All posts by chris.vandersluis

timecontrol

HMS Software’s timesheet best-practices portal

Did you know that HMS maintains a portal for timesheet best practices?  It’s true.  The TimeControl website has had a section dedicated to best practices for years and updates it on a regular basis.  In fact, the TimeControl website has a number of resource areas that may be of interest:

TimeControl Best Practices

This is not a list of features of TimeControl but rather how organizations, executives and individuals can get the most out of a timesheet system.  The portal is divided into those categories and each section includes resources that are targeted for that particular perspective.  In the Organization section, for example, there is an empty process guide template in Word that can be adopted to document timesheet practices on a per week, per month or per incident basis.  In the Individual’s section, you’ll find a webcast on how to get in and out of your timesheet as efficiently as possible.

The Best Practices portal is free and can be found at: TimeControl.com/resources/best-practices/organizations.

Use-Case Library

Aside from the Best Practices Portal, HMS also maintains numerous other free resources that can be of interest to those using TimeControl.  These include the Use-Case solutions area with the most common business challenges TimeControl solves.  Users can review the multiple use-cases at: www.timecontrol.com/use-cases

Resources Library

In addition to the many use-cases for TimeControl, additional resources can be found in the Resources section and the Support section including a bank of Frequently Asked Questions, webcasts, white papers, slides and factsheets.

Visit the Best Practices area of the TimeControl website and the Resources area for more information.

 

timecontrol

Integrating corporate systems in a mixed IT Environment

Many clients ask us how TimeControl can adapt to their changing IT environments.  It wasn’t so long ago that every mid to large-sized firm would have its corporate systems located on servers on-premise, inside their facility with databases, applications and networking all handled internally.  Advances in the stability, performance and security of Infrastructure in the cloud services from major vendors like Amazon, Oracle and Microsoft have shifted the computing load of many organizations to cloud providers.

One of the key advantages of having all your corporate systems on-premise is that integration between them can happen in the background at a database level.  Even if the ties between tools are done as an import/export of transaction files, having everything on the same servers makes that a little bit easier.

With the move of systems to the cloud, internal IT personnel are confronted with the question of, “How will our systems integrate?”  The most common environment is one where there are still some organizational systems working internally on premise, some systems which are subscribed to as a service and some systems which are hosted on external cloud servers in what is commonly known as a “private cloud”.  We think of these mixed environments as “hybrid”.  And, if that’s not enough, corporate environments are changing at a faster and faster pace.  The impact of the pandemic has had many IT departments reaching out to see how they can leverage cloud computing to better server their workers who are no longer co-located.

At HMS we are asked how to support these kinds of shifting environments all the time.  The short answer to the question, “Can we integrate our hybrid systems with TimeControl is, “Yes”.  But given that’s not too useful, here are some basic points to understand about why we say so:

Both on-premise and in-the-cloud

TimeControl started as a on-premise solution back in 1994.  There were no cloud computing offerings then.  In 2011, we released the TimeControl Online subscription service in the cloud.  That service has continued and expanded since that time.  To this day, TimeControl is still offered for on-premise and in-the-cloud use and our understanding of both environments makes us particularly well suited to help integration in a mixed hybrid environment.

One Code-base

One decision we made early on was that we would maintain a single code base for both TimeControl Online and TimeControl on-premise.  This would ensure that any features or improvements we made for one environment would work for the other.  That kept a sharp focus on being able to support not just TimeControl but anything linked to it no matter what environment it was in.

Many ways to integrate

As part of creating the TimeControl Online service, we had to look at how we would continue to empower the integration abilities of TimeControl.  One method we’d used sometimes in the past to integrate two systems was database-to-database.  That was clearly not going to be available in the online service.  So we worked on expanding one existing method and adding another.

Scheduled Imports and Exports

We extended existing functionality in TimeControl for importing and exporting transaction files in several ways.

First, we made the imports and exports scheduleable so they could happen automatically in the background.  With corporate systems like ERP environments, there was an overwhelming desire to not push data programmatically into the Finance system but rather to deliver a properly formatted set of data to be imported by the ERP tools.  That left CFOs more confident that their ERP tool had validated the data with whatever rules had been established for the organization.

Second, we made it possible for imports and exports of those transaction files to support FTP connections, so the resulting files didn’t have to be on a network server that TimeControl had access to but could rather work through encrypted FTP protocols to move data to and from servers that were under the control of the client whether they were on-premise or private cloud.

Application Programming Interface (API)

The ultimate tool in integrating seamlessly in the background of TimeControl is our RESTful API.  This bi-directional programming interface allows data to be pulled from TimeControl for use by other tools and allows data to be pushed from corporate systems like HR, Payroll, Finance, Cost control to populate the data that TimeControl needs for users to function.  The API is extensive and can interface with other tools whether they are database-based or API’s themselves or middleware environments that are used to tie multiple systems together.

If you’d like to find out more about TimeControl’s flexible architecture and support for your own IT environment, visit: TimeControl.com/features/flexibility or contact HMS to talk to a product specialist at info@hms.ca.

 

timecontrol

TimeControl is popular in both the public sector and the private sector

When we think of project management systems and enterprise timesheet systems, most of the literature is oriented around the private sector.  Benefits are thought of as “time to market” and “profitability”.  TimeControl certainly has many private sector clients but it is also very popular in the public sector.

While profit may not be a key performance indicator, there is much more focus these days in the public sector on transparency, and good governance in the use of taxpayer funds.  Time and Attendance in the public sector has always been a common business case for timesheets but more and more public sector operations are now project or results oriented and this has brought many public sector organizations to look at tracking time on an activity-by-activity basis for many of their staff.

Key performance indicators in the public sector may not be revenue oriented (although they can) but might include instead speed of delivery, citizen satisfaction and cost to implement new laws.

As a result, some elements of tracking labor actuals that public sector clients look for include a high degree of flexibility, speedy deployment and ease of use.

The TimeControl website includes a free Public Sector Solution Portal which caters more to public sector use cases.

 

timecontrol

Track Expense Reports, Freeform Notes along with hours in a TimeControl timesheet

We tend to talk a lot about timesheet entries and timesheet hours in TimeControl along with anything associated to them like project and billing values but there are many more options to data entry in the system.

Expense Reports

Associated to any timesheet line item, you can add an unlimited number of expense report items.  Each expense report is linked to a resource code and allow for a value, currency type, two taxes and more.  With each expense item, you can add an unlimited number of attachment files.  These can be something like a scanned receipt in PDF format or almost anything else.  The exact list of acceptable file types is managed by the Administrator.  If you’re using the free TimeControl Mobile App, you could, for example, attach a photograph from the camera or photo library.  This can mean you can easily associate a picture from the field to a given timesheet.

Freeform notes

You can add freeform notes either to the timesheet itself or to each line item.  Because TimeControl supports having the same charge code multiple times, you could even have different notes for each day of a particular task.  If you have optionally turned on the notes icon on the timesheet line, you will see it filled in if there are notes on that line.  Entering these freeform notes is also supported in the free TimeControl Mobile App.

Project Progress

This has been part of TimeControl from the very start.  You can enter the estimate to complete for each task or just mark it complete.  In the activity tab you can also enter the task completion if there are multiple resources on the same task. Entering project progress is also supported in the free TimeControl Mobile App.

Material Consumption, Equipment Usage and Production Accomplished

If you are using TimeControl Industrial, the Material Entry screen allows you to enter several kinds of non-labor entries including the Material Consumed, the Usage of Equipment and even how much production was accomplished.  These entries can be done with a timesheet creating a LEMS (Labor/Equipment/Materials) entry or they can be added in their own entry screen and approved separately.  The free TimeControl Mobile App supports these features as well.

Find out more about Materials entry at: industrial.timecontrol.com/features/material-entry.

You can see a lesson in Expenses in the Online Lessons area:

TimeControl.com/resources/online-training/timecontrol-8.   

 

timecontrol

TimeControl maintains a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) Index

Saving answers to our Frequently asked Questions save our technical and sales people a lot of time.  When we get questions over and over we try to have an answer appear either on the TimeControl Blog, the Solutions Area of TimeControl.com or in Frequently asked questions.  The best plan is often just to do a search of your question on both the blog and the website.

This week a frequently asked question was answered about where notes can be added in TimeControl.

You can, of course, add notes in TimeControl and not only can you add notes to the timesheet, you can add them to each line of the timesheet and to each expense item and to tables throughout the application.

You can see the complete index of TimeControl FAQs at: TimeControl.com/support/faq.

timecontrol

TimeControl Online enjoys its 9th anniversary!

With quite a busy August here at HMS we completely forgot an important anniversary.  TimeControl Online, our Timesheet Software as a Service in the cloud was launched in August of 2011.  It became an instant hit and is now used by organizations around the world.  Tens of thousands of users are on the TimeControl Online platform.  Subscriptions of the online service now eclipses on-premise sales and that has only accelerated this year. We’ve been fortunate to enjoy a 99.9% uptime performance over the 9 years of TimeControl Online’s life and we continue to focus new efforts on features, performance and capabilities of the online system.

We’ll make a much bigger celebration for the 10th anniversary next year but for now we thank all our TimeControl Online clients, some of whom have been subscribers since the first release!

For more information on TimeControl Online, visit TimeControl.com/features/timecontrol-online.

timecontrol

TimeControl Flexibility lets you actually add functions to the menu

TimeControl is known in the industry as the most flexible timesheet available and that’s true in so many ways.  The ability to add extra fields or validation rules or make the display of the timesheet vary depending on your role are all remarkable features.

But did you know that you can even add functions to the timesheet?

It’s true.

In the Maintenance area of the TimeControl Menu the Edit Menu function allows you to add a completely new function.  This is often used by our own staff to add extra documentation to a client’s menu with a PDF or other file that is specific to the client.

But you can add anything you have a URL for.  As an example, we’ve created an Online Lesson in the TimeControl Online Lessons area that shows how to add Online Lessons to the Help menu!

Once a menu item is added, it becomes part of the TimeControl structure and is controllable in the Security Profiles area just like any other menu function.  And when TimeControl is upgraded, these menu items will upgrade automatically at the same time.

It’s just one more way that TimeControl is adapting to how you want to function.

timecontrol

Our users at Quinte Conservation had some great mail for us which we’d like to share

mother goose and baby

It’s always great to hear from our clients.  From time to time though we get the delightful experience of receiving a letter like the one we just received from Quinte Conservation.

Quinte Conservation is a community based environmental protection agency that serves 18 municipalities in the area east of Toronto, Ontario Canada.

The letter from Tammy Smith, the Corporate Services Manager explains how the introduction of TimeControl a few years ago has helped from both the management and the employee perspectives to improve visibility into time spent on different projects and help distribute costs more accurately.

Employees are now able to automatically see available and taken vacation, sick leave and personal time off and administrators can let TimeControl calculate those banks of time automatically.

We’re very grateful to Tammy and the entire Quinte Conservation team for their letter and our relationship and we look forward to working together for many years to come.

You can read Tammy’s letter in its entirety at: TimeControl.com/why-timecontrol/testimonials/quinteconservation.

timecontrol

TimeControl.com has free online training

onlinetraining_250x109Not everyone is happy to read through manuals from cover to cover.  After all the TimeControl printed documentation runs over 1,000 pages.  But printed documentation is only one of the many tools available to Administrators and end-users on how to use TimeControl.

We’ve done recent updates to our Online Video Training Library. There are separate lessons for TimeControl 8 and even older versions.

These lessons are only 3-7 minutes each so users can work at your own pace. Each mini-lesson shows a single feature or function of TimeControl. Some are designed for end-users, others for TimeControl Administrators.

There are many other resources as well on the website including webcasts, white papers, slide presentations, factsheets and even a section on timesheet best practices.  You can browse through all of these resources at no charge at the Resources Area TimeControl.com.

timecontrol

Much of TimeControl.com is about you building your solution

Scavenger-Hunt_iStock-185313527_300x200Since we first launched our first website in the mid 1990s we have focused on making knowledge available to others.  This tradition of sharing information continues in TimeControl.com.  The website contains information about our product of course, but it also contains collateral of interest to anyone involved in project management systems, timesheet systems and, in particular multi-function timesheet systems.  There has never been any fee for accessing this collateral.

We always knew people would come to our site with questions about the features of our products, but people don’t fundamentally shop for features.  They shop for a solution to their business challenges.  So we have made our thinking on how to solve business challenges with our products and services easy to access here.

Surfing the TimeControl website at first glance can be overwhelming for the sheer volume of information.  There are webcasts, online training, white papers, factsheets and slide shows but the site content is organized into several logical areas:

TimeControl prospects

For those stopping by because they are interested in buying TimeControl, then the TimeControl Features area and Why TimeControl? areas are the first stops.  They contain information specific about what TimeControl can do, who has bought it in the past, why it was successful and how to subscribe to or buy it now.

Solutions

For those who are interested in how a multi-function timesheet like TimeControl can be useful, the Solutions area looks at many different possible applications.  There is a section for using TimeControl for Human Resources, using TimeControl for Payroll, using TimeControl for tracking R&D tax credits, using TimeControl to integrate with Primavera or Microsoft Project and much more.  Each solutions area contains different collateral like webcasts, factsheets and screen shots to help answer questions about how to solve a particular business challenge.

Resources Library

We may have referenced some webcasts or white papers in different solutions areas but we have bundled access to all our major collateral in the Resources Library.  Here you’ll find different sections for Webcasts, White Papers, Factsheets, Slide Presentations, Online Training Videos and our Press Releases.  There’s even a section on best practices for using timesheets and deploying TimeControl.

Of course that’s not the end of our materials.  There is also this blog, articles we write for other sites and put into the public domain.  We hope this information is valuable for those who are considering our products and also for those who are just looking to educate themselves in the industry.

You’ll find the TimeControl Solutions area at: TimeControl.com/use-cases.

The TimeControl Resource Library can be found at: TimeControl.com/resources.