Friday, March 24, 2023

Allocating all time to clock in day for overnight shifts

Hello everyone, we have a very interesting topic today. This is intended for those companies whose employees work during the night, so it's expected that their shifts overlap two separate days.

By using this new feature, our system will provide you with overtime and extra time calculations based on the whole shift that was clocked in, regardless of if the employees started one day and finished on the next one.

The idea here is that in order to provide accurate timesheet information, if an employee worked overtime, for example, then that time would be allocated to the one day shift (taking the hours from the moment the system registered a clock in, until the clock out). This is, as opposed to cutting the days from 12:00 AM until clock out, and then the clock in the next evening until the following 12:00 AM.

This is very important, because on overnight staff there can be moments where there is OT right in the payroll cutoff time, so applying this setting can be the difference of when an employee would get the correct amount of paid hours.

Also, one more thing to consider is that hourly employees might need to attend during different scheduled times, so it's crucial that the correct amount of hours is allocated to the right shift, instead of placing hours incorrectly by following the Calendar days. 

To set this up, start from the Administration tab and go to "Manage Overtime Rules" in the Payroll section:


Then, select the User Type you wish to manage the OT rules for and click on "Manage":


In this example, we are adding a new rule, so we need to tick the checkbox for the option "Allocate all time to clock in day":


That's all you need! From the start date that the rule is created for and onwards, time will be automatically calculated for overnight employees, including overtime and extra time.

Hope you like this enhancement, let us know if you have any questions or comments below.


Until next time...!


--Econz Team

Thursday, March 9, 2023

New Feature: Moving Tasks Between Teams

Sometimes, you just need to move tasks from one team to another. Maybe the company underwent some staff changes and a new team will take some tasks that another was working on and will no longer need. Perhaps, a person in charge of managing tasks might have uploaded them to the wrong team and you just need a quick fix. If any of those scenarios sound familiar, this is the feature for you!

We have added new functionality that will enable you to move tasks from one team to another. Originally, you would to need copy the tasks to the new team, and then delete the original tasks. In some cases, you may have hundreds of specific tasks that need to be moved, so it can take a lot of time to get rid of them, so we thought of a good way to make your life easier, as we always do.

For this, you would go to the "Maintain Task/Customer List" section in the Administration tab:


Then, let's say we have a few selected tasks from our "Region B" team, that need to be added to our "Region C" team. What we do, is just tick the tasks that we want to move as a first step:


Then, while having selected the tasks and seeing them checked on the screen, we select the team we want to move them to, in this case, "Region C":


Next, we open the dropdown menu and select the appropriate option:


Note that, we are able to do the same but moving subtasks from a task to another, within the same team. So, after selecting to move the selected tasks, we can verify the original team where the jobs where moved from and see that they are no longer there:



And finally, we confirm in our "Region C" team, that the new tasks have been populated:



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


--Econz Team


Tuesday, February 14, 2023

Bereavement Code for Timesheets

Hello everyone, today we are picking up on a subject that we had previously talked about, so now we are adding something new to it, the addition of Bereavement Codes for timesheets.

This feature is intended to be used for the cases where an employee has had the unfortunate passing away of a family member and the company provides bereavement leave for their staff. Since this is a feature that works together with a software integration, some additional setup is required; you can visit our previous post linked above to learn more about it.

Now, let's go over the steps on how to use it; first, we would find an employees timesheet that needs approval, we can do this by logging in with the appropriate user type and going to the Administration tab, then selecting "Approve Timesheets":


Then, find the timesheet that needs to be approved, and right below the detail for the hours, you will find the "Pay Code Entries" section. Use the "Select paycode" dropdown menu to choose the right code for this specific case. In our example we are using "BRV" for Bereavement. Also, it's out company policy that an employee can use up to three work days for this leave, so we are going to input 24 hours, which means 8 hours per day:

"Click on image to enlarge"

Once we are done entering the code and the amount of hours, we can click the "Add" button to proceed:


Just like on previous entries that use this type of integration, this codes will be added to the payroll system that Econz connects with.

Let us know if you have any questions or comments, that's it for now, we will be back very soon with more news!



--Econz Team

Friday, January 20, 2023

New Multi Timesheet Approval Functionality

Hello everyone! We are very pleased to show you a brand new feature we have just deployed called "Multi Timesheet Approval". It's an enhanced method to review and approve timesheets for your staff, where you will be able to easily visualize and approve multiple timesheets in one go.

To find this feature, we would go to the Administration tab, then within the "Basic" section you will find "Multi Timesheet Approval":



Once inside, you can view all the timesheets for the entire company at once, or use the filters to focus on a specific team or user:


We will filter the screen to visualize just one team for this example, so we pick it from the dropdown menu and click the "Filter" button. You will be able to use the left and right arrows on top of the screen to go back and forward the different timesheet periods. So, here is our current team view:

(Click on image to enlarge)

Notice the different colors depending on the status of the timesheet. We have "Unsubmitted" in red, next stage is "Worker Pending" in green, and finally "Management Approved" or "GM Approved" depending on the settings of your account.

When you click on the status of any users, you will be able to perform a number of different operations:



First up is "Show Details"; clicking this will give you a quick view of the user's timesheet:

(Click on image to enlarge)

Then, we have "Show Full Details", which as indicated, will open a new tab. This is the equivalent of going to the Administration tab, then selecting "Approve Timesheets" and filtering by the date and user... You can start seeing how much time you will save by using this!

(Click on image to enlarge)

The next option is "Edit". This is one of our favorite new features since it will pop up a new style of editing screen right from the same timesheet approval section.

(Click on image to enlarge)

Finally, we have the "Submit Timesheet" button. What this does is that it moves the approval process forward going by the steps described above, that is from Unsubmitted to Worker Pending:


And using the "Submit Timesheet" option from this status, will take you to the final stage, showing the timesheet as approved. Note that you can also use the "Approve" button on the right to perform the same function:


That's all for this time, we will be back with more awesome news for you!


--Econz Team 

Friday, January 13, 2023

Update to Managing Leave Requests as an Administrator

Following up with our previous post about requesting PTO, today we will see how it works from the Administration Portal. Before getting started, you need to make sure to assign an Administrator user to manage each employee's leave requests. This is done by going to the Administration tab and selecting "Manage Users" within the Staff section:


Then, find the name of the employee and click on the ID:


Scroll to the bottom of the screen and find the "Leave Administrator" section. Use the dropdown menu to assign a Leave Admin, then click on Add. After that, click the "Update" button at the bottom:


With that out of the way, let's see what it looks like if an employee sent a Leave Request. We would go to the Administration tab and click "Manage Leave Applications", also on the Staff section:


Here you can see and manage any Leave Requests that need to be reviewed. In this example, we can see a new request that needs to be checked, sent by Randy Howard. You can tell it's new since it has the "Approve" and "Reject" buttons. Note that its status is "Pending" and it even has an attachment that can be downloaded, in case the employee sent any with the request:

(Click on image to enlarge)

If you were to reject it, just click on "Reject" and type the reason for rejection, which will be shown to the employee with a notification within the app. Otherwise, click "Approve" and the system will immediately send a message to the device of the requesting user, just like we saw on our previous post about PTO.

In case you had any staff that does not have the mobile application, or for any reason misplaced the device, you can add a Leave Request in their stead. Notice the "Add New" button on the top of this same screen:


You will be taken to the next screen:


Here you will select the appropriate information for the employee, leave type, start and end times, as well as a comment for the request. Here is an example of us requesting Sick Leave for a staff member:


And if we went back to the Manage Leave Applications section, we would see this request:

(Click on image to enlarge)

That's it for now, let us know if you have any questions or comments about this important and powerful feature!


--Econz Team

Friday, January 6, 2023

Requesting PTO (Vacation and Sick Time) with the Timecard Application

Hello everyone, today we want to tell you about how you can request different types of PTO with Timecard GPS. Today we will focus on the application side of the equation, but on an upcoming post, we will talk about how to use this feature on the Administration side. Whether it's Vacation, Holiday or Sick Leave that you need to request, we have it all, so let's get to it!

The process is pretty intuitive, as you will see... First we start off the Home Screen and open the Menu on the top right.


Then, select the "Manage Schedule" Option:


You will then see two different options called "Schedule" and "Leave Forms". We will talk about the Schedule on an upcoming post, for now, let's stick to "Leave Forms":


On the next screen you will see different options, so you can specify which type of leave you need to request, be it Vacation, Holiday or Sick Leave:


In this example, we want to request Vacation Leave, so we pick that option, then adjust the start and end times and add a note, if needed, then tap "SUBMIT" on the top right of the screen:


We will get a confirmation message, so we select submit again. This will send the request to the server so a Manager can review it:


After that, it comes down to approving or rejecting the request from the Administrator Portal (stay tuned for the next post where you will learn exactly how to do that...), and finally, the employee will receive a confirmation message of the final status of this request:


That's pretty much it! As promised, it's very easy and intuitive to use; let's meet on the next post so you can learn the other side of the coin, what the Managers do on their end.


Until next time,


--Econz Team