On Track issue 5.05 October 2005

The long-awaited Service Pack 5.3 release of Employee Tracker is available for the asking. This is a pull release, which means that we will not automatically send you the update; you must request it if it contains features you are interested in. You must have an active support contract to receive the update package. If you want the new version, call us at 1-888-531-3774 x226 for the download details.

Employee Tracker Service Pack 5.3 contains many valuable new and updated features. Here are the highlights:

Time Banking

There are several new features available in Time Banking: Banking of statutory holiday time and premiums are both now available. Time Owed Cards are a system to track Lieu-banks and automatically incur a deduction during payroll if the time owed is not paid back on time. Several new Advanced Actions can now be performed on the time banks, all aimed at saving the user time when performing common administrative tasks.

Advanced Premium Application

The Advanced Premium Application allows for application of premiums to a group of employees based on certain conditions. These conditions include transactions which occur within a given date range or which occur within a defined number of days from an employee's hire date or seniority date. Further refinements can be made to filter on employees who have some amount of defined paid time.

Absent Earning Codes

The earning codes associated with absent type transactions were limited to a single code, which included all time distributed through regular, time and a half and double time. This is not the case anymore, as users can now define specific earning codes for each distributed column of time. This provides much better flexibility with the export of absent earnings.

Throw and Catch Substitution

One of the more appreciated forms of substitution available within the scheduling modules for Employee Tracker has been the "Throw and Catch" method, which allows a user to 'throw' a series of shifts for which employees may have called in sick, then systematically 'catch' the thrown shifts by locating, calling and substituting other employees who can work. The engine behind the scenes of this substitution method has been beefed up with new options to help streamline the process and make it more user friendly for the different ways all our customers work things.

Monthly Schedule

Employee Tracker's Monthly Schedule had always been pre-set to display the monthly detail calendar running from Monday through Sunday. The user now has the ability to tell the Monthly Schedule which day of the week they want to be on the left side, allowing for a more customized work space (e.g., Sunday through Saturday).

General Ledger Account Mask

Previously, the General Ledger Account Mask (which allows for dynamic creation of specific G.L. codes based on the department, position or job fields) was active only on Time type transactions. Now the user can dynamically construct a General Ledger Account number for Absent and Holiday type transactions as well.

Multiple Provincial Labour Standards

The base software for Employee Tracker now includes the province-specific add-ins for British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario and Nova Scotia. These add-in modules affect the way Employee Tracker behaves in accordance with each specific Provincial Labour Standard. Further to having these available, you can activate any combination of these required, and with intelligent filtering, run a single database to pay employees from numerous provinces! Even Holidays can be segregated to specific groups of employees depending on their geographic location (e.g., Alberta Family Day, Saint Jean Baptiste day).

Bug Fix - Time Record Corrections Through Time Approval Center

Previous versions of the Time Approval Center would not correctly display the attached premiums when an error transaction was completed (changed from an Error record to a Time record). This now functions as expected.

Absent With Premium

If Employee Tracker is setup to attach premiums to absent time, the user can filter which premiums apply on an absent-by-absent basis.

Tri-Weekly Overtime

The new Enhanced Time Calculation Rules allow the user to define how many weeks they wish to use for accumulation and distribution of overtime. Previously, only Weekly or Biweekly options existed.

Time Worked On A Holiday

Previous versions of Employee Tracker only had one area to identify the earning codes to use for time worked on a holiday. The user can now define earning codes for these unique circumstances on a status-by-status basis.

Break-based Alerts

Users can now define Alerts to trigger an email when an employee takes a break (either paid or un-paid) that is a bit longer than anticipated.

Rate Analysis

Employee Tracker now contains an in-depth analysis report for viewing all the various ways an employee may have hourly rates applied. From date-based employee, department or positional rates, to employee or position based step-rates; all these details are available on one standardized report.

SQL Server Specific Enhancements

Some retooling has been done on the methods Employee Tracker uses to communicate with SQL Server databases. These new methods have deep positive impact on the speed and responsiveness of the software, by reducing the load put on the server, allowing it to service more requests. Further, Employee Tracker will now fully support Windows Authentication against the SQL Server database, which eases a lot of administration burden for the IT department. Another new feature, requested by several customers, is the ability to encrypt the file used to identify and authenticate against the SQL Server. This adds another level of security to the entire corporate network. Also, clustered indexes can be applied to the work-horse data tables, which greatly increases the speed of any data lookups.

Strong Transaction Locking

Locking (aka Approving) transactions in Employee Tracker has always been about preventing the user from making changes. However this has not prevented Employee Tracker itself from altering locked transactions after the user makes an adjustment to any of the critical elements for a transaction, such as a time calculation rule. Users can now institute Strong Locking, which completely locks transactions from all outside elements that might adjust the resulting time totals, distribution or dollar assignments.

Pro-Rated Absences

Users can now define formulas for pro-ration of absent time. E.g., instead of paying an employee exactly 8 hours for a particular absence, a formula can be applied to gather hours over a defined period of time, and adjust the absent time based on those results.

Bug Fix - Daily Scheduling

One of the nicer scheduling features in its day was the Daily Schedule. This drag-and-drop style of scheduling gives a very graphic depiction of what is occurring on a given day. The bugs have been fumigated and this great scheduling method is once again ready for the masses of supervisors!

See the Advanced Tracker Downloads page for more detailed documentation and installation instructions, then contact us if you are interested in getting the update.