The xentral time clock from the Employee Time Recording module enables your employees to record their time with a time card at a terminal. The terminal consists of a QR code reader* and a tablet device*.
You can use the time clock with QR code card, with RFID chips or alternatively with barcodes (more information follows in the article).
The hardware is not included in the xentral time clock module.
Setting up the time clock requires several steps, which are described below.
The user interface of the time clock is web-based, as is common in xentral. The user interface must be available to an employee when booking. A tablet device that is mounted on the wall next to the QR code scanner is particularly suitable for displaying this interface.
The tablet device must meet at least the following requirements:
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Touchscreen operation
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Screen diagonal not less than 7 inches
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Android or Windows Mobile operating system
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USB host port (for connecting the QR code scanner)
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Access to local network (WLAN, LAN) possible
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A wall mount is available for the tablet
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Power supply not via USB socket - device must have separate charging socket
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For example: Dragon Touch X10, 10 inch Octa Core Android Tablet PC
In addition, the special use makes special settings on the device necessary:
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Continuous operation without automatic state change (shutdown, hibernation, screen lock)
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Browser with fullscreen mode (e.g. Firefox with plugin "Fullscreen"), or kiosk mode
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Static IP address to ensure pairing status with xentral
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Permanent Internet connection
In order to use a tablet as a time clock, the device must be registered once in xentral in combination with the browser used:
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Establish the network connection on the tablet
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Open the browser on the tablet and go to the xentral home page
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Log in with an administrator account
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Click on Administration > Settings > Employee administration > Employee time recording device settings> +NEW
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Enter a name for the tablet under Description - The fields IP, submask and code will be filled in automatically
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Save the settings
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Press the Pair this device button to activate the pairing mode
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Log out
The combination of tablet and browser is now registered in xentral as a time clock terminal. The tablet now allows logging in using the xentral time clock card, and displays a specialized login interface for this purpose, as shown in the following screenshot:
The time clock module is compatible with the following types of readers:
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ISO 15693 - HF Reader (13,56 MHz)
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MIFARE - HF Reader (13,56 MHz)
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UHF Reader (868 MHz)
Metratec > Readers: https://www.metratec.com/de/produkte/identifikation-rfid/leseschreibgeraete.html
Setting up the time clock requires several steps, which are described below.
The setup of the adapter box can be found under Administration > Settings > System > Adapter box. By clicking on +NEW, the Adapter box module in xentral will give you instructions on how to connect the adapter box.
Important
It is important that you select the option RFID reader in step 3 in the field Use as.
The adapter box is successfully connected as soon as the status is set to connected.
To enable an employee to use the time clock, perform the following steps:
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If not already completed: Create the employee as an address in the master data
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Create a user account for the employee under Administration > Settings > System > Users. This user account is only suitable for booking at the time clock. If an employee is also to work with xentral, he needs two user accounts: A normal user account, and the user account for the time clock
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If the employee wants another time recording in addition to the time clock, a new address must be booked for this, so that a unique address exists for each user
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The employee receives his RFID chip, in which a number is stored
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Assign a name
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Select the employee's address in the Address from master data field
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Do not enter a password
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Set the Account type to User
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Check the Allow access remotely box if xentral is hosted outside your local network
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Under Home page, enter the string "index.php?module=stechuhr&action=list"
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Under RFID Tag: Place the RFID chip on the RFID reader and press the Read in button
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Select the user's login method from the drop-down menu, here click on Employee time recording QR code in the list
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The number of the RFID chip should be taken now
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Save
The RFID chip is therefore linked to the master data address.
In addition to the time card and RFID chip, there is also the option of creating a barcode via which the user can log on to the system. The barcode content must correspond to a number of at least 8 digits, which corresponds to the user name in the user settings.
After both the terminal and the user account for time recording have been set up, the employee can book attendance and break times using the time card.
Please note that you always start the time recording on the first of the month, so that there are no minus hours or no manual supplement has to be made.
These events can be booked:
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Arrival
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Departure
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Break Start
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Break Stop
The working time worked by each employee is calculated from the added working times.
To book an event at the time clock, the employee holds his time card under the QR code reader. If the card is recognized correctly, the time clock interface appears.
The time clock interface includes the following elements:
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Name of the employee (first line)
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Current status of the employee (second line)
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Buttons for booking an event (third, fourth and fifth row)
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"Logout" button for logging out without booking an event (bottom)
Regardless of which event is booked by the employee, the logout takes place automatically after pressing one of the buttons. The interface is optimized for mobile responsiveness.
You can also book times manually under Administration > Settings > Employee administration > Employee time recording > Booked times > New entry.
A time can also be booked in the calendar by clicking on the corresponding day (e.g. vacation, sick).
Important
Please always click in the correct tag when adding. A manual change may not be applied by saving. If necessary, check the entry later in the calendar.
The evaluation of the booked times of your employees takes place under Administration > Settings > Employee administration > Employee time recording. There, the booking information of the employee selected in the selection list on the left is displayed in the following tabs:
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Vacation/Sick time
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Attendance statistics
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Overview of hours
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Booked times
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Booked project times
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Booked customer times
Using the Attendance statistics tab, you can display the times of your employee's attendance for a freely selectable period and the attendance statistics as well as the booked times can be exported as a PDF or CSV file at any time.
In addition, the dashboard displays the working time worked to date, the total target working time and the difference between the two. This allows minus or plus hours to be displayed and overtime worked to be calculated and displayed.
Under the Print time records tab, a record of the working time can be generated and printed for the selected employee for a freely selectable period. If the start and end of work are more than 16 hours apart, it is assumed that the employee has forgotten to clock in. To make this obvious, question marks are displayed on the time sheet.
In the Settings tab, various parameters of the time recording can be defined, depending on the employee.
You have the possibility to define different break lengths, which should be deducted automatically after a certain working time. Likewise, you can enter the number of vacation days stored for the employee here.
When recording via the dashboard for employee time recording, you must specify the specific days for which leave is taken. This means that if you take a week off, you do not enter the whole week including Saturday and Sunday, but only Monday to Friday.
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Template weekly hours: Mon: Tue: Wed: Thu: Fri: Sat: Sun: from to
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Help weekly hours: Mon: Tue: Wed: Thu: Fri: Sat: Sun: from month: to hours in month: After calculating, click apply to save target hours data
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Standard start of work: This time is used if no times were booked by time clock on this day, but an actual time was entered manually. The form hour:minute e.g. 08:00 must be used
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Raise to start of work: If a default time is set and this check mark is set, the clock-in time will be set high if the employee books earlier
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Round "come" time clock: Rounds the time up or down for the next 5,10,15 ... minutes when starting work
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Round "Leave" time clock: Rounds the time up or down for the next 5,10,15 ... minutes when leaving work
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Round breaks in minutes: A round break can be set here, e.g. 60 minutes
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Automatically subtract pause: Fixed from working time BreakWorking time
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Automatically subtract break → Hours:minutes from working hours. Automatic breaks can be entered here for three different working hours. For example, 15 minutes can be deducted automatically after 4 hours and 30 minutes after 6 hours.
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Break duration → Ignored if staggering is activated
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Always add pause from time clock to automatic pause: If the check mark is activated, manually booked breaks are added to the break time of the automatically deducted break. Example: 6 hours working time with 30 min automatically deducted break + 10 min manual break → 40 min break and 5:20 ACTUAL time.
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Vacation: 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021
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Vacation days in year: Indication of the vacation days in the specified year
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Remaining vacation in previous year: Manual entry of the remaining vacation days from the previous year
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Hours per vacation day: Indicates how many hours per vacation day are billed. For example, a part-time employee with 20 hours per week can be billed for 4 hours.
Note
If you have selected a staggering of breaks, you must enter them in ascending order of working hours, otherwise the staggering will not work.
You will find a global tab Settings in the employee time recording.
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Automatic logout after seconds: The employee will be automatically logged out from the time clock mask if he has not clicked after x seconds
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Calendar color: The color in which your employee's booked times will be displayed in the calendar
Under the tab Vacation schedule (all employees) you can clearly see which employee has taken vacation and when. By hovering over the vacation markers you can see the names of the employees.
In addition, there is another overview in the Vacation overview tab. This shows a specific year for each employee:
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Total number of vacation days
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Vacation days taken - Including days already registered in the future
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Remaining vacation - i.e. how many vacation days can still be taken
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Previous year's vacation days taken over for this year
Note
If an employee has no vacation days on file, he or she will be listed with missing entries.
Display of vacation/absences in the main calendar
You can display vacation or absence days entered in the employee time recording in the calendar. This means that you have a vacation calendar for all employees, which you can view, but only the administrator can change in the employee time recording.
For this purpose, the values entered in the Vacation/Sickness tab are taken.
If an employee leaves the company, it is possible to change the validity period of the role as follows. Navigate to the desired Contact and click on the pen icon of the relevant role in the Roles tab. You can then enter the date up to which the role should be active.
You can do the same in employee time recording via the filter show former employees also.
For example, the time clock can be set up as follows:
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Desktop scanner (e.g. with USB port)
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Tablet (with 2 connections: e.g. USB connection for scanner + additional connection for power supply (=further connection)
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Wifi (alternatively: a notebook with mouse/touchpad or a computer with screen touch function with network connection or also Wifi)
Holidays can be entered via the Days off/public holidays module. Administration > Settings > Employee Administration > Days off > +NEW.
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Designation: Enter description
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Date: Enter date of the holiday
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Type: Set type
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Project: Select a project
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Country: Select a country from the drop-down menu
Finally click on Save.
There is also the possibility to automatically load the non-working days of a certain state into the list.
Days off that you have defined are treated as fully completed working time, i.e. the hours preset for the day in question are automatically entered as worked and marked as a holiday by a color coding:
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The red field shows the sick hours
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The orange field shows the unpaid hours (vacation)
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The blue field shows the contractual vacation hours
The employee time recording/time clock works to the minute; seconds are truncated in calculations. Rounding differences are not to be considered as errors.
An alternative to the standard time clock is the time clock from Projektraum-Reger, which was specially developed for xentral.
Employees can request vacation days, unpaid vacation days and sick days in the employee time recording module. For this purpose, there are Submit requests and Edit requests tabs in the module. The former is visible to all users who are allowed to request absences, the latter is visible only to users who are allowed to approve absences of their colleagues, e.g. department heads or HR managers. The prerequisite for this is that all employees are also created in xentral as addresses with the role Employee and their planned working times are stored in the employee time recording.
Who can request absences and who can approve them is controlled by groups and user rights management. Each department can be created as a group and the addresses of your employees will be added to this group. In each group there must be at least one responsible person who is allowed to approve the requested absences.
This person in charge (e.g. head of department/personnel manager) needs the right timemanagement handle from the user rights management. This person in charge receives an e-mail as soon as an employee from his group requests an absence.
It is not possible for users who do not belong to any group to request absences - then an error message appears. If a user belongs to a group that does not include at least one other user with the timemanagement handle right (i.e. a responsible person), an error message will also appear.
In the overview, you can see your own vacation planning in the current year in the basic setting. You can navigate one year forward and one year backward. The groups in which you are a member are listed. If you select a group, in addition to your own absences, the absences of the other group members in the future are displayed anonymously. Absences before today's date are not displayed. Anonymized means that the absences of the other members are displayed as Absent, no matter if it is a vacation or an illness. Finally, there is the checkbox Split by employees which, if active, displays the absences of the individual group members line by line.
Clicking on a day opens a window where you can fill in the start date, the end date, the type of absence, an additional comment. It is also possible to choose whether the absence is a half day or not.
If both a start date and an end date are selected, the number of vacation days required is automatically calculated from the selected period. Holidays are always excluded from the calculation. Saturdays and Sundays are deducted or not depending on whether hours have been entered in the Template weekly hours fields in the Employees > Settings tab.
Possible actions in this overview:
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Request vacation (must be released)
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Request sick leave (must be released)
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Remove vacation (must be released)
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Remove illness (must be released)
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Delete vacation request (does not work for vacation in the past)
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Delete request for illness (does not work for vacation in the past)
In this tab, responsible persons may edit all requests originating from members of their group(s), i.e. approve or reject the requested absences. Users with the timemangementsuperprivilege right may even edit all leave requests of all employees. This right should therefore be reserved for HR managers or interdepartmental managers. Administrators have every right, including timemangementsuperprivilege.
If vacation or sickness requests are rejected, they will be highlighted in color in the Submit requests overview for some time and can then be processed again by the employee. If the deletion of an absence is approved, the status is removed from this day. If deletion is rejected, the day remains marked as vacation or illness.
In this tab there is also the submenu Completed requests where you can see all the processed requests.
An e-mail is always sent when a supervisor approves or rejects a request. The text of these emails can be configured in the business letter template module.
In the document template, the following variables are available in both the body and the subject:
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{DAYTYPE}: Previous status of the day
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{FROMDATE}: Start date
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{TILLDATE}: End date
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{EMPLOYEECOMMENT}: Comment of the applicant
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{SUPERVISORCOMMENT}: Supervisor comment
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{EMPLOYEENAME}: Name of the applicant
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{EMPLOYEENUMBER}: Number of the applicant
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{AMOUNTDAYS}: Number of days of leave required
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{REJECT}: Was the request accepted or rejected