With only a few days left in the year, now is the time to make sure everything is set up correctly with your time clock system for the new year to come. Whether you have 100 employees or just 2, it is still very important to make sure that you are accurately tracking your employees time cards. Let’s make sure everything is all set and ready to go for January 1st 2020. There may be some settings in which you did not realize were not set before or that need to be updated to reflect on the new year. This blog will go over:
- Review PTO settings
- Adding Bulk PTO
- Updating employee’s pay periods
- Archiving past time Cards
Start A New Year By Tracking PTO
What does PTO stand for? PTO is the abbreviation for Paid Time Off. PTO usually consists of Personal, Sick, Holiday and Vacation time that is paid for by the employer. Since an estimated 23% of Americans have no paid time off or paid vacation days, chances are you fall under the remaining majority that offer it. Most of our users take advantage of our PTO tracking option. Some companies start fresh on January 1st and some go off of their employee’s anniversary/hire date. These instructions will help you for either one that you choose to use.
The absolute first thing you need to do is export the hours that were used. To do this you need to go to the PTO Settings Tab in one of your employee’s profiles. From there you will want to click on the link that says “Click here to view current PTO hours for employee’s name”. Next you will want to click on the Excel Export button on the right side of the page. This will export your hours to excel so that you can save them for your records. This is not mandatory, but it is recommended that you have a copy of their past paid time off hours that are used or not used.
Now you are ready to make the big change. Next to your accruing date there is a link that starts a new PTO year. Go ahead and click on it. You will notice there is a start date and end date along with the question of carrying over unused PTO. Make sure to select Yes, No or Some and press save changes. Now you are ready for a new year for that PTO category.
Adding Bulk Paid Time Off
One of the best features that we offer is adding in bulk PTO. Instead of going to the time cards page and manually entering in each and every Holiday PTO day, we have made it super easy for you. If you click the PTO icon at the top and select Add Bulk PTO you will be prompted to select the employees that you want to add bulk PTO for and then select the year. Next you will find a grid with holiday dates. All you have to do is enter the hours under the category it falls under for that holiday and press save. Now those dates have been added to the selected employees’ timecards.
How To Update Employee Pay Periods
One thing we recommend double checking on is to review your Pay Period settings. Under Settings>Time Clock Settings> Basic Settings is where you will find the Pay Period type and Start Date(s). A great way to see your pay periods is to go to the time cards page and look at the actual pay period dates to make sure they match up to your liking. If you need assistance understanding what a pay period is then we recommend visiting out What is a Pay Period blog.
How To Edit Your Employee List(s)
There is nothing worse than looking at your employee list and realizing that you have been paying for employees that no longer work for you. The great thing about OnTheClock is that we allow you to delete your employees, but still keep their records in case that you need to restore them at a later time. Also, another cool feature is that we do keep their time cards in our system in case you need to look back at those as well. So go ahead and click on the employee icon >View Full Employee List and press the red X that is next to anyone that is not an active employee on your staff.
Archiving Past Time Cards
When you archive the time cards they become a final, historical record that cannot be edited and are put in a separate database. A lot of people ask why we offer archiving of their time cards. The main reason we offer it is because any changes that you make to your pay periods, overtime rules, and the auto deduct feature will change your past timesheets. You can find your archived time cards in the Time Cards section. In the Period box search for the pay period with (archived) after it. Click on that pay period and you will see the archived pay period. If for some reason you need to change them you can un-archive that pay period to be able to edit it. Then you can re-archive it.
Welcome to The New Year with Your Updated Time Clock
Hopefully by now you have gone through each and every setting I mentioned and was able to update them. Whether or not you use all of these features or maybe you learned something new today about OnTheClock, we want you to start the new year with a fresh start. I know that some of these tasks were not easy to change, but please know we are here to help in any way. Look at this as a business goal instead of a new year resolution since you are 3 times more likely to follow through with a goal than a resolution according to Forbes.