Adding New Leave Types

Hello everyone,

Today we will be adding to our rich Leave Request functionality. We have always made it our goal to provide as much flexibility to our customers as possible, providing ways to make our own application, yours. So, of course, we want you to be able to customize multiple settings according to your own needs.

This time, we are talking about adding new Leave Types. We have the most common setup by default, but some companies may need to include an additional set of types of their own, so let's see how to add them to your company's profile!

First, we go to the Administration tab and select "Manage Leave Types", which can be found within the Staff section

On the next screen, you will be greeted by the default list of leave types, click the "Add New" button:

Add the name you wish to use and click the "Add New" button again:

When you go back to the previous screen, you will see all the default and added types. We have added a few additional types to our company:

The next time you add a Leave Request for an employee, all your leave types will be available for you to select:

 

That's it for now, stay tuned for more exciting updates and news about our features!

--Econz Team 

Different Options for Rounding Rules

Continuing our topic about Rounding Rules, in which we have already discussed how you can set individual rounding rules per user; some companies may need to keep things simple, and just stick to a rule that would apply to the whole company.

For those companies, we of course have thought of an option to make their lives easier. Let's see how to set it up!

First, we would go the Basic section within the Administration tab and select "Set quantisation data":

Then, we can use the dropdown menu to select the most convenient option, whether it's 5, 15, or 30 minutes. By default this is set to "None", which will give the exact time, and you will notice that here is where you can also define the application to apply the "User Defined" rules.

Let's see it in action! First, we can have a look at the default option, showing the exact times, when it's set to "None":

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Here is our rule set to "5 minutes":

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And here it is after using the 30 minute rounding rule:

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That's all for now, stay tuned for more exciting updates and tutorials!

 

--Econz Team

Administrator Change Log

Today we have a very useful feature for companies that need to keep track of important changes done by Administrators in the web portal. This is particularly useful in the cases where an audit needs to be done to the account and see what adjustments have been done to different rules, or features that might have been enabled or disabled.

It may happen that someone might have inadvertently made a change that could have affected the processing of payroll, so going to this Change Log may give some insight as to what changes were done, so they can be reverted.

To use this feature, go to the Administration tab and select Preferences. Then, scroll to the bottom of the screen and you will find the "View Change Log" button:

Then, you will be greeted by a screen similar to this one, which will show you the different changes done to settings within the Administrator portal:

As you can see, this detailed view will provide you with all the changes done to the account, as well as the dates, times, and user who performed the changes.

We hope you can take full advantage of this monitoring tool, let us know if you have any questions or comments below...

--Econz Team

Improvements to the Worker Leave Screen

Hello everyone! Today we have one that is short but sweet... This is about our Leave Request functionality, which we are always looking to improve to provide more quality of life features to all our customers.

In order to process Sick, Holidays or PTO leave requests more efficiently, you are now able to use different filters to get to exactly the information you need, without the need to scroll or find among a long list.

Let's start from the beginning! First we would log in to the Web Portal and go to the Administration tab. Look for the option called "Manage Leave Applications" within the Staff section:

Once inside, you will notice a set of filters that you can use, such as Employee, Leave Type and Leave Status. Here is a composite image showing examples of these dropdown menus:

You may also have noticed that leave requests will include the total of hours, so it's easier to keep track of employees' PTO balance and enforce any PTO compliance based on this information.

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That's it for this post! Leave us a comment below if you are interested in learning more or have any questions for our wonderful Sales and Support teams.

--Econz Team

Selecting Companies that Sync with ADP

Hello everyone! Continuing with our ADP Integration topic, we would like to talk about a feature that we have implemented when setting up your account with the integration.

This is geared towards companies that may have different branches or locations, each with their own distinct company code, and they would like to only see the employees from their own branch. So, instead of putting every branch together under the same Timecard profile, each can have their own with their own configuration, which will enable the Payroll Department to synchronize with ADP automatically.

To set this up, of course you will need to have an up and running integration already configured in your account. If you do, you can continue with the following steps.

Start by logging in as an Administrator and go to the Administration tab, then click to enter the "Integrate With ADP" option:

On the next step you will find the dropdown menu called "Company To Sync". If you open it, you will be able to see and choose the company that you would like to auto sync with the current Timecard account. 

Make sure to select the appropriate company/code:

And finally, scroll to the bottom of the screen and click the "Submit" button:

It's that simple! With that, you will have the ability to organize the company profiles however you see fit, in a way that makes the most sense for your organization.

Let us know if you have any questions or comments in the section below. Until next time...

--Econz Team

Creating Custom Reports

Have you ever wanted to create your own report using the information we have on our system? If you have, now you will be able to do it; you can pick one of the existing reports and customize the columns that will be shown when generated.

We love this feature because it allows for more flexibility and in many cases, there might be some reports that could be perfect, but may have a couple extra columns that you may not need, so doing a couple of easy adjustments may be the key to higher productivity! 

Let's go ahead and see how it works! First we go to the Administration tab and select the option "Define Custom Reports":

Then, click the "Add" button:

You can name it as you wish so that it's meaningful to your company, in this case, we want our report to be called "Quick Location Report". We already like the existing one very much, but want to have a more simplified view for some Managers to have a quick overview without having to scroll over.

Next, we choose within the Report Type options, which will enable the report to be generated either as PDF or CSV files, or generating an HTML version that can be viewed directly from the Timecard portal.

With this feature, you can even add your Organization Logo so that it will be added to the PDF file! After this, you can then select the specific report you want to base yours on and in the next field, select the columns that will be displayed by picking their names, and then clicking the "Add" button.

Once ready, it will look something like this:

After that, save it, and you can go to the Reports tab, and your new report will be found under the "Custom Defined Reports" section:

And that's it! You will now have your own custom report with all the functionality as the predetermined reports we offer with Timecard GPS:

Go ahead and give it a try! We are definitely sure that you will have your own list of custom reports in no time, as we do over here...!

--Econz Team

New Feature: Deleting Multiple Field Workers

This time we have an excellent enhancement we recently added to our system, which will save you a lot of time in those cases when you may need to remove multiple users from the Field Workers tab. This is particularly useful for large companies whose staff might rotate frequently or that are using an integration that synchronizes the Field Workers list with another software package.

For starters, we should go to the Field Workers tab:

Then, find the users you need to delete and tick the checkbox on each of their names:

Scroll back up and click on the following icon on top of the first "Send Message" button you have, right next to the "Roster" header, which will show the different options available for the selected devices: 

Select the option called "Delete Workers":

After that, you will get a confirmation screen that lets you review and confirm the deletion you are about to do. If it is correct, click "Yes" and the process is completed.

That's all it takes, it's that simple and it will save a lot of time compared to doing it individually. Let us know if you have any questions or comments below and, until next time!

--Econz Team

Timecard GPS: Fresh New Look!

Hello everyone!

We have been around helping our customers make their payroll processes easier and efficient, while maintaining the highest standard in the industry. It has taken a lot of hard work from our teams and more importantly, all the support and loyalty from our customers, and we are looking forward to more years of successful partnerships to come. That is why today we have very exciting news we want to share with you, our Timecard GPS application is getting a new look and feel!

Check out the NEW and improved home page now including scheduling:

When accessing the menu, you will notice some new features that we are also bringing to the table, such as the Schedule Manager and the Timesheet Dashboard:

Keep an eye out for an upcoming post which will cover all you need to know about the Schedule Manager, which will provide employers with many powerful features and allow them to share meaningful job details to their employees to ensure the best possible service:

Finally, here is a screen shot of the new Team Clock-In section, many of you are already familiar with, but now with a fresh new look:

If you are interested in learning about all the new and upcoming features, or would just like to have a refresher on the application, make sure to reach us at 866-403-3475 or send us an email at customersupport@econz.com to arrange a time for an online webinar.

That's all for now, until next time!

--Econz

The Location Discrepancy Report

Hello everyone!

Today we will be talking about a report that recently got a very interesting update: the Location Discrepancy Report. With this report, you will be able to monitor your employees' movements by making use of the power of Smart Fences, which we have covered on several previous occasions. Every time an employee triggers an alert, Timecard will compare the distance that was setup in the Smart Fence itself, with the actual location that was reported by the staff members from the device.

This way, you will be able to tell how far or close they were to the expected address. Note that this report will generate entries only if the pinged location is further than 100 meters, or around 300 feet, and you will also get a "Discrepancy Distance" column showing the actual distance between the two points:

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Also, as a wonderful bonus, you can click the reported location and it will open a new tab showing the map with the expected location (marked as "E"), the reported location (shown with an "R"), and a line showing the distance between the two points:

As with most reports, you can generate and view it online, create a CSV file and also filter it by a specific date range, teams and users.

We know you will take full advantage of this useful report, but if you want to learn more about it, leave us a comment below!

--Econz Team

Maintain Task/Customer List For Workers: Manpower Edition

Hello everyone, today we are back with a new feature! Always thinking of better ways to make your life easier and help you be faster and more efficient at work, we have engineered a feature that will allow you to load tasks to individual users that haven't been added to a specific team. This is very useful because originally, if you wanted to assign specific projects to only one person, you had to create a team just for that one employee, load tasks for that person, and repeat the same process for every other staff member that needed it. While that still is pretty easy to do with our system, we enabled an even quicker method of taking care of that.

Let's see how to set it up! First, we go to the Administration tab and select "Preferences", from the "Basic" section.

Next, scroll to the bottom and tick the new "Has Field Worker Tasks" option, then click the Save button on the bottom left of the screen.

Once you go back to the main Administration section, you will notice a new entry called "Maintain Task/Customer List For Workers":

You will notice a familiar face, this section is pretty similar to the original "Maintain Task/Customer List", but instead of having a list of teams on the left column, we now have a list of Field Workers. From here, you will be able to load tasks for an employee, ideally one that is not assigned to a team, but keep in mind that if you do upload tasks for someone that belongs to a team, then these new tasks list will override the previous selection of jobs.

The beauty of this new functionality is that you don't even need to click on the names, you can use a CSV file and load the tasks and subtasks, just like you would do on multiple teams, but this time, it's on multiple employees. Open the dropdown menu and select "Load tasks/subtasks for specified employees using the Manpower CSV format".

This time, following the format from the example, we would use column A to put the employees' Device IDs, column B would have the Tasks and C, the SubTasks. same as uploading tasks to multiple teams, if you have a task with several subtasks, make sure to list all of the subtasks on column C, and to use the same task that these should go to on column B.

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The rest of the columns are optional, you can use them to set a job start and end time, address, and even smart fences if you wish so! Finally, find and select your file to upload it, append or replace the list to the existing tasks and save it. Now all of your employees can have their own individual set of tasks and subtasks!

That's all for now, stay tuned for some interesting announcements to come...!

--Econz Team

Adding Travel and Slipseat Codes for the Timesheet Approval Process

 Hello everyone! Today we would like to keep building upon the topic of pay codes that go hand in hand with our ADP integration. This time, we want to show you how to add Travel and Slipsear codes so they can be used for the timesheet approval process. As you are probably aware, using different specific codes for timesheets will enable you to create more accurate timesheets and abide by the different regulations depending on your location.

To set this up, we would start by going to the "Approve Timesheets" section within the Administration tab.

On the next step, we need to select the option to submit the timesheet for the employee, please note that this option is only available if the timesheet hasn't been submitted from the application on the device).

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Once the timesheet has been submitted, make sure to select the correct code on the "Pay Code Entries" section, which means SSP for "Slipseat Pay", and TRP for "Travel Pay". Then, you need to select whether it's an amount of dollars or a value of hours. Check out the following examples for both types of values:

SSP code with amount of USD

TRP code with amount of USD

TRP code with amount of Hours

Then, you can approve the timesheet and click the "Save" button to complete it.

You can tick the checkbox and approve all tasks in the timesheet at once.

Then click the "Save" button

That's all for this time, stay tuned for more exciting updates!

--Econz Team

New User Type: the Junior Office Admin

Hello everyone! Today we want to tell you about a new user type we have introduced to the list of different access types we provide to Web Portal Users. "Why so many?", you might ask? Well, flexibility is the name of the game. We are always thinking of ways to improve our system and provide as much flexibility to companies as possible, which means bringing different types of administrator rights depending on multiple needs.

Sometimes you may want to have someone just manage timesheets and nothing else. Other times, you want just that but limit the visibility to certain teams or users. We even have an option to assign specific projects to Managers so they can approve timesheets for the projects they oversee, regardless of the team the user belongs to. With these examples, you can see the value of having different access options for different scenarios. It's the same as in an operating system like Linux, where you can manage permissions and ownership for users, groups, and all others to resources such as directories and files; by providing levels of access, you are enforcing a tighter security to your valuable company information.

With that being said, the protagonist to today's tale is the "Junior Office Admin". As the title implies, these are a variant of the Office Admin user type, which, as you might remember, is able to approve timesheets for everyone, even being able to filter exactly whose timesheets they will approve. The main difference, and what makes it "junior" in this scenario, is that this user will not be able to remove users from the system; something that usually requires more rank or responsibility to perform.

Setting it up is very easy! We start by going to the Administration tab and selecting "Manage Users", within the Staff section:

Then, click the "Add New" button on the top left of the screen:

On the next section, you can fill out the information for that person's profile, here is an example:

After you are done and have entered a secure password, click the "Add New" button on the bottom left of the screen:

After that, the profile will have been created and it's ready for use:

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

--Econz Team