Econz Timesheet Date Select

Hello everyone! We are back with some wonderful news and improvements we just released with our Timecard GPS application. This one is related to Timesheet Signoff, we are now enabling the ability to search back in time for a specific timesheet, in case an employee needs to re-approve an edited timesheet or just maybe forgot to sign it...!

We start from the main screen and tap the menu icon on the top right of the screen (the one with the three dots), then select "Timesheet Signoff":

Then, you will notice a couple new things in the timesheet signoff login screen, first, the "Request timesheet for specified date" section with a Calendar icon, and right below it, a "Remember Me" check box, which we'll cover in an upcoming post. Let's go ahead and tap the Calendar!

We are presented with the option to select a specific date, we are going with October 30 for this example, then tap "OK" at the bottom right of the calendar screen.

The app will take us back to the login screen, so let's enter our password and select "LOGIN" to continue:

We will be presented with the timesheets that fall into the selected date. In this example we have it setup so the employee has to sign the timesheets for a weekly period, so that is what we are looking at. In the case of daily timesheets, we would only see that day we picked, and of course, it depends on if we do actually have punches on that date. 

This time we do, so we can review all of our entries and scroll to the bottom to sign:

As always, we will see the green thumbs up when the timesheet has been successfully submitted for approval:

There is a small timeout window after which you will be able to search and approve a different timesheet, just make sure to follow the process we just covered and you will be just fine!

That's all for today, stay tuned for more exciting news!

--Econz Team

Timecard Checker: iOS Task Search Improvement

Hello everyone, today we have an update we have done to our Timecard Checker version of the application. This comes hand in hand with being able to have checker users to select different jobs during the day and it's meant for companies that have a large amount of tasks for their staff to choose from (but of course, we recommend it for everyone!).

With this feature, employees will now be able to search for tasks within Timecard Checker and the way to do it is pretty simple. First, log into your own profile:

In this case we are clocking in, but it will work the exact same way when using the "CHANGE TASK" button:

Then, when displaying the list of jobs, notice that the app will have a "Find" section on top of the list. That is where you will search for the desired task.

Then, it's just a matter of typing the task name and then you will get the desired results! Note that this also works to search for subtasks.

This is now available on iOS, and we are soon to launch this for Android users as well, so stay tuned for more updates!

Until next time,

--Econz Team

Timecard v10 New Form Feature: Hold for Later

Hello everyone! Continuing with all of the excellent new features that our new version  Timecard v10 has, we are proud to show you today a very interesting quality of life improvement we have recently added to the Forms: hold for later forms!

As that name implies, the idea here is that you will be able to start a form while on a task and get back to it later, so the app will hold it for you, as the default behavior is to send the form to the server as soon as the task is changed.

In order to enable it, just go to the Settings on the main screen of the application and set the "All-day forms" option to ON:

Now, we are on a Task called "Meditek" so we want to open the Forms section and start filling out some data related to "Accommodation Expenses":

 

Of course, at this moment we could be on a business lunch and we need to travel back to our hotel after we are done. So we can tap "Done" on the top right and continue with our day, which in this case means switching to the "Travel" task:

Notice that when we access the same form while being on the "Travel" task, it will be completely blank:

So, now we have come back to our hotel room and we are ready to complete the form with the remaining information, so all we need to do is switch back to the "Meditek" task and when going to the forms section, you will notice that the app had saved all the data you entered for that specific task:

That's perfect! All that's left is to add the remaining information, take any needed pictures and tap "Done" when ready:

Once you clock out, the completed form will be sent to the server so that the Managers can access it via the Web Portal.

This is a wonderful time saving feature which will allow you to save and complete forms during your shift, and we really hope you like it! Let us know if you have any questions or comments below.

--Econz Team 

Timecard v10 Updates to Team Clock-in Display

Hello everyone! Today we are back with a great quality of feature that has been added to our Timecard v10 application. Our application will now make it easier for Team Leaders to visualize and have access to the profiles of the staff members that have been clocked in using the Team Clock-in feature. The application will now bring to the top of the list whoever is currently active; this way, you won't have to scroll over a long list of employees, which is particularly useful for those companies who have teams with a large group of members.

So, let's check it out! We are showing this with the perspective of a foreman, of course; we need to be clocked in first to be able to clock other team members in. Within the Main Screen, we open the Menu on the top right and select "Manage Team":

This is what the employee list looks like before clocking anyone in.

From here on, we can look for the employee that we need to punch in and tap his/her name:

Let's pick one of the last names on the list, we'll see how it will be brought to the top instantly!

And clocking in another name in the middle, the app will bring it to the top and sort it alphabetically to make it easier to find and manage:

That's all we have for today, this was a short but sweet one and we hope you take full advantage of this great improvement implemented to make your life much easier.

Until next time!

--Econz Team

The Weekly Employee Time Card With Answers Report

Going hand in hand with the Custom Premium Pay Questions, today we are going to show you an excellent report you can use to your advantage: The Weekly Employee Time Card With Answers Report.

This report bears some similarities to the Employee Time Card By Week Report, so this means you will be able to generate a PDF with your custom logo and have a beautiful, printable version of the end of day questions your employees have answered, along with their signatures.

The report can be found by going to the Reports tab and selecting "Weekly Employee Time Card With Answers Report", which can be found in the Customer Reports section:

Then, filter the report according to the date, users and teams that you need and finally click the "Generate PDF Report". Here is a sample of what the report look like:

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We are very proud to bring this excellent report to you and hope you can get the best out of it and make your company more productive, at the same time that you are keeping track of your employee's time, attendance and correct breaks and meal periods.

Until next time!

--Econz Team

The Forms Exclusion Filter

Hello everyone! This post is for all of you who already make use of our powerful Forms features (and of course, all of you who don't will be very interested in learning what Timecard v10 can do...). As you are probably aware already, Timecard can use Form Filters so that you only see them on certain jobs. This is incredibly useful since you can tie these forms to specific projects or activities that may need to have a very specific form that only applies to those tasks.

But there is another scenario that is the exact opposite of this situation... What if you have a large list of tasks that share a common form, but you don't need/want this form to show for one specific task (e.g. like "Travel Time", "Meeting", "Internal Training")? For that case, we have created the Exclusion Filter!

Let's see how to set it up: First we would go to the Administration tab and select "Manage Custom Fields/Forms":

Then we can choose the form that we want to add a task filter to (to prevent it showing on a specific set of tasks). For that, we scroll down until we find the "Exclusion" section:

Inside the text box is where we'll type the tasks that we want to have excluded from displaying the form in question. In this example, we are going to add the ones mentioned above:

Now, when we go back to Timecard v10, we should be able to clock in on any task other than the ones listed in the exclusion filter and see the "Property Damage Report" form:

But when we punch in to one of the three excluded tasks, the unneeded form will no longer be listed:

That's all for now! Let us know if you have any questions or comments below.

 

--Econz Team

Timecard v10: Auto Team Management

Hello everyone! Continuing our series for Timecard v10, in which we will go in detail about many new features our application has; we have something very interesting today, and that is Auto Team Management.

This is related to how the application manages team clock-in. With this feature, you will be able to decide how the app handles the punches of the team members without a phone. Let's see how it works and how you can set it up!

First, while clocked in as a Supervisor, tap the Menu icon on the top right of the screen:

Then, select the first option "Manage Team", which is the place you would normally go to manually clock team members in and out and handle their breaks:

Following that, tap the gear icon on the top right to access the team handling specific settings:

Once you do that, you will notice the following options:

Each of this settings will have a drop down menu so you can pick whether you want the application to Prompt you to take an action at the event you select, set it to Auto to take the action automatically for you, or set it to Off, so you won't be prompted but you will need remember to do each step manually. 

Those three actions take effect into the following settings:

• Manage Team on Clock-In: this step will prompt the supervisor to clock his/her team members in at the same time, or do it automatically. The default is Off, which means that each user will need to be clocked in manually.
• Manage Team on Clock-Out: by default the app is set to prompt the foreman to clock team members out, if this is set to Auto, then everyone will be clocked in at the same time that the supervisor clocks out, and setting it to Off will require the supervisor to always clock people out manually. This means that if the team leader clocks out without clocking the team members out first, they will remain clocked in.
• Manage Team on Change Task: this, of course, will change the way that tasks are handled, setting it to Prompt will ask the foreman if the team members should also be switched to the same task that person is changing to, and this will happen every time the task is changed. Using auto will skip the prompt and change everyone at the same time. Off will require each person's task to be changed manually.
• Manage Team on Break Start: same as above, but this happens when the team leader starts a meal or rest break, the default option is set to off, so each person would need to be sent to break manually.
• Manage Team on Break End: this works just like on Break Start, but of course, on Break End.

For this example, we will set it as follows:

So, when we are clocking in as a supervisor, if we have some team members we want to clock in, we have to do it manually for each person, so let's do that:

Now, when it's time to start a task, or take a meal break, we have it set to Auto, which means that when we take a break...

...then everyone who was clocked in, will be taken to break automatically:

Same thing will happen when ending said meal period.

Finally, we set the Clock-Out event to Prompt, which means that when we clock ourselves out, the application will ask us if we would like to clock our punched in team members, too:

And that's it! You can play around with the different options to see what fits your company the best, or ask us any questions so we can guide you and recommend the best of these useful combinations for your needs.

Until next time!

--Econz Team

Application Announcement: Timecard v10!

Hello everyone!

We have wonderful news we would like to share with you. As always, we are looking to improve our products looking for ways to give you, our valued customers, the best workforce management application in the market. So, we would like to present you with the Timecard v10 application:

With its new redesigned interface, you will be able to do everything that Timecard already does, plus a list of new features which include the following and more to come:

• Calendar Features
• Additional PDF form capabilities
• PDF confirmation of forms sent back to employees
• New Form Filters
• New Settings for Managing Teams

We will be providing more in depth articles for these new features so you learn more what they are all about and can incorporate them into your organization.

If you are interested in learning more, leave us a comment down below!

--Econz Team

The Enhanced Sage 300 Report

Hello everyone!

Following our previous post about Statutory Work Days, we have an update that incorporates this new feature in a report. We call it the "Enhanced Sage 300 Report", as it's based on the original Sage 300 Report.

Whenever an employee works on a Statutory Holiday, this report will add an extra line of hours to match the hours set up for each one of the profiles, stated in the PROJECT column.

In the case that there were holidays, the system will add an additional line showing the holiday hours and include "HOL" in the PROJECT column. Note that this is used specifically for the times when there is a statutory holiday that the employee did not work, but still needs to be paid for.

Finally, when there is overtime, the pay rate to will be adjusted to 1 1/2 the pay rate value, to make things easier for the staff in charge of payroll. An additional line will be created to make the overtime easier to visualize along with its new fixed pay rate.

Here is a sample of what the report would look like on a regular week:

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On this example we see that April 11th and 12th have the usual 8 hours with its pay rate of 26.50, but when we come to the 13th and 14th, an additional line has been added to signify the overtime with its updated pay rate of 39.75. Also, we have a paid Holiday on the 15th, which at the same time is a Statutory Holiday that this employee worked on, as noted in the "PROJECT" column by "HOL" and "STAT" respectively.

Additionally, if you have configured Auto Break Deduction, the report will deduct the specified amount of time of the last task on the day. For example, we have user "Bowen Thompson" who needs to have 30 minutes deducted from the total hours. If we first check the Timecard Task Detail Report, we can see that the last task he worked on the 27th there were 2 hours registered. Also, the next day shows a total of 13 hours worked in one individual job:

Click on image to enlarge

If we generate the Enhanced Sage 300 Report, we will see that 30 minutes have been deducted from that last task of the day on both cases, providing the desired timesheet calculation as follows:

Let us know if you have any questions or comments down below, and until next time!

--Econz Team

Setting up Canada Specific Overtime Rules

Hello everyone! Today we have a very interesting post about a new feature that has been added to our system. This feature has been put in place for our Canadian customers who need to set an overtime rule that takes care of adding up the overtime hours at the end of the month for every instance that an employee worked over 40 hours in a given week. This way, instead of paying overtime weekly or bi-weekly, it is going to be paid at the 4th week of the month.

To set this up, you need to create a user type that will be used solely for employees who this rule applies to. For the sake of this example, we created one called "Fourweek0T40", but make sure to name it as something that makes sense to your own organization:

Then, go to the Manage Overtime Rules in the Administration tab and follow the necessary steps to create the rules.

After selecting the user type you wish to manage, which should be the one that was recently created for this specific purpose, then we click the "Manage" button:

Set the date when the rule will be applied for; keep in mind that the correct overtime rules will not be enforced on any entries before this date. Here is an example of how this can be setup, taken from the Overtime section on the screen you are taken to:

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Note that we have set it to "Any time over 160 hours, reconciled over a period of 4 weeks." This shows how the system will recognize that the employee has worked any overtime going over 40 hours in a week, within a 4 week period.

Then, we set the start of the first of these periods, like "01 May 2022" in this example, and finally, the last piece of the puzzle is setting "Workers are guaranteed 40 hours per week, with any extra regular hours reconciled at the end of the configured period". This prompts the system to calculate those extra hours that may have been accumulated at the end of the specified 4 week period.

After this, it's just a matter of following the usual process of approving the timesheets and sending the Payroll Data Batch, the additional overtime hours will only be shown on the timesheet for the last week of the monthly period. Each weekly period will show the total worked hours in contrast to the maximum of 40 reported hours.

Also, after sending the weekly hours with the integration, there is an additional new step that needs to be taken to reconcile those overtime hours. Using the "FourWeeklyReconciliation" filter and combining it with the desired user type and payroll period, we will be able to see the users that have outstanding overtime:

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Note the total Regular ("R") hours on the first row, followed by the 18 Overtime ("O") hours on the next row.

That's it for the moment, next week we will show you additional details related to this post, so stay tuned for more!

--Econz Team

The Expanded Timecard Task Event and Location Report

Hello everyone,

Today we want to talk about one of our most recently incorporated reports, the Expanded Timecard Task Event and Location Report. This one is sort of a combination of the Timecard Event Report and the Timecard Task Event and Location Report.

When you generate it, you will notice the inclusion of four new columns:

• Start Event ID
• Start Break Event ID
• End Break Event ID
• End Event ID

These columns will provide you with the information of the ID associated to each of the events gathered from the device by the employees, which can be used to create an upgraded costing analysis for your field jobs that can be used with the integration software of your preference.

Compared to the Timecard Event Report, which created a new row for each event, this one summarizes all events related to a specific entry, so whenever you start, end a task and/or take a break in between, the event IDs for each will be shown on their corresponding column and row:

Click on image to enlarge

As with most of the reports, you can generate it online or export it into a CSV file using the date range, user and team filters of our choice.

We hope you get the best out of this report, let us know if you have any questions or comments down below!

--Econz Team