Q. Is there any way to track how many days off an employee has taken all year?

A. One way to see how much holiday/sick/
vacation/PTO time an employee has taken is to run a report and change the beginning date to show the whole year, or however much time you would like to view.

To change the start and end dates of any report, click the calendar icon next to the “From” and “To” fields, choose your dates, then click "Refresh."

Q. Can TimePilot Central run on a Microsoft Surface tablet? We're thinking about shifting from a PC to a Surface. The tablet does not have a CD drive, so can we  download the TimePilot software from your web site and use our existing CD license key? And how can we move the existing database to the tablet?

A. You can run our software on a Surface tablet only if the tablet is running a full version of Windows (7, 8 or 10).

You can download all of the software directly from our website here.

To move the database to the tablet, you'll find the database location and moving the entire database folder from one computer to the other. Here is a link to an article in one of our past newsletters that will walk you through it.

Q. I've received the TimePilot Tap clock that we're adding to our Vetro system. How do I set up the iButtons for this unit?

A. They're already set up. Employees can start using the Tap clock immedately. When you start the Tap Manager software and plug the clock into your PC to collect the data, the TimePilot software matches up the iButton number with the employee's name. For more on this topic, see the "Adding a TimePilot Tap Clock to Your System" quick start guide.

Q. With Extreme Blue Enhanced, let's say an employee clocks in at clock #1 in the morning, clocks out at clock #2 for lunch, then clocks back in at clock #2 when lunch is done and clocks out at clock #1 at the end of the day. Two different iPhones collecting the data, one at each clock. Where would the hours be allocated, the clock at  which the employee clocks in, or out?

A. Neither. Our clocks simply record an iButton number and the time and date. All of the calculating and allocation is done in the TimePilot software. The software looks at the iButton number and matches it to an employee's profile. You will be able to see at which clock each transaction took place by looking under the “Clock Name” column of the transaction. If you do not see this column, you can add it by right-clicking on the green column header, then choose the “Clock Name” column and save.

 

No rest for college students. In 1979, it took a student working at minimum wage ($2.90 per hour) 385.5 hours to pay off one year of the average college tuition. If a student worked a full-time job (40 hours a week) for an entire summer, he or she would have worked 480 hours. Today, it takes 2,229 hours working at the federal minimum wage ($7.25 per hour) to pay off one year of the average college tuition. The average full-time American employee works 2,000 hours a year.

Source

4+4 > 8? Eight straight hours of sleep has not always been the norm. Until the spread of artificial light in the 18th and 19th centuries, our ancestors slept in two shifts of roughly four hours each, with an hour or two of wakefulness in between. The scientific evidence suggests that our biology is better adapted to what’s often called “segmented sleep” than to our own "straight eight."

Source

Welcome!
TimePilot newsletter No. 44

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

In each issue, 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: Tracking days off; TimePilot on a tablet.
  • TimePilot Lead Story: Holiday Schedules.
  • Cool Stuff: Google Maps and traffic.
  • The Deal: 25% off iButtons.

TimePilot Best Practices

All About
Holiday Schedules

(Adapted from an article that originally ran in our November 2012 newsletter) 

Setting up holiday schedules in the TimePilot software is pretty straightforward, but there are some things you can do that will get the job done more quickly and efficiently.

When you installed the TimePilot Central software, you created one or more holiday schedules and then assigned one to each employee.

Now, each time you start TimePilot Central, the software looks at your holiday schedule(s) and determines if a holiday has occurred since the last time the software was started. If a holiday has occurred, the software then runs down the list of employees, looking for those with a holiday schedule that includes that holiday. When it finds one, it inserts into the employee’s record the number of hours you specified when you set up the schedule.

So how can you handle your holiday schedules more efficiently? Here are a few suggestions:

  • It’s tempting to label your holiday schedules something like “Salaried Holidays 2015” or “Hourly Holidays 2015.” That’s a very clear way to do it, but by making the schedules specific to certain years, you’re going to have to create new ones every year (“Salaried Holidays 2016,” “Salaried Holidays 2017,” “Salaried Holidays 2018,” etc.) And then you’ll have to go through every employee’s profile every year to assign them that year’s holiday schedule. That’s too much work!

    Make it easy on yourself by giving your holiday schedules generic names like “Salaried Holiday Schedule" or “Hourly Holiday Schedule.” Then all you have to do at the end of the year is return to that schedule and change the dates of the upcoming year's holidays. Handling it this way lets you avoid the drudgery of changing each employee's profile, as you would if you had created a schedule named after a year (for instance, "Salaried Holidays 2013.") Where in the software do you change the schedules? In TimePilot Central, click “Setup,” then “Holiday Setup,” then highlight the schedule you want to change and click “Edit a Holiday Schedule.”

  • Want to save even more time? When you're entering your holiday schedule in the TimePilot software, you'll see slots for 20 holidays. Most companies don’t have 20 holidays in a single year. (If your company does, please let us know!) After you fill in your holidays for the upcoming year, keep going and fill the remaining slots with the holidays for the following year, too.

  • What happens if you realize on Monday, December 28, just before extracting your pay period, that you've forgotten to include Christmas as a holiday on your schedule? You could insert the holiday time for every employee, but that's probably quite time-consuming. A simpler choice would be to add the missing holiday to the holiday schedule and then 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 December 23.

    4. Click OK. The software will inspect the newly changed holiday schedule, see that the December 25 holiday is missing from the appropriate employees' work hours in Current Transactions and insert the missing transactions where needed automatically.

This month’s special offer to TimePilot newsletter readers:

25% off iButtons!


Choose your color, choose your quantity!

5 iButtons: $30 (regularly $39.50)
10 iButtons: $44 (reg. $59)
30 iButtons: $119 (reg. $159)
50 iButtons: $187 (reg. $249)
100 iButtons: $337 (reg. $449)
200 iButtons: $536 (reg. $715)

These prices are available for a limited time. 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.

Google Maps: Traffic

If you've got a smartphone, you probably have a map app. One of the coolest uses for the app is to check traffic when you're traveling. If you use Google Maps (the iPhone or Android app or the PC version) you can turn on traffic reports by tapping (or clicking) the menu icon in the top left corner of the screen and choosing "Traffic."

Now on your maps you'll see live reports: red where there's stopped traffic, yellow where it's slowed and icons indicating the cause: construction, accident, etc. We've found it to be amazingly accurate: Recently one of our employees was able to avoid a 5-mile highway backup in the middle of nowhere simply by looking at his phone. To turn off the traffic report, tap the menu icon again and tap "Traffic." 

If you use Apple Maps, follow the instructions above to turn on traffic reports; the maps will appear a little different, but they're equally effective.

Google Maps