If you are self-employed, or you operate a small business with only a few employees, keeping track of time worked can be an issue. There are many task tracking gadgets available, but they are often simple and meant for amateur using. They often don't provide a record of the time you have spent, and they usually can only keep track of one person at a time.
Time Clock MTS is time tracking software targeted towards businesses, so it does provide these advanced features. Larger businesses will have to pay for Time Clock MTS after the trial period (30 days) expires, but any individual user or business that only needs to track three employee records can use it for free indefinitely.
Creating Records
When you first start Time Clock MTS you need to set up the administrative account. The admin account is responsible for creating and maintaining all of the employee records in the Time Clock MTS database. In a larger business it would be very important to keep this account protected, but for our purposes it is generally not as important. Still, the program requires that you set an admin account when you start it for the first time.
Once you've handled that you'll want to enter yourself into the database. By default you are not logged in to the admin account, so click on File and then click Log In As Administrator.
Now click on Employee Maintenance and then click on Add An Employee. The detail with which you need to fill out this next section will depend on your usage. If you are self employed and you only need to keep track of your own hours it is less important. If you are filling out information for an employee, however, you'll need to use more detail.
By default, the Employee Information part of the record will appear first. The other sections are Payroll, Contact and Tax information. The titles of these sections explains what each handles.
Tracking Jobs
Once you have entered at least one employee record, clocking in and out is done by selecting the employee record and then clicking Clock In or Clock Out.
But what if you want to keep track of the hours you are spent doing a specific task? Time Clock MTS lets you accomplish this, as well, but to do so you need to set up a Job Code.
Go to Tools and then click on Options. This will bring up an option interface with numerous sections. Scroll down until you see the Job Tracking section and click on it. Now click on the icon furthest to the left (it looks like a clean sheet of paper) to create a new code. You will be asked to assign a code and name the job.
Now go back to Employee Maintenance and click Edit Selected Employee. You'll see a job tracking drop-down menu. Click on it and select either optional (to make job tracking something you can do, but don't have to) or compulsory (to force job tracking whenever someone clocks in). If you do enable job tracking you will have to enter the appropriate job code when you clock in.
If you want to know how much time you or an employee has spent working on specific tasks you can do so by generating a Payroll Report. You can do this by selecting the employee record and then clicking on View Employee Information in the main window. A drop-down menu item will display the option to generate a payroll report. A new window will appear that included a Report Options section with a drop-down menu. Click on it and then select Job Time Report. This will display the amount of time spent on a specific job code you entered.
Conclusion
Time Clock MTS is great time tracking software to keep track of your time and the time of others working for you, in a professional manner. It has a large number of in-depth options, including the ability to export payroll reports to Excel. Compared to some, more mobile options - such as Toggl - Time Clock MTS feels clunky. However, Time Clock MTS lets you use all of its features for free so long as you don't exceed three employee records. Toggl, and other services, require that you pay in order to use all of the features available.
What time tracking software do you rely on to keep track of your billable hours?