Managing Holidays with TimeControl

The holidays are upon us and here at HMS when we think of Holidays, we think of what Payroll and Human Resources people need to do to properly account for them in the TimeControl timesheet. TimeControl includes functionality that is perfect for managing holidays that will be taken by many staff people and assisting those personnel with entering the appropriate line item in their timesheet.

TimeRequest Wizardclip_image002
The TimeRequest Wizard is a great function which is typically made available only to Administrators. It to add entries into future timesheets and approve those entries in advance. The function is extremely simple to use. Administrators select a date in the future and then enter the description, number of hours and the charge and rate code that are appropriate for the upcoming holiday. Then the Administrator selects which users should get this timesheet entry. Once the Administrator confirms the entry, TimeControl creates a pre-approved TimeRequest which will automatically create an entry for each of those users in the future timesheet with the properly entered number of hours and charge code already done.

TimeControl Administrators often enter the entire year’s holidays in advance for the entire staff early in the year. Using the TimeRequest Wizard means fewer errors in entry during holidays for those who are entitled to the time off.

Some of the challenges which the TimeRequest Wizard’s functionally overcomes include:

How to manage different holidays for different groups?
The TimeRequest Wizard can create future entries for any filtered or selected group of employees. Perhaps you have US Thanksgiving for the American staff and Canadian Thanksgiving for those in Canada. No problem. The Administrator simply selects different filters for different groups.

What if someone unexpectedly works on the holiday?
No problem. The TimeRequest has been pre-approved and will pre-load into the employee’s timesheet but the employee can overwrite or delete that line should they wish. The TimeRequest entry simply provides them an entry that is pre-made for them, not something that they can’t undo when the time to do their timesheet comes along.

Other functionality that is important for HR and Payroll managers at this time of year includes:

Managing vacation and Personal-time-off (PTO) banks
Around the holidays it’s quite common for some staff people to want to take additional time off from their vacation or Personal-time-off banks. TimeControl supports up to 9 separate banks of time by default. In an employee wants to put additional time on their timesheet for vacation or personal time, they can make a TimeRequest to get approval and then TimeControl’s Validation Rules can check to make sure the employee still has enough time in their time-off bank.

Links to external systems
TimeControl has been designed to link to external systems such as HR and Payroll systems or services so your Holiday and time-off data can get to the right place without having to retype.

Powerful reporting and dashboarding
TimeControl’s reporting and dashboarding options lets us show summary and detailed reports for holidays booked, holidays taken as well as any additional time taken.

clip_image003TimeControl Human Resources Solution Portal
To find out more about TimeControl and how it can help with your Human Resources (HR) requirements as well as other business challenges, visit the TimeControl HR Solution Portal at www.timecontrol.com/solutions/hr. You’ll find a webcast, and screen shots and you can even see a webcast of the TimeRequest Wizard in action.

Another happy customer

It’s a great feeling when clients tell us how much they love TimeControl and how it makes their life easier but when people actually take the time to write us a letter it’s even better!

I’d like to share with you an excerpt from a letter we received from Laura Nadeau of AeroInfo Systems (a Boeing Canada company):

“… My name is Laura Nadeau, I am the TimeControl administrator for Boeing Canada.  When I started with this company three years ago, I had to release every single employee individually. Now, all it takes is a simple reminder notice to employees and their managers to release their hours and the system does all the hard work for me. Thank you so much for this, as I no longer dread Monday mornings …”

Thank you Laura, you made my day.

If you are interested in reading more TimeControl testimonials, please visit: http://www.hmssoftware.ca/clients/testimonials/ If you or someone you know is interested in writing a testimonial, please contact our marketing department at: (514) 695-8122.

TimeControl for Time and Billing – Solutions Portal

TimeControl is a remarkably flexible timesheet system that can be used to fulfill multiple requirements simultaneously.  It can serve as a time and attendance timesheet, a project timesheet and as a time and billing system. 

Some of TimeControl’s features that are ideally suited to a time and billing configuration including:

Easy to use interface
TimeControl’s easy to use interface can be updated from anywhere and supports a wide range of web-browsers including Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Mozilla.

Mobile interface
Every TimeControl also includes a mobile interface designed for use from your Smartphone.  Enter or approve your timesheets on your iPhone, Blackberry, Android or Windows Mobile 7 device from wherever you are.

Expense entry
When billing must include more than just the time, TimeControl’s expense entry allows you to capture non-labor costs within the timesheet.

Remarkable table flexibility
It is TimeControl’s flexibility of its background tables which makes it capable of fulfilling many requirements at the same time.  This allows us to group data by client, by project, by task and more.

Unlimited multi-value rates
TimeControl’s power rates system is highlighted in a time and billing scenario.  Create an unlimited number of project-based rates by person and have each rate code manage multiple values.

Powerful reporting and dashboarding
TimeControl’s reporting and dashboarding options lets us show summary and detailed billing reports by client, by project or by any combination of data.  We can even show detailed reports with both the internal cost and external billing price for any hour entered.

Links to external systems
TimeControl has been designed from scratch to link to many different external systems so you can integrate your timesheet data to your finance, hr, payroll, invoicing, costing and project systems simultaneously.Time&billing sol pg

We have created a brand new solution portal dedicated to using TimeControl for time and billing.  The portal includes some great new material including a webcast, a whitepaper , slides and more.

Access to the TimeControl time and billing solution portal is free at: www.timecontrol.com/solutions/timebilling.

What our clients are saying about us

We are always thrilled to hear that TimeControl is making a real difference for our clients. We recently received this glowing testimonial from Mark Weissberger at Intelcan explaining how TimeControl is invaluable to this growing company.

Intelcan Testimonial

If you are interested in reading more TimeControl testimonials, please visit: http://www.hmssoftware.ca/clients/testimonials/ If you or someone you know is interested in writing a testimonial, please contact our marketing department at: (514) 695-8122.

TimeControl Value Propositions for CIO’s

CAMERA PICTURES 209For the CIO, the major benefit for using TimeControl is that it reduces redundancy. Many organizations have two or more different timesheet systems and trying to consolidate all this data can be a real headache. TimeControl collects both project and non-project time making it a perfect fit for everyone in the organization. Having one timesheet for everyone is definitely more efficient and cost-effective and consolidation of data becomes a non-issue.

a company-wide timesheet also means that there is also no need to support and maintain multiple systems thereby saving even more time and money. Having all the data in one place makes reporting a much simpler task. The CIO benefits from this direct access to data for metrics and scorecarding.

Because TimeControl is so flexible, it has the ability to integrate with other corporate systems such as Project management, HR, Finance, and ERP. TimeControl can even integrate to different systems and different versions of the same system simultaneously. This huge flexibility allows the company to leverage it’s existing IT infrastructure.

Aside from all the benefits for the organization, the CIO himself may want to incorporate TimeControl for his own internal staff. He may have his own needs to track things such as project vs. non-project time, internal billing, costing, R & D time and more.

For more information on the benefits of TimeControl by role, please see the TimeControl Value Propositions factsheet located on the www.timecontrol.com site.

TimeControl Value Propositions for Team Members

We have focused on making time-entry in TimeControl quick, easy and convenient because CAMERA PICTURES 018the truth is that team members just want to get their timesheet done – usually in a hurry on Friday afternoon.  The fact that TimeControl is web-based means that employees can enter their timesheet from almost anywhere, as long as they have access to the internet.  With TimeControl Mobile, users can even enter time from their smartphone mobile device. 
The TimeControl timesheet can be pre-populated with scheduled tasks imported from a project management system.  The timesheet can also be pre-populated with tasks that the employee usually performs, we call this a personal pre-load.  Having the tasks already in the timesheet means the team member simply needs to assign hours to the tasks that are already loaded.  Another form of timesheet pre-load involves the use of the TimeRequest module.  Employees request time-off or other special time through TimeRequest by filling out the date and description of the time (vacation time, personal day, banked time, etc …).  When this time request is accepted, the time is automatically populated in the future timesheet. 
From the MyTimeControl homepage dashboard, employees can quickly see how much sick time, personal time and vacation time they have taken and is available.  Training hours, banked time and more can also be seen if the company opts to track this type of time.  This knowledge empowers employees to better manage their time and eliminates the need to be constantly be calling HR to ask for this information.   
This post has been a continuation of the TimeControl value propositions started last week.  Over the coming weeks I will continue on this series outlining the key benefits of using TimeControl by company role.  Last week we covered Executives and in the posts to come we will continue with CIO’s, Project Managers, CFO’s, Resource Managers, HR managers and Payroll managers.
For more information on the benefits of TimeControl by role, please check out the TimeControl Value Propositions factsheet located on the www.timecontrol.com site.

TimeControl Value Propositions for Executives

The use of TimeControl can have many benefits across an organization.  Sometimes it is helpful for people to understand just how TimeControl can benefit them according to what position they hold in the company. 
Today I will outline some of the key benefits that Executives would get out of TimeControl.CAMERA PICTURES 140
If you’re an executive, you’re used to looking at the big picture because your daily decisions affect the organization.  TimeControl allows executives to have timely reports to show where labour is being spent.  In some organizations, executives have to look at project data to track metrics on project progress and then look at financial timesheets to assess non-project labour.  One of the major benefits of using TimeControl is that it collects both project and non-project data for everyone which means that consolidated data is available for all staff. 
TimeControl offers flexible reporting with unlimited levels of data selection, filtering and sorting.  The ability to have immediate access to any report you need saves you time and energy and allows you to focus on decision making.  Perhaps you would be shocked to see how many hours have been spent in meetings over the past week.  TimeControl gives you the information you need to focus resources onto more effective tasks which saves money and improves the bottom line.
For more information on the benefits of TimeControl by role, please see the TimeControl Value Propositions factsheet located on the www.timecontrol.com site.

Managing banked time with TimeControl

Keeping track of banked time is one of the fundamental reason for purchasing a timesheet system.  Every company has it’s own policies which offers employees certain types of non-standard time that that needs to be kept track of.  Vacation time, personal time and sick days are the most common and that is why they come as part of the default set-up in TimeControl.  These can be modified or added to for a total of 9 banks per employee. 
Hours are allocated to each of the banks through the employee table. As the employee draws from the banks, TimeControl keeps track of the time taken.  When users log into TimeControl they will see a table of banked time on the main dashboard.  This table shows the allotted time, time taken and time remaining which allows employees to keep track of their own banked time.
Validation rules can be created to ensure that people are not taking more hours out of a bank than is available.  Also, employees can use the TimeRequest function to request permission to take time from a particular bank when permission is needed. 
For more information please check out the webcast entitled Managing Banked Time which is available in the TimeControl Online Learning Center.

Selecting TimeControl for Online or On-premises

online_vs_onpremisesWith TimeControl now available to be purchased for on-premises installation and for subscription to our TimeControlOnline hosted timesheet service, there is a choice to make.  Here at HMS we’ve been asked recently “Which is better – Hosted or Purchased?” and the answer isn’t obvious. Whether you subscribe to TimeControlOnline or purchase TimeControl to install on your own servers, there’s lots of great functionality including:

  • Multi-browser easy to use interface
  • TimeControl mobile smartphone interface
  • Links to project management systems like MS Project
  • Links to ERP/Finance, Payroll and HR systems
  • Matrix Approvals
  • Automated Validation Rules
  • Extensive Reporting
  • Vacation approvals
  • Email notifications
  • Multi-lingual functionality

But there specific advantages for both subscribing or installing so we’ve put together some resources that we hope you’ll find useful on our Timesheet Buyer’s Guide solution portal including:

Webcast
A short webcast by our President, Chris Vandersluis comparing the differences of purchasing TimeControl vs. subscribing to TimeControlOnline along with some basic questions you can ask yourself to see which path is optimal for you. Read more…

Slides
A PowerPoint slideshow that is used in the webcast.   Read more…

Factsheet
A 4-page factsheet entitled Online vs. On-premises which puts side-by-side comparison of the different options available with both products.  Read more…

Timesheet Buyer’s Guide
This solution portal contains numerous resources other than those we’ve listed here on how to select a timesheet for your needs and how TimeControl might apply to those requirements.  See more at buyersguide.timecontrol.com.

The official blogsite of TimeControl