Tag Archives: TimeControl

timecontrol

TimeControl Online is 6 years old and better than ever!

TimeControl Online is TimeControl’s Software as a Service subscription offering which launched in 2011.  At six years of age, it’s looking better than ever.

“HMS is committed to offering TimeControl both as a purchase for installation on-premise and as a subscription service in the Cloud,” explains HMS Software president Chris Vandersluis.

The online TimeControl service provides all the functionality loved by the on-premise version.  The code that is deployed for both situations is identical.

When subscribing to TimeControl Online, clients avoid having to purchase or configure hardware, networking, databases or worry about security, monitoring or anything other than simply using the timesheet.  HMS Software’s technical team handles the rest.

TimeControl Online started in 2011 as version 6.2.  It has gone through continuous updates and upgrades and is now in version 7.

For those who are using TimeControl on premise and are interested in switching to TimeControl Online, they can speak to their TimeControl representative at info@hms.ca and ask about a transfer credit towards their first year’s subscription.

For those who are considering TimeControl and aren’t sure whether to purchase for an on-premise deployment or subscribe online, our President, Chris Vandersluis has recently released a series of mini-webinars on the subject.  You can find them on his blog EPMGuidance.com.

For more information on TimeControl Online, visit timecontrol.net.

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HMS will be at PMI Westchester on Saturday, April 29th!

pmiwestchester_300x34.pngHMS will be on the road this Saturday at the 8th Annual PMI Westchester Professional Development Day which takes place April 29th at Manhattenville College.

HMS a Gold sponsor of the event and we will be there to give attendees a chance to talk to HMS personnel about their timesheet needs and see the latest of TimeControl, TimeControlOnline and TimeControl Industrial.

For more information on the conference, see pmiwestchester.org and if you’d like to make an appointment to speak to HMS personnel while you’re at the conference, contact info@hms.ca.

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TimeControl Case Study – March Consulting

Here at HMS we are blessed to have the clients we have. Our long standing relationships is one of the key motivators for our staff and there is little that will get our team more excited than hearing that a client is using our software in a way that has made a difference for them.

So it is great to see a new case study on the TimeControl website by one of our clients.

March Consulting is a Canadian engineering firm based in the province of Saskatchewan and they can be working on 20 or more projects at a time.

“I’ve implemented a lot of software throughout my career and now I use TimeControl as my gold standard,” Peter Smithen, Project Services said. “This was the best implementation I’ve ever completed.”

You can read the whole story at TimeControl.com/why-timecontrol/case-studies/march or to see more case studies, go to: TimeControl.com/why-timecontrol/case-studies

 

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Design your Timesheet Approvals

TimeControl has the most extensive set of controls for creating timesheet approvals in the industry.  We created the term Matrix Approvals for timesheets over 20 years ago.  TimeControl’s approval mechanisms allow an organiztion to create numerous approval paths for the different aspects of their organiztion.  There are automated approvals using TimeControl automated Validation Rules and Workflow.  There are unlimited organizational approvals and even line-by-line approvals.  In version 7.1 of TimeControl even more rich functionality has been added to the approvals area with the new Line Item Approval mechanism.  If you are designing your own approval process you’ll want to look at the TimeControl white paper Creating Your Approvals Process which talks about all aspects of the approval mechanisms.  This paper has recently been updated to include information on the Line Item Approval Process.

Take a look at the updated Creating Your Approval Process white paper at: TimeControl.com/pdf/whitepapers/tc6_creatingapprovals.pdf.   For more information on our other white papers, check out TimeControl.com/resources/whitepapers.

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HMS and BrightWork Announce Technical Alliance

We’re delighted to announce that HMS Software and BrightWork have reached an agreement to work together as technical alliance partners.  HMS Software CEO Chris Vandersluis and BrightWork CEO Éamonn McGuinness announced to their respective technical groups today that the two companies intend to work together to bring a BrightWork / TimeControl integration to market and to promote it through both firms.

“I’m very excited about this announcement,” our CEO, Chris Vandersluis explained.  “HMS and BrightWork already have clients in common and Éamonn McGuinness and I agree that our clients will benefit from a bi-directional integration of our two systems.”

HMS will become a BrightWork Solution Partner.  BrightWork will become an HMS Technical Alliance Partner under their respective programs.

Since 1995 BrightWork has become known worldwide as the publisher of its project management system based on Microsoft’s SharePoint and Office 365.

HMS is, of course, known around the world for our TimeControl enterprise timesheet system.  The combination of both products will make for a powerful project control environment.

TimeControl already has a link from SharePoint and this link can be used by BrightWork customers already.  In the coming weeks, the HMS development team will work with BrightWork technical personnel to complete a bi-directional link.

Further information on bringing this combination of best-in-class products to market will be released in the coming weeks as technical details and other collateral become available.

For more information on BrightWork visit www.brightwork.com.
For more information on TimeControl, visit www.timecontrol.com.

 

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TimeControl 7.1 now available

Late last night we released TimeControl 7.1 and we couldn’t be more excited.  TimeControl Industrial 7.1 was also released but we’ll do a post and more notes on that edition of TimeControl tomorrow. TimeControl 7.1 includes numerous new features and many improvements on features that are already a part of the TimeControl 7 family.  The features we’ll mention here are shared by both TimeControl and TimeControl Industrial:

Line Item Approval

tc71_lia_300x240One aspect of TimeControl that has been a constant has been the multi-faceted way that approvals are handled.  We coined the term “Matrix Approval Process for Labor Actuals™” (Yes, that’s our trademark).  TimeControl has had both an organizational approval aspect and a project management line-item aspect of approvals since its very first version but now we go much, much further.  The new Line Item Approval mechanism allows additional parallel approval paths to progress as part of an approval design.  Imagine one stream of approvals for HR and Payroll, another for Project Management, yet another for Account Management or even another for Onsite Client approvals.  The implications of how flexible approvals have just become is so vast, we’re still wrapping our heads around it and will share our insights in a white paper in the coming days.

Web Services link to Oracle Primavera EPPM

primaveralogo_300x76TimeControl now has two ways of linking to Oracle’s popular project management product.   The existing database-to-database link will remain but for some environments this was not enough.  With the new TimeControl Primavera Web Services link, TimeControl takes advantage of the Web Services API within Primavera EPPM to create a bi-directional link with the same functionality as the existing link.  TimeControl has had an integration with every version of Primavera since 1997 and with this new architecture, it looks like that integration will continue for decades to come. For users of Primavera Professional or EPPM users who need intimate database-level integration in an on-premise implementation, the existing links will remain in TimeControl.

Batch Debit / Credit

TimeControl Industrial had a feature in the past used for doing Debit / Credit adjustments for many employees at the same time.  In the high-volume world of TimeControl Industrial, it was a must but it was also so popular that we’ve rewritten Batch Debit / Credit and have made it part of the regular TimeControl.  Administrators are likely to love this easy to use method of making adjustments for multiple timesheets and even across multiple employees in a single interface.  For organizations with many adjustments to make each period, this will be welcome news.

Employee Banks Report

We didn’t talk about this much in the last version of TimeControl because it was new even to us but the Employee Banks Report is a new dynamic interface that allows administrators to view, aggregate, group, sub-group and analyze the status of all data in the Banked areas of the employee records.  For larger organizations this view is tremendously powerful and allows HR managers to get a handle on what time off has been taken, what categories it’s in and what is still to be taken for any selection of staff.

And so much more…

These are just the more visible changes available as part of TimeControl and TimeControl Industrial 7.1.  There are so many more changes under the covers including performance improvements for high capacity or high volume implementations, ergonomic improvements to many of the screens, and improvements to the table interface which makes it faster to perform most functions.

You can get it now!

TimeControl version 7.1 is available immediately.  Find out more about the new features at TimeControl.com/features/latest.  Existing users with a current support contract can access the upgrade at no charge at TimeControl.com/support/updates.

TimeControlOnline users will be updated automatically in the coming weeks.

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FAQ: How does one deploy a timesheet like TimeControl for both the company and its sub-contractors at the same time?

subcontracting_300x244.jpgThis is a great question and a common one.  First of all, many organizations already have a clause in their sub-contracts where the contractor has agreed to use company-specified or company-provided systems.  It’s quite a common aspect of a sub-contract and is needed for many reasons.  If you’re using access cards for your front door, for example, contractors absolutely must comply with having an authorized access card in order to work.  The same logic can be applied to other systems.  It is relatively simple to insist that contractors use your internal timesheet system.  That being said, there are two things you may find are immediate concerns and TimeControl can handle both of them:

  1. Can you separate the access to data by the sub-contractors so they only see things that are appropriate to them and they can’t see things from either the company or other contractors?   TimeControl’s User Profiles allows you to set filters for many purposes including this exact scenario.  You can isolate the data for the sub-contractor to see as much or as little data as desired.
  2. Can you create an approval mechanism for contractors that is distinct from other contractors and from the company?   TimeControl’s flexible approval mechanism allows you to design an approval for each sub-contractor so they can be involved in the approval mechanism and you can insert people such as a contract manager into the approval mechanism for them.

The benefits of having both your internal personnel and your contracting personnel on the same timesheet system can be significant.  There is a use-case section of the TimeControl website dedicated to this with a webcast, white paper and other resources located at: www.timecontrol.com/use-cases/manage-contractors.

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Starting off your TimeControl year

It’s a brand new year and just like for many of us at home, there are some things that will need doing in TimeControl to make sure we close off our previous calendar year and are ready for the upcoming year.  Here are a few suggestions:

End of the Fiscal year?

If the end of the calendar year is the end of your fiscal year then this is a good time to be looking at your completed year of timesheet data to make sure it’s ready for Finance to get their year-end complete. A good start to this is to check for completeness.

  • Are there any timesheets which were not completed during the year for any employee? The Missing Timesheet Report may help locate these.
  • Did we close off the missing timesheet report for any employees who left the organization by entering a end-date in the employee table?
  • Are there any timesheets which never completed their approval either because someone left or there was a change in the approval path? Using the Change-Ownership may help with those.
  • Are there any more Debit/Credit corrections expected for the previous year?
  • Are your full-year reports showing everything you need in the data? Running draft reports and checking against expectations will help with that.
  • It’s a good time to check for end of year Accrual Rules to ensure they ran as expected. Some Accrual rules will use the end-of-year to automatically reset employee bank balances for things like vacation time.
  • While we’re talking banks, this is a good time for a Banked Time review. Did employees use the banked time they were supposed to? Did the appropriate amount of banked time roll over into the new year? Are there any manual adjustments needed? Using Banked Time reports and delving into the Employee Table’s Banked Time Tab should help with that.

Start of year clean-up

Whether this is your fiscal year end or not, this is a great time to be doing some clean up of the TimeControl tables.

  • Table clean up. Are there employees in the Employee table which are no longer with the organization? This might be a good time to either delete them or make them inactive. How about the Project and Charge tables? This might be a good time to be either deleting or marking tasks as Closed to filter them from view.
  • Timesheet Archive. If you won’t be using the timesheet data from 2 or 3 years ago in your most common reports, you can Archive the Data and then include those timesheet records only by specifically asking to include archive data. This may help with performance of certain drop down fields.
  • Rate Review. This is a great time to review your rates table and see if any rate values will change for the new year. Should you make new rates or just update the previous rate values? This depends on what will work best for your implementation.
  • Filter Review. Are your charge code, reporting and other filters doing what you need? Some organizations use date-specific filters. If that’s the case for you, reviewing your commonly used filters for reporting, exporting or screen display might be required.

With a good review of your data now behind you, you’re ready to face the year! We hope it’s a good one and we at HMS are very much looking forward to working with you as the year progresses.

Testimonial

A Letter from our client Entegrus

entegrus_300x120Sometimes we just can’t say it better than our clients do.  We received a letter recently from our client Entegrus.  Entegrus is a utility company based in Ontario Canada which brings electricity, renewable energy and water to over 40,000 customers.

They’ve been using TimeControl since 2014 and as a result have become more efficient in reporting on where their time is being spent.

We’d like to thank Chris Towne, the Director of Finance for Entegrus and the entire Entegrus team for their support.

You can read Chris’s letter in its entirety at www.timecontrol.com/why-timecontrol/testimonials/entegrus.

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Get attached to things? Like receipts?

One feature that was added to TimeControl some time ago was enhanced in TimeControl 7.  The ability to attached documents within the timesheet relates to a couple of very important features.

Attachments to the timesheet
Some people have scanned documents or pictures or other files that are relevant to their entire timesheet.  Just above the timesheet grid on the right-hand side of the screen is a button called “Timesheet Attachments”.  Clicking on it will allow you to add an unlimited number of files from your device to attach to your timesheet.

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Attachments to Expense Items
A more popular area of the timesheet where attachments are made is within Expense Entries.  If you add an expense item to any timesheet line, you are able to add an unlimited number of attachment files to each expense item and an unlimited number of expense items to each timesheet line.  Whether you take a photograph of your receipt or scan it into a PDF file, the file is easily uploaded into the TimeControl database and associated to that item.

In TimeControl 7, this ability to add files was improved in both the Expense dialog and the timesheet header area, making it easier to browse and post files in both sections.