We wish you and yours the very best of the holiday season from all of us on the TimeControl team. During the holidays our hours (all in EST) will be:
Monday, December 24: 9am-12:30pm
Tuesday, December 25: Closed
Wednesday, December 26: Closed
Thursday, December 27: 9am-5pm
Friday, December 28: 9am-5pm
Monday, December 31: 9am-12:30pm
Tuesday, January 1: Closed
Wednesday, January 2: Closed
Thursday, January 3: Regular hours recommence
CEOCFO Magazine recently interviewed HMS President Chris Vandersluis. The topics ranged from the history of HMS and the project timesheet software business to trends in the industry and high tech in general. You can read the interview in its entirety at ceocfointerviews.com
Once again we’re proud to publish a letter from one of our clients. In this case it is our UK-based friends at Hyde Part Solutions. We’ve known the HPS for years so when they went looking for a timesheet, we were delighted to work with them. The letter from Richard Jebb, the HPS Chief Technology Officer explains how the flexibility of TimeControl was a deciding factor. HPS has been growing at a rapid pace the last couple of years and we wish them continued success. You can read the letter in its entirety at TimeControl.com/why-timecontrol/testimonials/hydepark.
Our thanks to Richard and the whole HPS team for their kind letter!
In early 2018, HMS introduced a new service associated to TimeControl Online. Called, the TimeControl Sandbox, it is a parallel service that brings a separate instance of TimeControl Online and features to replicate the exact data from the production instance of TimeControl. The purpose of the service is to provide TimeControl Online administrators a separate TimeControl for the testing of new features and the creation and testing of new Link definitions, Validation Rules and Accrual processes without affecting the main system. The TimeControl Sandbox is also an ideal place for training.
The cost is a small fixed price per year regardless of the number of users on your TimeControl Online subscription.
HMS creates a second instance of your TimeControl Online environment and links this instance to your production instance of TimeControl. At any time, the Administrator can restore the complete production database into the Sandbox. If you have multiple backups, you can choose which backup to restore.
For more information on the TimeControl Sandbox or to find out pricing, contact HMS at TimeControl.com/contact or email info@hms.ca.
It’s the day before Thanksgiving in the United States. More than 54 million people (yes, million) will travel more than 50 miles for the holiday in the US this year. So we’re going to take a moment to think about how to manage your timesheet responsibilities while you’re mobile.
The free TimeControl Mobile App has been available for over a year now and is one of the most sought-after elements of TimeControl functionality. If your organization has enabled the Mobile App, you can create your timesheet, edit a timesheet that is already in progress, and complete and release a timesheet. If you are a supervisor, you can do your approvals while on the move (in the passenger seat!). You can approve or reject a timesheet and, if need be, attach an email notification. If you are an administrator who had only a few more adjustments to do, you can recall a posted timesheet and apply debit/credit adjustments to it.
And all that from your phone or tablet!
The TimeControl Mobile App is available at no charge from the Apple Store for iOS iPhones and iPads and from Google Play for Android phones and tablets.
For more information on the TimeControl Mobile App, visit Mobile.TimeControl.com.
Here’s some news we don’t have every day. HMS Software’s President, Chris Vandersluis was just featured on Nathan Latka’s Top Entrepreneur Podcast! Nathan and Chris discussed HMS Software’s history as a premiere publisher of timesheet software and the rise of TimeControl as one of the most popular timesheet systems. The Top Entrepreneur podcast is hugely popular and has featured some remarkable guests in the past. We’re very proud to have our own President on the show!
The podcast can be found on iTunes at: http://nathanlatka.com/thetopitunes (it’s episode 1209) or from your desktop on Nathan’s site at: nathanlatka.com/thetop1209. Take a listen to hear their conversation!
We’re delighted to tell you that TimeControl 7.4.1 is now available for download. This version updates TimeControl, TimeControl Industrial, TimeControl Online and the free TimeControl Mobile App. TimeControl and TimeControl Industrial clients with a current support and maintenance agreement can download the new version immediately at TimeControl.com/support/updates. HMS is preparing for the upgrade of TimeControl Online which will happen automatically in the next 2-3 weeks. TimeControl Online customers will be notified a week in advance of the update.
There are many new features to be excited about. Here are some of the highlights:
Charge HierarchyTimeControl now supports multiple methods of displaying a hierarchy of charge codes. TimeControl has long been recognized for supporting hierarchical charge structures but the new functionality takes this to a new level. Field hierarchy permits hierarchy to be built from multiple user defined fields in the Charge Table and you can create multiple breakdowns then switch them on the fly when you’re searching for charge codes in the timesheet!
We have made extensive additions to the TimeControl API making it even easier to integrate TimeControl as part of an overall corporate environment.
The TimeControl Mobile App now allows Debit/Credit update Adjustments. This allows supervisors and administrators to open a Posted timesheet and apply adjustments to that timesheet and release those adjustments to Posting.
The TimeControl Mobile App now includes the ability to view the expenses that are attached to a posted timesheet in the past as well as any attachments that might have been associated to the timesheet or expenses.
We have made major changes to the Assignments Table. Assignments can now be made as part of a person’s full time availability so one person could be put on two tasks simultaneously at 50% of their availability each. You can also now have the assignment start and finish be dates other than the charge start and stop so assignments that were meant to occur only during part of the charge can be defined that way.
We have taken numerous elements of the TimeControl configuration and moved them from the TimeControl.INI file into the Administrator System Preferences and User Profiles functions. This will make a huge difference for TimeControl Online environments where some of these features had to be managed at the server level.
There are numerous new settings in User Profiles that allows TimeControl’s configuration to be tailored to the person or group with that User Profile setting. These changes include all-new Super-User reject and Modify rights . You can also change how the Timesheet List appears, allowing only a certain number of weeks in the past or future to display. A new Highlight feature helps when adding a timesheet by highlighting the current week or the last missing week for a new timesheet.
When creating timesheets, TimeControl allows the number of periods in the past and the future to be constrained to avoid accidentally creating a timesheet in the wrong period or in a period when Finance is not expecting it.
We’ve made it possible to control who is allowed to copy hours when creating a new timesheet using the Copy Timesheet function and activated the ability to copy hours.
There’s so much more. We’ve done a lot of work on high volume capacity, improved performance, added more revision auditing, and improved usability across the application.
Find out more at TimeControl.com/features/latest
If you haven’t seen the interview already, we’re quite proud of it. The piece is entitled Inside the Mind… of Chris Vandersluis and is written by Dave Gordon who is featured regularly on the Business to Business News Network. Dave asks Chris to talk about the history of HMS Software and the evolution of TimeControl and to discuss for other entrepreneurs how to service some of the most well known organizations in the world as a small niche software publisher. We invite you to give it a read. The article can be found at:
We have the privilege of having some pretty awesome clients. For those who have visited the HMS Software offices in person, you know the corridors are covered in testimonial letters written by clients over the years and we are very proud of each and every one of them. This month we received what is, for us, a first. Marie-Lyne Vachon, the Financial Controller at our Quebec-based client R2.ca sent us a beautiful testimonial letter in French. You’d think with HMS having our headquarters in Quebec Canada and with virtually all our staff being bilingual, this would happen more often but it has not. We’ve taken the liberty of translating the letter so you can read the original letter in French or the translated letter in English. From all of us at HMS to our users at R2.ca and Marie-Lyne we say a hearty thank you!
We don’t do enough French blog posts due to our large profile of clients outside of Quebec and Canada but for this letter we can’t resist!
Nous avons le privilège d’avoir des clients assez impressionnants. Pour ceux qui ont visité les bureaux de HMS Software en personne, vous savez que les couloirs sont couverts par des lettres de témoignage écrites par des clients au fil des ans et nous sommes très fiers de chacun d’entre eux. Ce mois-ci, nous avons reçu ce qui est, pour nous, une première. Marie-Lyne Vachon, contrôleur financier chez notre client québécois R2.ca, nous a envoyé une belle lettre de témoignage en français. Vous penseriez que si HMS avait son siège social au Québec, au Canada, et que presque tout notre personnel était bilingue, cela se produirait plus souvent, mais ce n’est pas le cas. Nous avons pris la liberté de traduire la lettre afin que vous puissiez lire la lettre originale en français ou la lettre traduite en anglais. De tous les employés de HMS à nos utilisateurs de R2.ca et de Marie-Lyne, nous disons un grand merci!
Every year the US Defense Contract Audit Agency audits thousands of contracts with the US government. If you have ever been part of such an audit you will know that the DCAA places a particular emphasis on verifying timesheets associated to workers working on projects that they oversee. It is not enough to have a good time and attendance record. The DCAA must validate that hours billed to government contracts were spent on those projects and not on other work. A complete task-based timesheet is required that encompasses all work.
In 2017, the DCAA audited over $281 billion in defense contract costs. The DCAA is not restricted to defense contracts alone. Their standards and audits are also used by NASA, the DoE, Homeland security and other agencies.
While the DCAA deliberately does not endorse or certify software products, and instead focuses on an auditable process, the standards they require are well known.
TimeControl has included DCAA compliant functionality for many years and has been selected by clients on numerous occasions to be used for DCAA audit compliance.
HMS maintains a resource portal with a number of useful tools and links to aid in becoming DCAA compliant when using TimeControl. The portal is free and is located at: dcaa.timecontrol.com.
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