What's new in each of the last few ShopClock-3 updates

Version 3.0.65.3

Warning: Windows XP computers must be updated to Service Pack 3 before installing this update. Right Click on your "My Computer" icon and select "Properties" from the popup menu to see which Service Pack is currently installed on your computer.

ShopClock version 3.0.65.3 is wrap up of all the changes made to ShopClock last year ( versions 3.0.64.xx).

We modified the Auto Lunch function such that lunches are only applied to days when the employee worked over X hours without taking a lunch. That is on those days with only one time card session.

We made several changes to increase compatibility with Windows 7:

• Changed the screen graphics to support the HDPI feature which Windows 7 promotes. This allows you to keep the high screen resolution often found on new flat panel monitors, while increasing size of the font and icons displayed on the screen.
• Changed the location of backup files and error logs to the Program Data folder, and in the case of the single user data base, the location of the data file from the program folder to the AppData folder located in the users documents. Although most ShopClock users will not even notice this change, it means that you will have a different database associated with each login profile. If you are using a single computer for you business, you should use a single standard user account for running ShopClock. One benefit of this is that Standard Users cannot change the system time used by ShopClock. If you are a bookkeeper working for several other business you can set up a User Profile (separate login) for each business and then connect to that business via a VPN connection. ShopClock will then behave the same as if you were actually at that location. Change users and you will be working on a different account.

Added the ability to enter "TimeWorked" from the managed time ca lander of the Admin window. TimeWorked is different from the other categories of managed time (Vacation, Sick, PTO, etc) in that it just like "Hours Worked": it will count towards overtime and can be used to accrue other categories of managed time. The real difference between TimeWorked and HoursWorked is that TimeWorked can only be entered via the managed time calendar by the administrator, while HoursWorked can only be entered by clocking in and out of the clock (or editing a time card).

TimeWorked has three main uses:

• It can be used to quickly enter previously worked pay periods
• It can be used to enter time on days in the future. This will let the administrator complete a pay period early by guessing how many hours employees will work in the future, entering the time and then running the Pay Period Processing report prior to the end of the actual pay period.
• It can be used to add time to a time card when an employee worked off site and was not able to clock in or out.

In order to enter TimeWorked, the administrator need only select the employee, open the managed time calendar, click on the date, select "TimeWorked" and enter the desired number of hours.

Added the option of allowing managed time to be managed via the employee calendar when the Padlock is open. After this option is enabled (via the button on the miscellaneous setup task of the admin window), managed time can be approved or disallowed,, added or deleted by opening the padlock instead of the admin window.

Added the option of displaying ALL of the managed time related to a date when that date is clicked on. Previously only Other employees Vacation and PTO time was displayed. The option is located on the Miscellaneous Setup task of the admin window.

Fixed bug which prevented Auto Accrual from running completely when a pay period was closed.

Fixed bug in hours worked Day by Day management report.

Now employees (as well as the administrator) can set or change their passwords. The employees must first open their time card to confirm that they know the current password. The password can then be changed by clicking on the "Set Employee Password" option of the Administration menu.

ShopClock now supports the SecuGen Hamster Plus finger print reader (purchased separately). When using the finger print reader, the employees click on their name and then touch the finger print reader(instead of entering a password) to verify their identity. If their identity is verified, the timecard is displayed.

Current time cards (as well as closed time cards) can now be edited from the Admin Window via the Examine/Edit Pay Periods task

Version 3.0.63

Extensively reworked the Accrual System:

• The Accrual system now keeps of journal of every change made to the number of hours of managed time available. This journal can be edited by the administrator and viewed by the employees.
• Hours can now be accrued on either a Per Pay Period Basis or, as before, on a Per Hour Worked Basis .
• The accrual wizard can now be automatically run whenever a pay period is closed
• The accrual wizard can be re-run when ever necessary. Entries in the journal are modified to match any settings that may have been changed since it was last run.

When the managed time journals are created, the current amount of available managed time is added as the first journal entry.

Added an option for explicitly tracking Un-Compensated Time Off. This category of managed time is not accrued, but the journal tracks allocations and can be cleared whenever you wish - perhaps annually. The goal is to provide an easy way of monitoring the amount of Un-Compensated Time Off an employee is using.

We've changed the way that Salary Hours are handled. Our goal is for employees on salary to be able to clock in/out so attendance can be monitored, but not to have any of the clocked data (Regular Hours, OverTime Hours, and Double Overtime Hours) exported to your payroll system. Thus, if there are any Salary Hours on the current time card then they will be exported if you export the data. Note: if you are exporting Salary Hours to QuickBooks you will need to add 'Salary Hours' as a new Payroll Item to QuickBooks. If an employee is on salary, they can still clock in/out so that attendance can be monitored and if you wish managed time accrued. When Salary Hours are present on the time card, clocked time is NOT exported.

Both Salary Hours and Clocked time are included on the Pay Period Processing Report, but Salary Hours are not included in the Total Hours column. This makes it easy to compare Salary Hours to actual Clocked Time.

Added an option to display the Day of the Week on each time card session. (the option is under the Admin Menu of the time clock window.

Edited sessions are printed in Bold when the time cards are printed.

In Version 3.0.62

Added the ability to re open closed pay periods to the 'Examine Closed Pay Periods task Closed Pay Periods can be re opened for a single employee or for all employees.

To prevent any possibility of double clicking the 'ShopClock' button remains disabled after being clicked until another employees time card is displayed.

Modified the QuickBooks import function so that Canadian SIN numbers can be imported as well as the U.S. SS Numbers

The Employee Comment displayed above the Managed Time Calendar can now be cleared by clicking on it.

Added an Auto-Lunch feature. configuration is done in the Miscellaneous Setup task of the Admin Window. You need to tell the system how many hours an employee must work before the lunch break an be applied to that day. The Auto Lunches are applied from the Pay Period Processing task. This must be done prior to running any of the reports, and it can be done as often as necessary.

Modified the Add and Delete Holiday hours functions in the Managed Time Calendar so that Holidays hours can be applied to particular departments as well as all active employees and the currently selected employee. Just select the department you wish to work with prior to opening the Managed Time Calendar.

In Version 3.0.61

Added drop down controls to the Active and Department column filters. When the Admin window is first opened the Active employees are selected. To select inactive employees click on the drop down arrow in the Active column and select No. To see both inactive and active employees at the same time just toggle the filter buttons off. When the drop down arrow in the Department filter is clicked the desired department can be selected by simply clicking on that department in the drop down list. To see employees from all departments at the same time either select the "Blank" department from the drop down list or turn the filters off.

Pay Period summary reports can now be generated a select department as well as the currently selected employee. Just select the desired department by clicking on the department name in the department filters drop down list. To run the report for all employees just select the blank department line from the drop down. you may want to sort the employees by department by clicking on the Department column heading.

"The Pay Period summary report can be grouped by employee (all pay periods for the same employee printed before going on to the next employee) or by pay period (the data for all employees, or those of the selected department, is printed before going on to the next pay period.

Added a new set of management reports: The total hours worked per day, week, month, or quarter for the currently listed group of employees for the selected year. To generate this report for a particular department just select that department from the departments columns filter drop down list. This report can be exported as a CSV (comma separated values) file, which can be opened by Excel. If you export the report to a previously saved version of the report (for example the same report for a previous year) you will be given the option of either over writing the file or appending the new report to the previous report. This lets you combine multiple years.

Added a Tardiness or Early/Late report to the Attendance tracking group. This is visual report (it does not print) which colors dates on the calendar shades of blue or red depending on whether the employee clocked in early or late on that date. The data can be processed assuming employees were to start on either the hour or the half hour. See Quick Help in Attendance Tracking for details.

In Version 3.0.60

The hours column and time card analysis can now be displayed in hours:minutes:seconds format (hh:mm:ss)as well as decimal hours.To change from one format to the other use the "Display Time In" option of the Admin menu. Each ShopClock client can be set to which ever display mode you like.

Session hours, daily totals, and weekly totals of the Pay Period Processing report are now displayed in the same format (decimal hours or hh:mm:ss) that is selected for the employee totals.

Modified the administrators Managed Time Calendar such that requests for zero hours of vacation, sick, PTO, and bereavement time can be approved or deleted. This provides a way for employees to request uncompensated time off Just have them request "Zero" hours of whatever category you want them to use. No time will be added to time card but everyone will be able to see the request.

Added a new button above the time card for employees to use to bring up the Request Calendar. It does the same thing that pressing "F12" or clicking on the "Request Time Off" option of the "Quick Info" menu did. It's just easier to find.

Fixed a bug which was preventing some instances of managed time from being accrued. Closed pay periods which were not processed prior to his will now be processed.

The employees allowed to clock in or out on any particular ShopCock client can now be limited to a particular department. The Department is selected on the Department Setup Task.

Edited times (in or out) are now colored red, and when a session is clocked out automatically the time out is colored blue.

Added the option of grouping the Pay Period Summary Report by Pay Periods as well as by employees. When grouped by pay period, all employees for a pay period are printed before going on the the next pay period. When grouped by employee are pay periods for each pay period are printed before going on to the next employee.

In Version 3.0.59

Fixed three bugs found in version 3.0.58:

• Accrual Wizard didn't process any employees because it believe them all to be inactive.
• Accrual Wizard incorrectly calculated the hours in the accrual period which had been previously processed.
• Attendance Wizard only showed days when more than one employee was working. Now show dates when more than zero worked

In Version 3.0.58

This Page

This page will be automatically displayed the first time the Admin Window is opened after a new update. After that you can see again only by clicking on the "What's New In This Version" phrase in the upper right corner of the admin window.

Departments

There are two main reasons to use departments.

• Different departments can use different overtime calculation rules. Perhaps you have a group of employees who are exempt from overtime. Just create a department and set the overtime rule for members of that department to "None" and then in the Add/Edit employee grid assign the appropriate employees to that department.
  
• When the Managed time calendars display the time off of Other Employees they are limited to employees in the same department as the current employee. This makes it much easier for employees to determine which vacation/pto days are available

To use departments they must first be Enabled, and defined in the Department Setup task of the Admin Window. They and be Disabled and Enabled at any time When they are disabled shopclock works exactly as it did before the were enabled.

California Overtime Rule Options

You can now choose to calculate overtime in California via either the Pyramiding or Non-Pyramiding method. See the Quick Help page of the Pay Period Process Task for more info and be sure to google "overtime pyramiding".

Fixed the Eligibility Date Problem

(it was being ignored)

Added a New Short Cut for Dispensing Managed Time

Any managed time action (adding or deleting any kind of managed time to a calendar date) can be quickly repeated by holding down the control key while clicking on the date. For example, this will allow you to add vacation time to a date with just a single click of the mouse.

Employees can now be filtered on the basis of the Active Column

This allows you to hide all of the inactive employees in the Add/Edit Employee Grid. You can also filter employees by Department (at the same time).

More control over the update process

Updates can be scheduled with the windows scheduler by clicking on All Programs/ShopClock-7k/Setup Automatic Updates. This method allows you to choose when and how updates are managed. For the most transparent update process choose the have the updates downloaded and installed automatically. Once an update has been installed it will no longer be downloaded. If it is not installed then the next time the computer checks for updates it will be found and downloaded again. It works best to install the updates when they are first found because you won't be asked repeatedly to download and/or install them. Unfortunately, this needs to be reset after each update or you will not receive the next update automatically.

You can also check for updates from within shopclock by clicking on the 'Check for Updates' option of the Help menu