Q. How do I add vacation time for an employee?

A. You’ll use the Insert Time function. You can find it by clicking one of the black buttons at the top of TimePilot Central’s main screen (the sixth button from the left, to be exact).

With this function, a supervisor can insert a block of time for an individual employee into TimePilot Central. You can indicate the purpose of the inserted time in the “Transaction Type” field at the top of the box. Among the choices are Vacation, Sick Time, Lunch (if you don’t use TimePilot’s AutoLunch feature), Personal Time, Jury Duty, etc. You can designate the date and amount of time to be inserted and add a note explaining the situation.

Important: Be careful when picking a Transaction Type; depending upon the overtime policy you have set up in TimePilot, your choice here may or may not affect your employee's overtime hours.

By the way, you can also use this function to subtract time from an employee, if, for instance, an employee was paid inadvertently for hours they did not work in a previous pay period. To subtract time, click the "Negative Values" checkbox at the top right of the screen (the + signs will change to - signs next to the fields where you enter the amount of time added or subtracted) and continue as if you were adding time.

Q. Oops: I forgot to put July 4 in our holiday schedule. Is there a way to add it without having to make changes to all of our employees?

A. This is a perfect time to use TimePilot's “Check Holiday Transactions” feature. This feature looks at your holiday schedules and at your Current Transactions and adds missing holiday transactions. Here's how to use it:

  1. First, add the missing holiday to your holiday schedule(s) and save it (TimePilot Central > “Setup” menu > “Holiday Setup” > Click the schedule you want to change > “Edit a Holiday Schedule”), make the changes and click "Save." The date will show up in red, because it's in the past.
  2. Next, start "Check Holiday Transactions" (TimePilot Central > “Edit” menu > “Check Holiday Transactions”).
  3. In the box that pops up, click the down arrow and choose a date that occurs just before the date of the holiday you just entered in Step 1. In the example above, you might choose July 1.
  4. Click OK. The software will inspect the newly changed holiday schedule, see that the July 4 holiday is missing from the appropriate employees' work hours in Current Transactions and insert the missing transactions where needed automatically.

Q. If the Vetro is hooked up to our network, can we still pull reports/information from it via USB?

A. Absolutely. It’s a good backup to have, especially if (when?) your network goes down and you need to get your payroll out. In a nutshell, you’ll plug the USB drive into the side of the clock, download the data to the drive, plug the drive into your PC and upload the date into TimePilot Central. Detailed instructions are in the TimePilot Central Help files and also are available here.

Q. Can an employee clock in with their iButton and clock out with their personal ID number?

A. Yes. It’s no problem, and a good backup in the event an employee loses his or her iButton and hasn’t had a chance to get a new one from their supervisor.

When the employee enters their four-digit number on the clock's keypad, it will display their name as confirmation that they’ve entered the correct number. He or she then presses the "In" or "Out" key on the keypad to complete the process. The clock will display the employee’s name, date and time on its screen and beep twice to indicate that the process is complete.

Q. When I download the information from the Extreme clock, how long should it take? Do I just plug in the USB Drive get the info? What is gray fob for?

A. It depends upon how many transactions you’re downloading, but in 99.9% of cases downloading data to the USB Drive should only take a few seconds. The gray fob—we call it the Management iButton—is a security measure that keeps just anyone from downloading your clock-in and clock-out data. It is a special iButton that verifies that the user is authorized to download the data.

To collect your data, you remove the padlock (clearing the USB port at the bottom of the clock) and insert the USB Drive into the port. Then you tap the gray Management iButton to the “In” probe on the clock to start the download process. Here’s a link that explains the whole downloading process. The information is also available in the Help files in TimePilot Central.

Eons apart: You may have seen science fiction movies where a Tyrannosaurus Rex battles it out with a Stegosaurus. Didn’t happen: The two dinosaur species lived 85 million years apart. The dump truck-sized Stegosaurus with the barbed tail lived about 150 million years ago, while the T-Rex came on the scene only about 65 million years ago. That means that T-Rexes lived closer to "human time" than they did to "Stegosaurus time."

Source

Time Quotes:

“Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That’s relativity.”

Physicist Albert Einstein

“If you want to leave footprints in the sands of time, don't drag your feet.”

Writer Arnot L. Sheppard

"If you don't have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?"

Basketball coach John Wooden

Welcome!
TimePilot newsletter No. 35

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 Q&A: Vacations & holidays.
  • TimePilot Best Practices: All About Login Accounts.
  • Cool Stuff: The Kitchen Safe.
  • The Deal: Upgrade to TimePilot Enterprise for 20% off.

TimePilot Best Practices

All About
Login Accounts

(Reprinted from the TimePilot Help files.)

What are Login Accounts?

There might be a time when you want to give supervisors partial access to the TimePilot database. For instance, you might give a maintenance supervisor access to the transactions created by maintenance department employees, but not to the transactions created by employees in other departments. This is where you set up these permissions.

The employees granted the permission will log on to the system by choosing their User Name from the drop-down list (click the arrow to the right of "Administrator" to see the list) and entering the password they were assigned.

Here's how to set up a user login:

  1. Start TimePilot Central (you must have full administrative rights), click the Administrative menu, then "Login Account Setup."

  2. Administrator will always appear at the top of the list. This is the master login for your TimePilot system. If you click "Administrator, then the "Edit" button, you will be able to change the master password, but not the name (Administrator).

  3. To add another user, click the Add Login Account button.

  4. At the top of the screen that appears, enter the login name (of course, Administrator is already in use, so you'll need to choose something else) and create a password.

  5. If you wish, you can enter the name of the person who will be issued this access at the top right of the screen.

  6. Now decide how much access this person will have:

    Give this user full administrative rights: Full administrative rights means he or she can see and modify everything in your TimePilot system.

    Allow this user to modify the hardware setup: Do you want this user to be able to do things like change the time on your clocks, rename clocks, etc.? If so, click this checkbox.

    Read Only - Do not allow this user to edit transactions or setup information: Do you want to prevent this user from making any changes to your system, but give him or her the ability to see transactions and setup information? If so, click this checkbox.

    Company/Location/Department/Shift: This is where you can limit the parts of your organization that the new user can see and work with. As you click one of these four categories, the various companies, locations, departments and shifts you set up when you set up TimePilot will appear. You can give employees access to any or all.

  7. Click Save.

Here are some examples of how to put it to use (click any screenshot to see a larger version in your browser):

Example 1



The administrator has set up George Washington, a maintenance supervisor, with his own login (Dad1) and password (VF1778). George will be able to modify the TimePilot hardware, and when he starts TimePilot Central, he will be able to see only those employees who been assigned to the Maintenance Department. In addition, he will be able to modify any of those employees' transactions (because the "Read Only" box is not checked).

Example 2



The administrator has set up Abby Adams, a Human Resources supervisor, with her own login (2d1stldy) and password (HuMRez729?). Abby will be able to modify the TimePilot hardware and will be able to see and work with transactions generated by anyone in any department or shift who has been assigned to the Evanston location.

Example 3



The administrator has set up Tom Jefferson, an employee in Editorial, with a username (WM1762) and password (MrPrez1801-09). Tom cannot modify the TimePilot hardware, and is only allowed to view—not modify—transactions generated by Editorial employees. 

The deal

This month’s special offer to TimePilot newsletter readers:

20% off Upgrades to TimePilot Enterprise Edition!

Upgrading your TimePilot software enables you to create multiple Login Accounts (as described above) as well as many other features.

Special prices for newsletter readers:

Upgrades start at $119.20 (regularly $149).

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.

The Kitchen Safe

The Kitchen Safe is a cookie jar-like container with a time-lock lid. You fill the container with cookies or any other "forbidden" product, put on the lid and set the timer. You can't get to the contents until the time runs out.

The timer can run from 1 minute to 10 days. The device is available with a clear container (as seen at right) or white container.

Users have found it has helped them lose weight, reduce smoking, take medicine on time, cut spending and remove "distractions" (note the video game controller and cell phone in the photo!). Others have put a gift in the white version of the container and set the timer; the recipient can't see the gift or get it until the time runs out.

The Kitchen Safe