Friday, March 4, 2011

Biometric Time Clock Software - Part 1

Biometric integration is one of our top requested features, and I talk to a lot of business owners and managers about their time and attendance needs. It seems that businesses are looking for biometric employee time clock software integration for two main reasons: security and efficiency.

Security
The most popular reason is to prevent buddy punching. With a mechanical punch clock, I can leave at 4:00 and tell my buddy to punch me out at 5:00. Even with time clock programs that are password protected, I can just give my buddy my password and still head out early. The only way to completely remedy a situation like this is to either take a photo snapshot at every punch in and out and then compare the images to worker punch times, or require biometric authentication. If I want to buddy punch, I have to either disguise my colleague to look like myself or cut off a finger! Both seem a little too drastic just to cheat the company out of a couple hours work.

Efficiency
The second reason is to streamline the punch in and out process. Employers don't want workers having to fiddle around with the mouse and keyboard, select their name from a list, and enter a password. Rather, they want a worker to walk up to the time clock and swipe a finger that will both recognize who they are and punch them in all from that one finger swipe. This is usually an attempt to eliminate lines forming at the time clock station during times of heavy use.

Did I miss any other significant reasons for moving to a biometric based time and attendance system? Please drop me a comment and let me know.

We've been chasing biometric integration with our Virtual TimeClock software for the last 5 years, cultivating relationships and testing technologies. We made a breakthrough last month with a vendor who can now provide biometric fingerprint scanner support on both Microsoft Windows and Apple Mac.

Jeff Morrow
Virtual TimeClock Product Specialist
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Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Control Overtime With Employee Time Clock Software

It takes a lot of time, effort, and resources to run a business, no matter what the size. To some extent, all businesses have to deal with employees, customer satisfaction, and expenses. Of these, businesses are always looking for easy ways to cut expenses. In a strong economy it is easy to overlook the small inefficiencies because the bottom line is healthy. In a weak economy, businesses need to look carefully at all of their processes and procedures to see where to trim the inefficiencies and make every dollar count. Some business costs are generally fixed, like rent. Others may fluctuate from month to month, like the utility bill. For many businesses, the greatest drain on company expenses is payroll. And the greatest drain on payroll is the working of unauthorized overtime. Employee time clock software is the perfect solution for eliminating unnecessary employee overtime.

Learn more about controlling employee overtime costs by reading our new online article called Control Overtime With Employee Time Clock Software.
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Thursday, February 10, 2011

Improve Payroll Accuracy

The more time you spend manually processing payroll by calculating hours, trying to determine when overtime rules apply, and deciphering the cryptic notes left on punch clock cards, the more likely you are to make a mistake. Manual payroll processing is prone to human error, errors that can cost you time and money. Employee time clock software performs all the complicated calculations for you by applying your payroll rules.

Learn more about making your payroll process more efficient and accurate by reading our new online article called Improve Payroll Accuracy - 4 Reasons to Use Employee Time Clock Software.
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Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Celebrating 25 Years of Time Clock Software Excellence

Milestones are events that mark significant changes or stages in development. In 2011, Redcort Software is celebrating 25 years of publishing, developing, and supporting time and attendance software. Now that's a significant milestone! We're certainly proud of the fact that tens of thousands of workers in over 50 countries rely on our Virtual TimeClock software everyday.

We try to keep up on our close competitors, I think all businesses do. We're happy to go head-to-head with any of them. That's what makes capitalism so grand. The time and attendance software market is certainly a volatile one. Here's a recent case that illustrates the point. The company using the websites www.punch-clock.com, www.lionclock.com, and www.lion-clock.com was found guilty of trademark violation and forced to surrender these domain names. The former owner of these domains, LionClock Software, is currently in bankruptcy court. If you're a current LionClock software user, please take a look at our free time clock software trial. I think you'll like what you see. After all, we've been doing this for 25 years now.

Time clock software vendors seem to be a dime a dozen, but not all time clock software programs are created equal. The old adage "you get what you pay for" definitely applies here. LionClock claims to have been around since 2001, which may or may not be true. That doesn't seem to matter to the companies that are calling us frustrated because their LionClock software no longer works and the company isn't responding to their frantic requests for help. With scenarios like this (and this isn't an isolated case), save yourself a lot of time, money, and frustration by doing a little research to find out who's behind the time clock software you intend purchasing. Any legitimate company shouldn't be afraid of chatting with you about their history and background. Here's a big hint. If the only way to contact them is via email or an online form, do yourself a favor an go on to the next company, no matter how inexpensive their time clock software is.

Here's to another 25 years!

Jeff Morrow
Virtual TimeClock Product Specialist
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Monday, January 31, 2011

Control Employee Overtime with Virtual TimeClock '11

Virtual TimeClock '11 is now available. We've added powerful new clock in and out rules to the latest release of our employee time clock software that allow you to control unnecessary employee overtime by setting shift restrictions and creating employee schedules. New shift reports, calculation of shift differentials, shift summaries, and late arrival reports compliment the new clock in and out rules. The engineers have worked hard enhancing the worker action dialog with new action and warning icons, and clearly alerting users when they're in violation of shift rules and how to proceed.

Learn more about Virtual TimeClock '11:

See the new clock in and out rules in action:

Jeff Morrow
Virtual TimeClock Product Specialist

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Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Virtual TimeClock '10 Year In Review

We've been very pleased with the response we've received this year from customers and the media regarding our latest Virtual TimeClock software releases and the other time and attendance resources we've introduced. And I'm very excited about what's coming in 2011, especially the employee overtime control measures included in Virtual TimeClock '11.

Here's a recap of the highlights from 2010:


As you can see, this makes for a busy and satisfying year. And we have some exciting plans for 2011 to keep Virtual TimeClock at the forefront of the time and attendance industry!

Jeff Morrow
Virtual TimeClock Product Specialist
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Thursday, December 2, 2010

Free Time and Attendance Tools

The Internet has certainly changed the way we access and interact with information. Unfortunately, much of the information you encounter on the Web is outdated, inaccurate, misleading, or just so disorganized it's of no practical value.

Since we're in the business of time and attendance, we get asked a lot about overtime laws and overtime rules for each state. So I started thinking, "If people are asking us, they must not be able to easily find the answers they need elsewhere." With that in mind, we decided to expand our time clock software web site to offer businesses looking for helpful time and attendance resources with some handy reference tools. We thought gathering these tools "under one roof" so to speak would be a great way to help business owners and HR professionals find some of the answers they're looking for.

This reference tool brings together an easy-to-use summary of daily, weekly, and any premium pay rules for every U.S. state and territory.

This reference tool includes a set of calendars of common holidays observed by U.S. businesses and all of the U.S. federal holidays for four consecutive years.

These free time and attendance resources join our free time card calculator that provides employees with an easy way to total daily and weekly hours in a convenient printable timesheet.

Jeff Morrow
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