Tag Archives: TimeControl

TimeControl and Microsoft Project Futures

Microsoft Project, Project and TimeControl, Chris Vandersluis, Christopher Vandersluis, Christopher Peter VandersluisWe are getting an unusual number of requests regarding our support of the link between TimeControl and Microsoft Project.  This isn’t a huge surprise as Microsoft has made a number of announcements regarding the future of Microsoft Project in the coming months and years.

Project started as a single license per computer product over 30 years ago.  By the time TimeControl 1.0 was released in 1994, Project was already up to version 4.  We became a part of the Microsoft Partner Network in 1995 and when we released TimeControl 2.0 in early 1995, it included support for Microsoft Project 4.11 and Project ’95.  The Microsoft Project line has expanded since then but in each iteration, TimeControl has evolved to support the new versions of Microsoft Project.  I’ll go through all the current Microsoft Project versions and iterations below, but let’s take a look at the news out of Microsoft first.

Microsoft Project Server 2019 is the on-premise version of Project Server and it came to its official End of Mainstream Support on January 9, 2024.  That means that no new fixes or enhancements will come to this version.  There will continue to be security fixes only for this product until July 14, 2026.  (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/products/project-server-2019).  Clients who are still using Project Server on premise have been advised on numerous occasions by Microsoft personnel to shift to Microsoft Project Online.

Microsoft has made that migration decision a little more challenging by saying, “Going forward, all innovation will occur in Project for the Web…  there is no date to limit the functionality of Project Online at this time, but we encourage customers to plan their transition as soon as possible.”
(https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/project-for-the-web-and-project-online-6569170c-5c8e-474e-a7f0-642872f62f8a) That doesn’t mean that this is an end-of-life announcement for Project Online, in fact, there have been several communications from Microsoft to say that clients can expect continued support for Project Online for the foreseeable future and that no official end-of-life announcement has been made for that product.  But, if you’re a client facing the decision of where to migrate your project environment, it may feel like you are confronting conflicting messages.

So, all of that being said by Microsoft, where does HMS Software stand with the link between TimeControl and Microsoft Project?  We are committed to continue to support the TimeControl/Project integration as long as the iteration of Project functions and is still in use by our clients.  That being said, in some cases we might have to insist that a client not upgrade in order to support an older Microsoft product.

Here are all the Microsoft Project products to which TimeControl has and continues to support a link:

Microsoft Project Standard

This is the individual computer license to which TimeControl can link directly.

Microsoft Project Professional

This is an individual computer license but also has the ability to communicate with Microsoft Project Server or Microsoft Project Online (3 or 5).

Microsoft Project Server

Even though mainstream support for this product has ended, our link continues to function with Project Server.

Microsoft Project Online

Project Online is sold in three separate subscription plans:

Microsoft Project Plan 1

This is the license given to people who are updating Project Online and includes a subset of functionality allowing users to update their project progress, collaborate and participate in the project but not do the planning.  TimeControl links with Microsoft Project Online but since this Plan is only functionality if you have Plan 3 or Plan 5, there’s no TimeControl link that only supports Plan 1.

Microsoft Project Plan 3

This subscription is akin to Project Server but online. It has all the Project Server functionality plus new enhancements made only to Project Online that were not ported to Project Server 2019 on premise.  It does not include Portfolio Analysis.  TimeControl integrates directly to this product.

Microsoft Project Plan 5

This is Project Online but also includes portfolio analysis.  TimeControl integrates directly to this product.

Microsoft Project for the Web

This is the most recent addition to the Project family.  The integration functionality provided with Project for the Web allows TimeControl to pull data from it but not to push data back to assignments in the same way Project Online does.  With improvements coming to Project for the Web all the time, we’re looking forward to being able to link back to it in the same way we do with other Project products.

We’re not Microsoft, of course, so we encourage you to get the most up to date details about their products and their intentions from them (https://project.microsoft.com).   From the perspective of TimeControl, we continue to be committed to support the integration of TimeControl with all versions of Microsoft Project that are made available just as we do with all the other project management tools to which we have integrations.

Let us know if you have questions about the integration of TimeControl and Microsoft Project and how we can help with your own project environment plans.  You can reach us at (https://www.timecontrol.com/contact).

TimeControl named one of the top 50 most innovative companies to watch!

HMS named one of the Top 50 most innovative companies to watch in 2024 by CEO Views. Chris Vandersluis, Christopher Vandersluis, Christopher Peter VandersluisWe are very excited here at HMS.  Our TimeControl division has been named One of the Top 50 Most Innovative Companies to Watch in 2024 by The CEO Views Magazine!  Our work with TimeControl has led CEO Views to categorize HMS as a “Disruptor” in our industry.

Here’s just a short quote from the article: “Solve your real-world business challenges from a single timesheet with powerful built-in integration.”  How could we not like that?

The full CEO Views Magazine will be published shortly and we’ll let you know how to see the whole magazine but the article and analysis of HMS and TimeControl can be seen now on the CEO Views Magazine site.

Write your own timesheet or subscribe to one?

Subscribe Online or Write it yourself.  Chris Vandersluis, Christopher Vandersluis, Christopher Peter VandersluisYou need to update your timesheet or your project management system.  A host of potential developers are pitching for your business often with low-cost overseas developers.  It might sound tempting.  You could commission exactly the features you’re looking for and, after all, it’s a timesheet. How hard could it be?

Here at HMS we hear this quandary on a regular basis.  Sometimes we hear that the prospective client has, indeed gone off to create their own customized development of a timesheet or combined timesheet and project system.  We often hear back from them 2 or 3 years later as they look at TimeControl again.

Here are a few things to think about if you’re considering writing your own system.

Writing it yourself

Here are some of the things you’ll need to think about as you embark on your writing a timesheet project.

Internal Design

Internal design isn’t a given.  Do you have personnel with the expertise to design such a system?  Even with our deployments of TimeControl, we sometimes find it difficult to get all elements of the client to agree on exactly what the functionality and process should be.  Are you able to consider everyone who is involved in the project?  How difficult will it be to get sign-off on your design.  What will be your process for accepting changes to the design after the project is underway or even after it’s delivered?

Creating it

Ok, you’ve fought through the design and you’re ready for those programmers to get busy.  Now you’ve got to create it.  You’ll need to make sure that the outcome matches the design and then testing, testing, testing to make sure what you’ve created matches your process.  Are there regulatory requirements?  What about financial requirements? Have you got a dedicated programming team or might some of the team change over time.  Did you think to make test case data for testing?

Effort

It can be surprising how much time it takes to create a timesheet system and even more a project system to the commercial standards you see online.  The interface that you see on screen is the least of the work.  What happens once that data is saved is the hard part.  So total effort can be deceptive.  Think in terms of several person-years of work to get the job done.

Congratulations! You’re now a timesheet publisher!

You might not have thought about it, but now you have become a timesheet publisher, maximum clientele: 1

With a commercial system like TimeControl, we get to amortize all the effort we’ve put in over the last 30 years across hundreds or thousands of clients.  That won’t be the case for an in-house written system.  Plus, in becoming a timesheet publisher, there may be some sideeffects you might not have counted on.

  • Your people will be distracted from your core business. These might be some of your best core people.
  • You’re not just responsible for writing it, but also adapting it to changing technology. Whenever an operating system or a database or a browser or malware protection or any integrated technology changes, you’ll need to check to see if upgrades are required.  It’s continuous work.
  • You’re responsible to secure it, monitor it, and upgrade it. Plus, are you developing for in house, in the cloud, in a private cloud, in a hybrid cloud?
  • What about requested changes? As soon as your system is delivered, it’s a guarantee that someone will ask for something additional.

Delays until the investment in writing it pays returns

You’ve created it, tested it and deployed it and how long did that take?  Every day you spent on the project is a day you weren’t receiving the benefits of having delivered it.  With a system that you buy or subscribe to, those delays don’t occur.

Subscribe to TimeControl Online in the Cloud

If you are comparing the challenges of writing your own timesheet or project management system, here are some of the considerations for our TimeControl Online Software as a Service in the Cloud.

HMS manages the entire environment

First of all, HMS is responsible for:

  • The infrastructure including the servers, databases, database servers, operating systems, configuration of those servers, malware protection and more.
  • The installation of the software itself along with any updates, upgrades, hotfixes or anything else the application requires.
  • Security including physical security and the safeguarding of the infrastructure, the application and the data.
  • Data backups
  • 24×7 monitoring.
  • We do all of this in cooperation with our partner Amazon and Amazon Web Services where the services are extensive.
  • ROI is almost instant. The system is there right now.  The only time between subscribing and going into production is any configuration you elect to do

The return on investment is almost instant

All the functionality is there already and with a system like TimeControl, there is so much flexibility to have it adapt to your needs that writing something on your own with similar levels of functionality should be somewhat daunting.

And, there’s so much more.

  • The free TimeControl Mobile App
  • Pre-existing links with numerous project management tools like Primavera, Microsoft Project and Project Online, BrightWork, JIRA and more.
  • Crew timesheets Material/Equipment usage collection in TimeControl Industrial
  • TimeControl Project
  • TimeControl BI
  • Vacation Approvals with TimeRequest™
  • Expense reporting
  • Extensive reporting
  • A complete bi-directional API

If you’d like to see more, trying reading the white paper Buy it, Write it or Subscribe to It? which you’ll find in the White Papers area of the TimeControl Website. You might also want to look at the white paper TimeControl Online Security Architecture on the same page.

Or, feel free to contact one of our TimeControl experts at: TimeControl.com/contact and we can talk about the differences in writing it yourself or subscribing to it online.

Why is TimeControl so popular with the Payroll Department?

TimeControl Payday, Chris Vandersluis, Christopher Vandersluis, Christopher Peter VandersluisWe often talk about TimeControl in association with project management tools but, because it is a multi-function timesheet system, TimeControl is often managed by the Payroll department.  What is it about TimeControl that makes it so popular with Payroll Departments?

First of all, let’s acknowledge that virtually every Payroll system has some kind of timesheet attached to it. We have nothing bad to say about any of them.  But Payroll timesheets are single purpose.  They’re designed to give that particular Payroll system what it needs to process employee pay.  The attractiveness of TimeControl is that it can be used not only for Payroll but also for updating Project Management, Human Resources, Billing, Job Costing and other internal systems and processes.  The benefit for Payroll is, that if the timesheet can do what they need, then everyone in the organization can be using one timesheet instead of several and that will create huge efficiencies in reducing reconciliation between disparate systems.  TimeControl was designed from its inception to meet the needs of Payroll.

So, what are some aspects of TimeControl that make Payroll happy?

It’s Auditable

If a project finance report is off by a hundred dollars or more, no one gets too excited.  But, if a paycheck is off by a single penny, there is all kinds of upset.  So, all entries, changes and approvals of time in the TimeControl timesheet is tracked and is completely auditable.  Even post posting changes are traced on a line-by-line basis.  This is an essential element of a Payroll system.  If the numbers are questioned, they can be recovered from the original entry and any changes will be immediately visible.

Approvals

If your timesheet is going to Payroll, then it almost certainly has to go through some level of approval.  It might be very simple or have multiple levels but knowing that the data that arrives into the Payroll system has passed the approvals required is a must.

Automated Validation Rules

When we explain this to prospective clients, the eyes of the Payroll staff light up.  TimeControl can have as many automated Validation Rules as desired.  A rule might be simple like “for salaried staff, no timesheet should be more than 24 hours a day” or “no salaried person can book more than 40 hours of regular (meaning paid-for) time in a week. Or a rule could be complex like “your timesheet cannot have more than 8 hours of sick leave on a weekday and no sick leave at all on a weekend”.  You get the idea.  Some clients have a handful of validation rules.  Some clients have dozens or more.  It’s all about catching potential and obvious errors at the point of entry rather than in a long cycle where someone has to start communicating from Payroll back to an employee about timesheet problems affecting their pay.

Validation Rules can be errors which must be corrected before the timesheet is released or they might just be a warning like “Be advised you have now used all of your paid-for sick leave.”  It’s up to the client to determine what rules are important to create in TimeControl.

Accommodating both Wage and Salary staff at the same time

Rules for Payroll for salaried employees and wage employees are often quite different.  Salary employees, for example, rarely are paid overtime.  Wage employees are often paid for overtime.  Some organizations want to pay overtime at different rates.  “Time-and-a-half” or “Double-time” are common requests.  Some organizations want to give employees an option to book their overtime into a bank to be used to take time off later.  All of these options and more are a part of TimeControl.  This means that both Wage and Salary staff are easily managed within the same system even if the calculations and rules are different.  Vacation time for example might be calculated at the end of each month as a number of days of vacation earned for the last 30 days for salaried staff.  Wage staff might have vacation accrued automatically by TimeControl also but calculated based on the number of hours worked that week.  Two different calculations, both handled in the same system.

Rates for Payroll, Billing and Project Management at the same time

Payroll’s perspective on rates is what will result in an employee’s paycheck.  But the Billing department looks at Rates differently.  First of all, the values of what we bill at vs. what we pay are almost always different and secondly, there will be hours counted for Payroll that might not be counted for Billing.  Project Management usually uses an aggregate or average rate to keep their reporting simpler.  TimeControl handles all of this and much, much more by allowing distinct values for each rate code.  So, for a particular employee, TimeControl might record their pay rate as $40, their billing rate at $60 and their project rate at $50.  Plus, security in TimeControl goes all the way to the field level.  Employees are almost never shown the values associated to their timesheet and individual pay rates are almost always restricted to only the limited number of Payroll staff who are allowed to see them.

Batch Transfer

Once the timesheets are complete in TimeControl, the data usually needs to go somewhere else; sometimes to several somewhere else’s.  TimeControl’s export mechanisms can track the batch of exported records so that a timesheet line is never accidentally sent twice.  Even after adjustments and corrections, only the new changed records are sent.  Batch Transfers are kept in TimeControl so a batch could be recreated if necessary.  The ability to know what was sent to the Payroll system and when and know that those records won’t ever be sent twice to inadvertently doubling someone’s pay is a favorite with Payroll.

What about Contractors?

As we’ve described in recent blog posts, TimeControl can accommodate both employees and contractors within the same time.  These records can be flagged distinctly so the contractor hours don’t go to Payroll, but rather to Accounts Payable and the hours of both employees and contractors can go to Billing.  Sound confusing?  It’s nothing compared to keeping separate systems and then trying to reconcile them later.  TimeControl was built for this.

What about timesheets that are only by exception?

Some employees do the same thing every day and are not tracked by Project Management, or Billing.  Imagine a receptionist for example.  They don’t even really need to do a timesheet except when there’s an exception such as a vacation day or a sick leave day.  TimeControl handles this with a function called Autofill.  If there are no exceptions, TimeControl will created an fill in an automatic timesheet for that employee with the appropriate number of hours per day.  If someone took a half-day of personal time off, then they can enter that and Autofill will just “top-up” the hours to the expected total for the day.  It can save enormous amounts of time making sure we have complete records for all the staff but not make people do work that creates no value to the company.

Is that it?

Goodness no.  There’s lots more in the TimeControl functionality that Payroll will find of interest.  Here are a couple of areas of the TimeControl website that will have more information that includes webcasts, white papers, slide shows and more:

Is it getting harder to support an on-premise enterprise system?

TimeControl Online, Timesheeet Software as a Service Chris Vandersluis, Christopher Vandersluis, Christopher Peter VandersluisOnly a few years ago we wouldn’t have even had this conversation.  Even with Software as a Service becoming more popular over 10 years ago, the conventional wisdom at the time was that significant enterprise systems would always be housed in-house.

That conventional wisdom has changed.

Big IT vendors like Microsoft, Oracle and Amazon have pushed hard for organizations to shift to an online subscription model.  At one time the thinking was that this would be most attractive to small and medium sized businesses but that thinking has evolved too.

Here at HMS, we have had TimeControl on-premise available since 1994.  TimeControl Online, our Software as a subscription Service option came out in 2011.  We continue to support both on-premise and online clients and are committed to do so for the foreseeable future.  There are some clients who have very specific and very important reasons to keep their TimeControl systems in-house on their own data platform.  Often these are government or defense sector clients.

But let’s not think about the exceptions for a moment.  Let’s think about everyone else.

Imagine an organization that has heard the evangelism from Oracle and Microsoft and has decided to move some of its data systems to a subscription model.  Both Oracle and Microsoft are making it more and more awkward to choose and install an on-premise system so the incentive to shift might be high.

The savings to the organization is that they no longer need to have quite as much expertise in the IT department.  After all, at the subscription service center, security, monitoring, upgrades, system performance, database servers, operating system updates, network configuration, security patches and, of course, monitoring, updating the hardware servers themselves is handled as part of the subscription.

Now, with one or more systems successfully migrated, the need to handle these requirements internally evaporates as does the need to have that same level of IT expertise available in house.  Many of the IT personnel can be repurposed and there are the remaining in house systems to support but the numbers start to dwindle.

Who leaves first?

In many cases, there is natural attrition and the company is happy with that.  It’s better overall for morale if people are leaving of their own free will.  Older employees who are at retirement age or who can be given an incentive package to retire early take the plunge.  They are probably still young enough to continue in the IT industry if they wish working in other capacities.  But, those people who are leaving through retirement won’t be replaced or wont’ be replaced in the same numbers.

In some cases, some employees see the future coming and decide to seek other opportunities elsewhere.  In most cases, this will be the most experienced and capable employees.

For these two categories, the impact on the organization cannot be measured by just the number of employees.  A great deal of corporate memory, experience and skill go with these seasoned veterans.

We have had contacts at some of our clients announce to us they were retiring, then announce that they couldn’t leave quite yet.  Then announce they were retiring again.  Then announce that yes, they’d actually retired by had been retained by their old employer as a contractor so we’d be continuing to interact with them.  It’s not a unique story.

For the organization, the ability to continue to support the enterprise systems that remain becomes harder and harder and so it’s perhaps no surprise that in the last 2 years, we have had more on-premise TimeControl clients shift to the TimeControl Online subscription service than ever before.  We’ve made that easier in many respects by having an Evolve Program to help defray the costs of going online but the incentive is clearly coming from within.  And, this shift isn’t restricted to our small and medium clients.  It includes some of our largest clients as well.

We expect this migration to continue.

Our own commitment isn’t likely to change however until there are literally no clients left who wish to purchase or support TimeControl on-premise.  Until then we plan to support our clients both on premise and in the Cloud.

For more information on TimeControl Online, go to: Timecontrol.com/features/timecontrol-online.

To see more about choosing Online vs. On-premises, go to: TimeControl.com/how-to-buy.

To find out more about the Evolve program go to: The TimeControl Evolve Program. or contact one of our TimeControl experts at: Timecontrol.com/contact.

Supporting contractors in your corporate systems

Contractors, TimeControl, TimeControl Industrial, Chris Vandersluis, Christopher Vandersluis, Christopher Peter VandersluisWe often speak with organizations who are struggling with how to integrate their contractors into their corporate systems.  Payroll is rarely a problem.  The contractor is almost always paid by their own employer and that employer will submit an invoice for their person’s time.  It is in the project management and timesheet tracking areas where contractors become a more logistical nightmare.  This is exacerbated by environments where the individuals can change from week to week or even day to day.  When contractors are on longer-term engagements or working remotely, we hear about this more in relation to our standard TimeControl system.  When the contractors are taken from a pool each morning or each week, this comes up more in our TimeControl Industrial product in the Crew Management module.

TimeControl’s flexibility was designed to accommodate employees from multiple sources within the same organization.  Let’s look at that from a couple of different perspectives.

Authentication and Single Sign-on

Some clients report that to use any of their corporate systems, they need to on-board any workers whether they are full-time employees, part-time employees or contractors.  They use this workflow to record people for payroll, vacation and system access.  This can be a multi-step process that can result in additional hundreds or even thousands of employees receiving a corporate ID and can affect things like the number of licenses that must now be paid for in systems like Payroll or HR or Office systems that a contractor won’t ever use.  The challenge is so daunting and potentially expensive that organizations will isolate the contractors outside those systems where functions like timesheets will now be done completely separately.

TimeControl overcomes this by having authentication systems that are defined at the user level rather than globally.  On-premise staff can be authenticated in the corporate Single Sign-on  Active Directory such as Microsoft Entra or other LDAP mechanism. Contractors, on the other hand can use TimeControl’s own username/password login or alternate login mechanisms.  That frees up the corporation from having to bring every contractor on board the corporate infrastructure as though they are full-time employees.  Better yet, this can serve to avoid multiple timesheet systems (one for the contractor and one for the corporation) that don’t interact with each other.

It’s all together but that doesn’t leave the contractor company disenfranchised

With all the data for the timesheet now in one place, some contractor companies can be concerned they will lose access to their own employee’s timesheet information.  With TimeControl nothing could be further from the truth.  TimeControl’s can send data automatically to the contractor either by giving them limited and filtered access to TimeControl itself or by sending regular reports automatically on a schedule via email.  Data can even be sent via Excel so the contractors can automatically import that data into their own internal systems for their own payroll, billing and HR needs.  It’s a win-win.

Authentication and multiple approval layers

TimeControl’s approval mechanism is extensive and known as the most flexible in the industry.  Clients who use contractors are able to create an approval flow that will includes both the contractor’s representative and the corporation administration at the same time.  TimeControl is designed for this kind of challenge and it’s unique.  A timesheet could be approved on a remote site by both the contractor manager and the organization manager meaning that invoices from the contractor, once they arrive, will already have approvals from both sides.  Imagine how that will revolutionize the invoicing approval process at the end of the month with hours being pre-approved by both the client and the contractor.  We clients where invoice reconciliation times have dropped from weeks to hours.  We’re not kidding about that.
From weeks to hours.

It’s all about the flexibility

When you are merging the work of multiple contractors into the same system, clients often explain to us that the blending of corporate processes was a large barrier that TimeControl was able to overcome.  TimeControl’s timesheets can appear one way for one group of workers and very differently for other groups of workers.  When we weave in the additional functionality of TimeControl Industrial’s Crew Timesheet Entry and Enhanced Rates, the options become extensive.  Once entered, the data can be split, shared or divided up as need be in exports, reports and more.

We’ve mentioned a few things here you may want to look at some more.  HMS maintains a Manage Contractors solution portal with more information on using TimeControl with both Employees and Contractors at the same time.  If you’re interested in Crew Timesheets in particular or TimeControl Industrial in General, check out industrial.timecontrol.com or just contact us at timecontrol.com/contact to talk to one of our TimeControl specialists.

Where does TimeControl stand in the use of AI?

TimeControl.ai, TimeControl, Chris Vandersluis, Christopher Vandersluis, Christopher Peter Vandersluis HMS started using AI techniques in TimeControl back in 1999.  Surprised?  Artificial Intelligence has been around awhile and you probably wouldn’t have noticed how we leveraged it back in 99.  At that time we created a communications protocol called “HMI” for TimeControl to transmit enormous volumes of TimeControl data through the Internet.  It had the capability of re-routing traffic based on what paths would be fastest.  With the invention of .Net and other Internet-based technologies we evolved from it.

While we are investigating how generative AI could help TimeControl administrators get the best use of TimeControl now, the questions we more commonly receive on the subject are almost all in one area:

“Can you make TimeControl use AI to automatically fill in my timesheet?”

The short answer is yes but don’t get too excited quite yet.  We have the technical capability to have AI determine what the most likely entry for any particular user’s timesheet.  The algorithm would look at the user’s scheduled work, for example, and perhaps past examples of timesheets submitted by that user and then figure out what the most likely entries would be.

The problem is, should we?

An auditor would say, ”Who entered this data?”  “TimeControl did it on its own,” we’d have to answer.  That would a problem for any audit.

“Ah,” you might answer, “but TimeControl could create the draft timesheet and the end user could just approve it.  Think of the time saved?”

That too is technically possible but imagine this scenario: A user is scheduled to work 30 hours this week on “Task A”. They’re scheduled to work 10 hours on “Task B”.  The end of the week comes and the clever AI generator says “Based on the scheduled work, the timesheet should probably look like the schedule”.  The pressure on the employee to just click Ok would be tremendous.  Perhaps they’d even justify it in their head by saying “I’ll make it up next week by doing the reverse.”

You can see the problem.  Algorithmic calculations of what should have happened don’t mix well with the simple recording of “what actually happened”.  So over the years, despite numerous requests, we’ve resisted putting our AI knowledge and our ability to automatically fill in workloads into the timesheet very deliberately.  This is perhaps why TimeControl is supported by both project administrators and Finance administrators at the same time.

We aren’t however, unsympathetic to the desires to reduce the workload in filling in a timesheet and, as a result, there are many features and functions within TimeControl that can reduce the time required to get one’s timesheet complete.  They include:

Preloading where TimeControl will automatically preload your timesheet with the project name and charge code to which the employee was assigned, and which fits into a particular filter of time.

Filtering which can filter out projects and charges the employee isn’t even working on.

Personal Preloads in which the employee defines projects and charges they always want to appear on their timesheet (think “Internal Meetings”) that they don’t want to go looking for.

Validation Rules and testing those rules on the timesheet.  This allows any errors to be caught before they’re even submitted for approval.

Notifications where TimeControl will remind you by email if your timesheet is late or about to be.

Copy where you can just copy a previous week’s timesheet in its entirety if you know you did the same thing this week as you did last week.

TimeControl can also just get you to the timesheet faster by configuring your personal preferences to have the timesheet entry screen automatically appear.

Keeping the structured financial and auditing rules of Finance, the fast-moving progress of project management and the speed at which end users want to move on with tasks they are not focused on is a balance we’ve had to manage since TimeControl was invented some 30 years ago.

Take a look at the Best Practices area of the TimeControl website for more ideas on how to improve efficiency with TimeControl either as an organization or as an individual.

Our President, Chris Vandersluis is on the TrepTalks podcast!

Chris Vandersluis, Christopher Peter Vandersluis, TimeControl, HMS Software, HMS, TrepTalksIt’s always a thrill to hear about HMS, TimeControl and all the work and accomplishments we’ve made.  This week I’m excited to share a podcast I participated in on TrepTalks.  It’s a little longer than I usually get for a podcast but in just under an hour that gave us lots of opportunity to talk about the industry, the history of HMS and TimeControl and how TimeControl has become so successful both as a commercial timesheet system but also as a source of critical data that organizations of all sizes use for key business decisions about their projects and forward looking project investments.

I hope you like it.

The podcast can be found at: treptalks.com/interviews/chris-vandersluis-of-hms-software.

Data Sovereignty matters more and more

When we started with TimeControl, the location of the client’s data had nothing to do with us.  We published the software with an on-premise license and the client decided where to install the product and where to locate the data.  The location, security and access to that data was completely decided by the client.  With the release of TimeControl Online a dozen years ago, that all changed.  TimeControl Online’s data was originally stored only in the US but as Software as a Service (SaaS) became more popular in medium to large corporate environments, the location suddenly became more an issue.

As it has with so many changes to the technical world, TimeControl adapted.  The TimeControl Data Location option, allows a client for a fee to decide from a wide range of countries where to locate their data.  The option is well established in our own technical department and has been taken advantage of over the years by clients requesting their data be stored and secured in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the European Union.  There are other countries and regions that can be supported as well including Brazil, South Africa, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, India, Australia, Japan and others.

The TimeControl Data Location option goes beyond just storing the data.  At HMS we understand data sovereignty.  So, when this option is used, we don’t backup or transport data to any other location outside the country or region where it is located.  We also don’t ever read client data directly from our Canadian offices in Montreal without a client’s direct request.  And, when the Data Location option is involved, we work with the client on how to access the data through their own systems to achieve whatever might be required to help with support or features.

HMS does manage these remote servers of course. We monitor all our Data Location servers just the way we do with the US-based servers on a 24×7 basis. We also handle all the upgrades and updates directly but that is an application-based update, the TimeControl application then handles upgrading the data locally in each location on its own.

Storing the data and self-restricting our access to the data is only part of the data sovereignty conversation.  It is then up to the client themselves to determine which users can access TimeControl and from where.  For global companies, that can take some thinking to make sure that both data sovereignty and user privacy are respected.

The Data Location option is available to TimeControl Online and TimeControl Industrial Online clients at any time.  If this is of interest to you, contact your TimeControl Account Executive at: TimeControl.com/contact