site: http://joby.com/gorillamobile/iphone4