1. Create an account on Twitter

• Go to http://twitter.com/
• Click the big “Sign Up Now” link
• Follow the instructions
• When it asks you to find your friends you may click the “Skip this step” link at the bottom of the page
• When it asks you to “Follow” people from the list of Twitter stars you may click the “Skip this step” link at the bottom of the page

2. Linking your cell phone to Twitter

• From your Twitter home screen, click the “Settings” link at the top right of the page
• Click the “Devices” tab
• Enter your cell phone number, check the box allowing Twitter to send you text messages, and click save
• Send a text message to Twitter (40404) with the confirmation code on your screen
• Great, you’re phone’s linked to Twitter!

3. Requesting text message alerts when we post updates

• Go to the TSheetsStatus Twitter page
• Click the “Follow” button
• Click the new cell phone icon that shows up where the follow button was

You’re done! Now whenever we post any sort of service issue you’ll instantly be notified via text message.

We Have A Backup Number!
Last time we had a text message outage we told you we were working on a backup plan. Well, we’ve got it. TSheets’ new backup text message number is 313131. It works exactly like our other 68398 number. There are two small things to note:

• You might need to send a text message with just the letter “T” to 313131 it before it will allow us to send replies to your phone.
• If you include the word “stop” anywhere in your text message it will unsubscribe you until you send another text message with just “T” in it.

Please continue to use 68398 as the primary number for texting to TSheets, but let everyone know about the backup number too.

Want Instant Notifications of Outages?
We have setup a new TSheets Status page on Twitter where we will be posting TSheets outage notifications in real time. You can even set it up to send you a text message anytime we post an update to that status page if you’d like. Here’s the URL: http://twitter.com/TSheetsStatus

• 2009-10-23: Status Update: Our primary 68398 number is working again!

We’ve had several clients using this feature for the past couple of months and have finally deemed it ready for release. You’ll notice this option on your account if you have a Business or Platinum account.

What is it?

The PTO Accruals Add-on allows you to use your TSheets account to track and accrue paid time off hours for yourself and your employees.  Currently we only offer yearly accruals, but have plans for monthly and pay period type accruals in the near future (if you’d like this sooner, let us know).

We’ve built it to allow you to set company defaults as well as personalized PTO settings and balances for individual employees.

How do I use it?

The easiest way to explain how to use PTO Accruals is by showing you.  Sit back and enjoy the short video below.

We hope you find this new feature helpful. Please let us know if you need help during setup or have any questions along the way.

If you’re one our our legacy customers, please contact us to learn how easy (and affordable) it is to upgrade to our new Business or Platinum accounts.

Along with this update, we’ve also gone ahead and refined the assign job/pto code tool (used in both the new PTO Code Management tool and Job Code Management tool).

You can now group by group name and sort by first/last name.

We’ve got a lot of new features coming in the next couple of months, so check back often or subscribe to this blog to receive automatic updates.

It’s working! (mostly)
One of the things changed by our provider’s software update is they are now intercepting all text messages with the word “start” or “stop”. Since 95% of the text messages sent to TSheets are “t start” or “t stop”, none of those messages are getting to us. To work around this we have setup the new words “in” & “out” to replace “start” & “stop” respectively. So if you would have previously texted “t start at 0800″, you will need to replace that with “t in at 0800″ instead.

Confirmations may not work
If you happened to text “t stop” to us during the last 24 hours, chances are that we won’t be able to send messages back to your phone. Our provider is intercepting the word “stop” and blocking your number so that we can’t send messages to you. We don’t have a work-around for this yet, but will keep you posted.

A backup plan
Be assured that we are completely committed to restoring a reliable system for tracking your time via text message as quickly as humanly possible. We are working through the night researching other text message gateway providers and alternatives to get a reliable system in place. Expect another announcement in very the near future with backup number you’ll be able to text to.

Please call or email if you’d like more details or just feel like venting.

Brandon

• 2009-08-28: Status Update: Our provider will be applying a patch tonight. Read my update in the comments below.
• 2009-08-31: Status Update: Things are back to 100%! Read my update in the comments below.

The Basics

There are a few notes that you should know about the overtime alerts before you dive right in:

1. Everybody is allowed one weekly and one daily alert. If you create any new alerts that interfere with older ones, the new ones will override the old.
2. The authority chain goes as follows: Employee > Group > Company.
3. The alerts will “assume” that the first day of the week is on Sunday if you don’t have your Week Starts On day set.
4. When you type in the number of hours the number will be rounded to the nearest whole number (ex. 37.5 = 38; 37.1 = 37).

How It Works

Everyone knows how frightening overtime is – and it can stack up quickly! Whether it’s skipping a lunch here, staying late enough to finish up a phone call another day – everyone is susceptible to the dangers of overtime. So the TSheets developers came up with a plan to warn people when they are approaching overtime. Not only can you warn the employee, however, you can send alerts to their manager or to the administrator.

Basically, what happens is our system is programmed to run a check every 15 minutes, and alert anyone that meets the requirements of being clocked in past their set limits. Chances are you will not be alerted at 5:00 on the dot that your employee has reached 8 hours, instead you will be alerted sometime between 5:00 and 5:15 that your employee is X number of minutes over 8 hours. (Don’t worry, the number will be accurately displayed. For example, an email sent at 5:05 will say that employee X has been on the clock for 8 hours and 5 minutes).

The best part? TSheets doesn’t calculate the time by the set hourly time – it will alert you to the time specific to your employee! So if an employee came in 30 minutes late TSheets will take into account their number of clocked hours, not the typical 9 to 5 work day – so nobody gets sent home early!

Lets Get Started

The Overtime Alerts are set up as an add-on. This means that they are optional for your account; but free to use if you wish to take advantage of it (for Business accounts and up, if you have a legacy account contact us for your upgrade options). It also means that you will have to install the add-on before you will be able to use it, below is how to obtain the alerts and get them rolling.

Installing the Add-On

1. Log on to your account as an administrator.
2. Click on the “My Account” link on the left hand side of your main menu.
3. Navigate to the “Add-Ons” tab.
4. Scroll through the possible add-ons until you find the one labeled “Overtime Alerts”.
5. As soon as you click on the “Install” button a new box will pop up – this is the preferences box.
6. Here you will set up the alerts to match what you want.
7. Save your changes.

To make things easier on everyone we have the ability to set up our sample alerts automatically. Before you set up any alerts at all you will be presented with a blue box (shown above) that will allow you to click a button and have our two most popular alerts set up for you. One of these alerts will inform you when an employee has reached 8 hours in one day and is still on the clock, the other alert will let you know when an employee has reached 38 hours in a week.

Setting Up Your Alerts

1. Open the preferences box for your Alert Add-on.
2. Click the “Add Alert Rule” button.
3. You will be presented with a box to fill out parameters for this alert.
4. Choose who this alert is for: “All Employees”; “One or more Groups”; “One or more Employees”.
5. Fill out the “Who” box – as you type you will be presented with suggestions; click on the appropriate one. (Only applicable if you did not choose “All Employees”).
6. If you are choosing to make this rule for more than one person click the “Add Another” button below the “who” box.
7. Type in the number of hours you want to be alerted at.
8. Select if that is the number of hours per “day”; “week”; or “never”.
9. Select who you would like the alerts to go to and how you would like to have them received.
10. Click the save button.
11. Repeat this process for as many rules as you need, once you are done click the “Done” button in the bottom right hand corner.
12. Rest easy! Your overtime hours will be closely monitored.

Questions or comments? Please post them below.

Getting Started

It’s easy to get started with Time Sheet Approvals.

Here’s how:

1. Log into your TSheets account as an administrator
2. Go to the “Add-Ons” section found under “My Account”
3. Install the “Approvals” add-on
4. Launch the add-on from the main menu (on the left)

To ensure that the Approval add-on functions correctly please ensure the following is set on your account:

• Payroll Period (learn more)

Using Time Sheet Approvals

Generating approval reports and approving/unapproving time sheets couldn’t be easier.

Follow the steps below to see how:

1. Launch the Approvals add-on from the main menu (on the left)
2. Select a payroll period (if defined), or a custom date range
3. Select any other report criteria and click “View Approval Report”
4. If you have employees with unapproved/approved time sheets, you’ll see them below
5. Click “Approve” or “Unapprove” for each employee
6. Congratulations.  You just approved/unapproved time sheets for that pay period.

Here are a couple of tips to make a note of:

• You can view the individual time sheets that make up the total for an employee by clicking on the “view details” link or the green plus in the upper right-hand corner of the blue employee total box.
• Toggle between all, approved and unapproved results by clicking on the corresponding tabs across the top of the employee blocks.

What Now?

You might be wondering what happens when you “Approve” an employee’s time sheets for a pay period.  Once time sheets have been approved, all time sheets through the end of that pay period will be locked and cannot be modified by anyone.  This ensures that your payroll data is intact and provides a mechanism to ensure that once approved, these time sheets will not be edited.  If for some reason you do need to make edits, an admin would need to unapprove the time period first, then re-approve after the changes were made.  As always, all actions related to the time sheets are logged in your account system log for your review at any time.

Questions or comments?  Please post them below.

Local Wisdom is a website development shop that uses TSheets to track their time both internally and for time spent on projects for their clients.  It’s wonderful to get a glimpse into how a customer is using our software, and now you can too! They’ve given a great overview of the ways that TSheets allows you to track time manually or in real-time with a single click of the mouse.  Stop on over and have a look!

How To

It’s easy to assign an employee as a group manager.  Here’s how:

1. From your TSheets admin account, click the “Manage Employees” menu item
2. In the bottom area of the “Manage Employees” window, click the “Manage Groups” link
3. The red “Manage Group” tool appears.  If you have groups already, you’ll notice three icons to the right of the group name.  They perform the following functions (in order): Assign Managers, Rename Group and Delete Group.  Click the first one (Assign Managers).
   
   
4. An area should appear that allows you to assign employees as managers.  Just start typing their name and the box should auto complete.  Select their name and then press the green plus next to the input box.
   
5. Assigned managers show up below with a red minus button to the left.  This button allows you to un-assign users as managers of that group.
6. That’s it. Once a group manager logs in, they will essentially have admin rights over the users that are members of the managed group.

This is a powerful new feature that is flexible enough to allow TSheets to accommodate businesses who rely on department or group managers to function.

This feature is included in our Business and Platinum accounts at no additional cost.

Please post all questions/comments below.

Time Tracking with Twitter

Today we have another exciting announcement – TSheets has leveraged the Twitter API to create a link between our services. TSheets users with Twitter accounts can now send direct messages to @tsheets to start or stop the clock, switch job codes, or add notes to their work-log.

Text messaging for international users

One of the unexpected benefits we quickly discovered is if you’re outside the US and want to send text messages to track your time, you can now do it! Twitter has phone numbers that allow almost anyone in any country to send a text message to @tsheets via twitter. Tracking your time from your cell just got easier :)

Learn More

Check out our Twitter integration page where you can see examples, screenshots, and more. If you don’t already have a TSheets account now’s the time. Enter coupon code “TS0420″ when signing up and get $20 credit instantly applied to your paid account. (offer expires May 1st 2009)

So now in addition to voice recognition, a polished iPhone web-app, a Google gadget, text messaging, a Mac widget, and your personalized TSheets account page, you’re ready to rock the clock with Twitter.