Friday, September 23, 2011

PIN Entry Time Clock

There are many ways to capture employee time punches: from an old mechanical punch clock to sophisticated biometric systems designed to completely eliminate buddy punching, and all manner of time and attendance systems in between. Virtual TimeClock has long held a unique position in the time and attendance industry because of its ability to fill the role of multiple business systems at once. For example, not only do you get a completely automated payroll process, but you get the advantages of improving office communication with real-time monitoring of the status of every employee with the in/out board that's built right into the time clock interface. However, we're beginning to discover that some businesses want more anonymity from their time clock. They're looking for a way to have multiple employees clock in and out from a single time clock kiosk, without having to first select their name from a list, which could be quite long depending on how many workers you have using the time clock. Businesses are also concerned about employees, students, or patients being able to see when others are coming and going.

These are some of the reasons why we're planning a PIN entry time clock that will allow employees to clock in and out from a public time clock station without being able to see what other employees are doing. The exciting thing is that this really becomes the foundation for a biometric time clock software solution, with a finger swipe replacing entering a PIN with the keyboard.

Jeff Morrow
Virtual TimeClock Product Specialist
Redcort Software

Friday, September 9, 2011

Employee Scheduling Software

There's a common question we often get asked by new Virtual TimeClock users: What other software do you guys make? The reason we get asked this question is because our time clock software users find Virtual TimeClock so easy to set up and use, they want to know what other business operations we can help them streamline. Business owners are always looking for ways to better manage employees, so we have a lot of business owners asking about employee scheduling software.

Employee scheduling is definitely on our development dashboard. In fact, the new shifts and schedules feature in Virtual TimeClock '11 laid the groundwork with its built-in clock in and out rules to control employee overtime. Different shifts can be assigned for each employee for every day of the week. This works great if you have fixed weekly schedules. It's not currently designed for rotating employee schedules and is not a substitute for an employee scheduling program.

We're planning a true employee scheduling program that can be integrated directly with Virtual TimeClock. This means shift rules, a scheduling calendar, when to work email reminders, and employee load planning/balancing are just some of the features we're thinking about.

What else do you need an employee scheduling program to do? Leave me a comment and let me know.

Jeff Morrow
Virtual TimeClock Product Specialist
Redcort Software