Not quite ready for prime time...
For the pros - web-based means easy access to anyone in the company who needs access to the information.
For the cons - management of Projects, Tasks and Subtasks leaves a lot to be desired. Tasks and subtasks should be separate as subtasks are intended to be components of a project. When clocking on to a task, which is intended to be a separate operation, all of the subtasks are mixed in. In our case, we have a set of 7 subtasks in our project routing, but the task dropdown will include all of the subtasks for all of the current projects - making it extremely difficult for an employee to clock onto a task. Also, it is possible to choose a task together with a project - which, in theory, are 2 different areas. Adding subtasks to a project is also more difficult than necessary. As stated above, our projects have 7 subtasks in the routing yet the new project addition allows for only 3 subtasks. To add more, you must go back tot the top of the page, save the data and then find the new project and then you can add 3 more subtasks. When I say find the project, I mean that literally as the order of the sort on the page is changed when you save.
Reporting is all text based - even when exported to Excel and the way the data is organized does not facilitate ease of analysis. No way to customize the output although you can change the groupings before the information is exported. I run the same report every day but these is no way to automate it. The page for report generation does not remember my preferences, so I have to go through and check the boxes for the information I want, how it is grouped, and in which order.
Our payroll is somewhat manual, so we have to export the time card data at the end of each pay period. The report comes with several columns that are not wanted (nor do they even have any data) yet these is no way to customize this.
We use the fingerprint readers - which work quite well, by the way, but there is no facility to let us know if a punch was recorded with a fingerprint or with a mouse click. Clock rounding exists but is not handled in the best way. You can choose from a couple of different levels of rounding, but it always changes the actual clock time rather than adjusting the calculation of hours only - meaning that I have an employee who arrives a 7:04am with 6 minute rounding, the system will show he clocked in at 7:00am, so I will have no idea he arrived late. The preferred method would be that the punch is recorded at 7:04am but the calculation of hours would begin at 7:00am.
Supervisors have no way to view the time card information, so they are unable to verify that their employees have clocked into the correct project and operation. Only giving them access to edit time cards - meaning the times also, would allow them to change this information. Needs to be a level of access to allow them to adjust task and project/subtasks without changing times.
We have communicated our issues and updates have been promised (for April) so maybe some of these issues will be resolved in the new release. Meanwhile, we will continue to use the service because it is quite inexpensive and worked better than the previous time system we used.
Reply From OnTheClock.com
Hi David,
Thank you for your great review of our Job & Project Costing Setup and Reporting. Our Developers have been working on a way to make this part of our system more user friendly. We appreciate your feedback. ~Alicia E.
