Time Clocks for Off-Site Employees

Many businesses have off-site employees that rarely enter an office. Or they may start out from an office or equipment yard and then spend the rest of the day out in the field, and usually go straight home after their last appointment or job. We're currently working on a mobile time clock that will work with a wide variety of smartphones or tablets, including the iPhone and iPad. In the meantime, using laptops with wireless Internet cards are a great solution for off-site employees.

A wireless Internet card and data plan from your wireless carrier will let you access the Internet from anywhere your carrier provides coverage. With regular WiFi you need to be within range of a WiFi hot spot to get connectivity to the Internet.

Another alternative is a MiFi, now available with certain carriers. A MiFi has a built-in wireless Internet card and allows multiple computers to connect simultaneously to the internet via WiFi. Think of it as a mobile hotspot you can control.

Just because our mobile time clock isn't quite ready, don't let that keep you from tracking off-site employee time by combining our networked time clock system with one of these other solutions.

Jeff Morrow
Virtual TimeClock Product Manager
Redcort Software, Inc.

iPad Time Clock

It's probably safe to say that touch tablet computing is here to stay. You get all the functionality and portability of a netbook with the advantages of stunning displays, the myriads of apps available for free or negligible cost, and all the touch gestures we've come to love and rely on.

We've got some great ideas for using Apple's iPad as a time clock, and those ideas will soon be coming to fruition in our upcoming Virtual TimeClock Mobile app for the iPad.

Group Time Clock
How about placing an iPad time clock in a convenient employee cross roads like a break room or employee entrance? Mount the iPad on the wall and allow employees to punch in and out quickly with the simplicity of touch gestures.

Employee Monitoring
How about giving an iPad time clock to your managers? This would allow them to monitor in real-time when employees are coming and going. Mobile managers have the advantage of being out where the action is without sacrificing the information their desk top time clock software provides for them. They can correct punch times, respond to messages, and review timecards without sacrificing mobility.

Go Mobile
How about taking an iPad time clock with you on the road? This allows you to approve payroll while on the road. Perhaps even more powerful, use mobile time clocks for workers to track the different customers they're visiting or deliveries they're making in real-time.

Did I miss any? Drop me a comment and let me know other ways to use an iPad time clock.

Jeff Morrow
Virtual TimeClock Product Specialist
Redcort Software

iPhone Time Clock

Customers have been asking for a Virtual TimeClock iPhone app for some time. I'm happy to announce that we're now in the position to make this happen. In fact, engineering is finalizing the user interface specifications as I type this. Those of you who use our employee time clock software on a regular basis know we work really hard to make the user interface intuitive and the steps needed to perform routine activities efficient. That can sometimes be a challenge with a desktop app. It can be an even bigger challenge with an iPhone app because you're trying to maximize functionality in a limited amount of screen real estate. "What's the big deal?" you ask, "You just gotta clock in and out. There are a dozen time tracking apps in the App Store that already do that." That may be true, but here's one of the things that will set ours apart from the competition.

Most time tracking apps fall into two different categories. They're either a mobile replacement for a paper timesheet, which means you manually enter a start and stop time for each day and then the app will calculate the hours for you. Most of these can't handle overtime rules, and some of them won't even let you make multiple entries per day. I'm not entirely sure what you gain by using a timesheet app like this. The second group of time tracking apps function like timers. You select a task and then start the timer. You stop the timer, pick a different task, and then start the timer again. This can be especially handy when you're billing time for different customers, but what do you do with the data you've collected?

The new iPhone time clock app for Virtual TimeClock will have the advantage of connecting to your existing time clock server. This means the data will be collected from a mobile device, sent to your time clock server, and be instantly available to other time clock clients, both desktop and mobile. You'll be able to capture payroll hours and labor hours per job or activity from a mobile time clock, and that data will be instantly available to those who need it for processing payroll or billing your customers. How's that for our first foray into iOS development?

Jeff Morrow

Virtual TimeClock Product Specialist

Redcort Software