Getting Started

The guide covers the aspects of using the software as a simple time recording system including how to create projects and employees. The guide covers most of the basic functions of Timemaster except the project management and invoicing functions (which are covered in other documents), so even if you are evaluating the project management version, you should work your way through this guide first, before moving onto the project management guide.

All functions are driven by access rights. If you don’t have access to some of the features discussed in this document your Timemaster administrator has restricted them from you. If you feel you need these features please liaise with your Timemaster administrator.

1.1. Login Page

You will have been provided with a link to the Timemaster software. Please log into the application with the credentials your Timemaster administrator has issued you.

If you are using Active Directory you won’t need to login in. Instead, you will be logged in automatically and presented with your Home Page.

1.2. User Interface basics

Users can navigate around Timemaster by using the pull down menus across the top of each page.

Each page also has a title which appears just below the drop down menus. Below this are ‘Related Links’ which provide quick links to related areas of the software. These related links are context sensitive; they change depending on which part of the software you are currently viewing. Related links which appear with a plus (+) sign to the right have additional options.

Function	How?
Add and remove columns	Click the Cog button in the top right corner of the grid Select Customise Columns – the Field Chooser appears in the bottom corner of the grid. Use the mouse to drag a field onto the grid between any of the existing column headings. To remove a column simply drag the column off the grid into the Field Chooser box.
Sorting	Click the column heading to sort the gird by this specific column.
Filtering	Click the Filter icon which appears at the right of the column heading cell. Multiple columns can be filtered to refine your search. The filter icon will change colour when a filter is applied to that column.
Export	Data stored in the grids can be exported using the Export button in the top right corner of the grid.

Some grids have quick filters which can be turned on and off via the Include button which is a button to the top right of the grid with a tick on it. If you don’t see records in the grid which you expect to see please check the options in this and the Filter button!!!

Grids also have buttons to the left of each row (in-line menu options). Clicking these gives further options relating specifically to this record.

When editing data, text labels with a red asterix to the left of the description denote a mandatory field.

Clicking ellipsis buttons (buttons with three dots) enable the user to populate data from lookup lists.

2. Home Page

The Home Page contains quick links to enter your timesheet, and a variety of other widgets which your Timemaster administrator may, or may not, have restricted access to.

Within the Home Page, each person may only view their own data, they do not see performance or timesheets for anyone else.

▪You can access your Timesheet directly from the Home Page by clicking to the right of one of the days on the Timesheet widget.

▪Messages such as timesheets and expenses to approve appear in the Messages widget. You can click on a message to action it.

▪You can obtain on-line help by clicking the Help link in the top right corner.

▪You can log out by clicking your name in the top right corner. If you are using Active Directory you can simply close your web browser.

▪You can also customise the widgets you have access to – Refer to the on-line help for more details.

3. Time and Expenses

This part of the guide focuses on entering time in the timesheet and recording expenses.

3.1. Entering a Timesheet

*This may be also referred to as the Timesheet and Attendance widget if you have Flexi Time installed.

If the timesheet is empty, you will be asked if you want to copy the previous week’s projects. That way, the timesheet is automatically populated with your projects you were working on in the previous week. All projects will be copied across irrespective of if you have booked time to them or not in the previous week.

You can navigate backwards and forwards by clicking the left and right pointing chevrons at each side of the timesheet date.

If the project/task/activity is already shown on the timesheet you can enter your time directly from here.

You can also drill-down into the timesheet line to see more detail by clicking on the project title.

▪To copy a timesheet line (retaining the project but perhaps to enter a different activity or note), select the Create timesheet line from line details option from the in-line menu.

▪To enter an expense or mileage claim, click either of the Create Expense from Line details or Create Mileage from Line details options from the in-line menu.

▪The expense options may be switched off if not required using the Options under your Home page.

If you are drilling down into an existing timesheet line or creating a new timesheet you will be shown the Edit Timesheet Line or New Timesheet Line pages respectively.

Here you can see more details on the timesheet and change the project/task/activity. You can also change the overtime type if you are booking overtime on your timesheet.

You have the option to enter your timesheet notes here. Depending on your configuration you may be required to enter timesheet notes for each day or just one note for the week. This can be changed within your Options under the Home menu.

3.2. Completing a Timesheet

All timesheets start with a status of ‘In Progress’. Once the timesheet is complete, the status should be changed to ‘Complete’. This can be achieved by changing the status in the top right of the Weekly Timesheet where there is a status drop-down option.

Completing the timesheet submits it for approval and updates the performance statistics on timesheet performance. Once complete the timesheet becomes read-only and must be reverted back to ‘In Progress’ to be changed.

▪The Save button is highlighted when changes are made to indicate that there is unsaved data on the timesheet. Closing the browser without saving would lose the changes!!!

▪If an expense exists for the same project and date a green bar is shown. This helps users see they have submitted an expense for that time.

3.3. Using Options to Configure Your Timesheet

Timemaster is used by many varied organisations and provides options to configure how your timesheet looks. You may configure your own timesheet using the Options under the Home menu.

If you don’t have this option your Timemaster administrator has restricted it.

The options page contains various tabbed pages of options. The one we are interested in is the Timesheet Options and Expenses Options tab pages. Using these you can add or hide columns from your timesheet, and configure expense data entry options to suit how you and your company wish to record them.

3.4. Entering Expense & Mileage Claims

Using the expense and mileage buttons from within your timesheet is easiest because the project and date information is pulled through from the timesheet line.

▪Scanned receipts can be uploaded from images or PDFs, to speed up the approval process and for audit purposes.

▪Rules can be set to “red flag” expense claims which do not comply with company policy. For example, maximum value without a receipt or for a certain category of expense has been exceeded.

Expenses are entered using an expense code, which defines the category of expense. The expense codes allow rules for maximum values allowed, whether a VAT receipt is necessary, as well as providing management reports on expenditure.

In addition to requiring an expense description, you may also require a purpose to be entered (i.e. a reason for the expense such as client meeting, training, working on site etc.). The purpose is optional and is configured centrally.

To create a new expense claim click the New Expense or New Mileage buttons. You will then be shown a page where you can enter your expense details; either the New Staff Expense or New Staff Mileage page. This is the same page as you will be shown if you are creating an expense directly from your timesheet.

When you have entered all the expense details you can then click the Save button to save the expense. You can also create a duplicate mileage or expense claim for the same visit by clicking the appropriate save buttons. Many expense claims could be made up of several items for one claim (mileage claim to station + parking + train journey + taxi fare), so these buttons are quite useful.

Mileage claims support a predefined list of “standard journeys” which can be monitored against. Any journeys out of tolerance to a standard journey can be “red flagged”.

The mileage codes contain maximum annual mileage limits before moving onto the next code to cater for the 10,000 miles per year rule. This will be configured by your Timemaster administrator.

If you have navigated from one of the buttons on your timesheet you will be returned back to your Weekly Timesheet when you save the expense.

If you have navigated from Time and Expenses > My Expenses you will be shown your Staff Expenses list.

The list of expenses may be filtered by a date range. It can also be configured to include/exclude certain types of expense via the Include button (the button with the tick).

4. Creating an absence request booking

This section assumes you have either the Absence Requests or Flexi functionality installed.

This will take you to your Absence Requests page which shows a list of your requests for the current year.

Any public holidays your Timemaster administrator has entered will also appear in the list.

At the top left of the page there is a summary of your current year’s annual leave usage. To the right there is a basic summary of next year’s entitlement.

From within this page you can create a New Absence or Recurring Absence by clicking the appropriate button. You can also view the Absence Chart which is a grid showing when you and your colleagues plan to take absences. This is useful when planning your leave.

For the purposes of this example we will look at creating a single absence via the New Absence button.

When this button has been clicked you will be presented with the Create Absence Request page.

From here you need to select the type of absence (Absence Code), the absence reason, absence dates and whether the absence is to cover the morning or then afternoon.

Please remember that the system works on a return to work date; not from and to dates. So, if you want to book the week’s leave from Monday to Monday to record it this way. You don’t book Monday to Friday as this assumes you are returning to work on the Friday.

If you spend your leave in hours rather than days you will have a further option to book a Custom leave request*. This allows you to specify the start and end time of your absence request.

*this is only available for single days and is subject to whether the absence is configured to accept Custom Leave bookings.

The system will then calculate how many days you are planning to book. If you are booking annual leave the system will validate the number of days you are proposing to take against your remaining entitlement.

If your line manager(s) has an email address assigned to their staff record you will also see an Email Notifications section. From here you can select who you would like to receive an email notification of the request which will be created when you click the Save button.

You can edit unapproved absence requests or recall requests which have already been approved via the grids in-line menu options.

Your system will have a defined hierarchy of approvals by line manager or group administrators.

The Timesheet Control page is now shown. This contains a list of all staff for whom you have the authority to approve timesheets. The grid shows the total hours worked and the colour coded status of the timesheet:

You can also approve a batch of timesheets without drilling down into each timesheet.

▪Place a tick in the Use multi-select in grid option – this allows you to select more than one timesheet cell.

▪Select a block of cells – when you release the mouse the Timesheet Status window will appear.

▪You can then select the status you want to change the selected timesheets to.

6. Approving Expenses

Similar to your timesheet configuration, your system will have a defined hierarchy of approvals by line manager or group administrators.

The first page provides a summary of all expenses within the date range awaiting your approval.

▪To view just expenses waiting to approve, click the number in the To Approve column.

▪To view only previously approved expenses, click the number (if any) in the Already Approved column

▪To view expense that have been rejected, click the number (if any) in the Rejected column.

▪To view all expenses including those previously approved, click in the Name column.

▪Expenses can be approved quickly by checking the first checkbox for multiple rows and clicking the Approve button above the grid. This method will approve all expenses which have the checkbox checked.

▪If an expense has a magnifying glass in the ‘paperclip’ column, clicking the magnifying glass will load the receipt image in a second tab page in your browser. You can keep this tab page open and, as you move to other expense items, it will refresh with the new receipt details.

▪If an expense has a red flag it cannot be approved without drilling down to view the expense detail. In order to approve a red flagged expense, a justification reason must be given (by either the approver or the expense owner). Click the in-line menu button or double-click the expense to drill down into the details.

▪When all expenses have been approved, click the Approve Expenses in the related links to return to the summary of expense approval page to select the next person.

7. Approving Absence Requests

This then shows the Approve Absences grid which lists all the staff who you have approval rights who have requests awaiting approval.

You can toggle this view between Summary and Details via the radio button in the top right corner. In this example we will work with the Summary view.

This is the same page you would see for your requests. The difference is that the grid in-line button includes the Approve option whereas you may not have the permissions to approve your own absence requests so this option would be omitted.

Note: You can keep track of whose absence request you are approving as their name appears in the top left corner of the page.

You now have the ability to Approve or Reject* the request via the appropriate buttons. You can also check other team members leave bookings via the Absence Chart before approving the request.

Note: You can also process an absence request by double-clicking the absence on the Absence Chart.

*Clicking the Reject button loads the Reject Absence Request page where you have the ability to enter a rejection reason.

If the requester has an email address assigned to their staff record you will also have the Email Notifications option where you can opt to send the requester an email confirming the request has been actioned.

8. Projects

8.1. Creating a Project

This section of the guide takes you through creating a new project and defining the client and project manager (in charge of running the job).

▪Enter a project Prefix (if your system requires one), a Project Title, and Project ID.

▪Select a template project you would like to copy from (leave the project to copy from blank if you don’t want to create from a template).

▪If you don’t want to copy from a template ignore the warning about normally copying from templates.

▪Complete the rest of the Edit Project Details page completing the Client and the Project Leader. If you are copying from a template with tasks (stages) your project will have inherited these from the template.

▪When you have finished populating the details on each tab page click the Apply button. Alternatively click the Save button to return you to the Project Listing page.

Due to the various ways the software can be configured it is not practical to document each option which should be populated. This will have been covered as part of your personalised implementation training.

8.2. Restricting Access to Projects

The following sections describe a couple of other project settings you may wish to use.

▪By default all users will be able to book time to the project you just created. You can restrict this by selecting Project Edit > Edit Project Staff Restrictions from the menu button to the left of each project on the Project List page.

▪To restrict timesheets to selected staff members, check the restrict check box at the top left. If this is unchecked the project is open to all. If it is checked, the project is restricted.

▪Check the individual staff you wish to add access to, and then click the Save button

▪To remove staff so they cn no longer book time to the project, change the view to Remove Staff from Project and follow the same procedure (check staff to remove and click Save).

8.3. Favourite Projects

Users can be assigned a list of ‘favourite’ projects which are a limited subset of their overall project list.

This reduced list proves to be very useful for staff who tend to only book time to a handful of projects as they don’t need to search through a long list when looking for a project code to book time to. It also helps with viewing projects and reports from areas such as the Project Listing page.

Note: The option to filter by My Favourites is available from the Project Lookup and the Project Listing pages.

To assign a project to a staff member’s favourite list navigate to Project Edit > Manager User Favourites from the menu button to the left of each project on the Project List page.

Note: You can remove projects from a user’s favourite list by firstly selecting the option Remove Project from Login Users Favourite Projects.

8.4. Other Project Settings

To define whether the project requires activities and notes, click the Project Edit > Edit Project Settings from the project in-line menu.

*Your implementation training will have highlighted if you are to use activities or not.

If the checkboxes are checked, notes or activities must be entered for each timesheet entry, if they are cleared, notes or activities are optional.

9. Staff Records

9.1. Creating a staff record

Employee records are maintained under the Setups menu option. This topic of the guide takes you through creating a new staff record.

Click the New button. You will then be shown the Create New Staff Record page where you can create a new member of staff.

Data entry for the staff records are spread over multiple pages, as depending on the modules purchased, there can be quite a lot of data relating to an individual staff member:

To speed up the process staff records may be created by copying from another person with similar working conditions in the same area. Then you only need to change the specific data which is different.

▪The email address is required to enable the staff member to receive email notifications.

▪The login ID must be unique for each member of staff. The difference between Login and Staff ID’s is the Staff ID is the unique identifier for the staff record whereas the login ID is the ID with which they login. This allows a staff member to have more than one login record. It also allows staff to be identified on report with something common i.e. payroll number but still allows then to have the same login username as other applications. The login record can be linked to Active Directory if required.

Once the staff record has been created, the data may be changed using the edit options from the in-line menu on the Staff List. The only page covered in this guide is the hourly rates as this concept is universal across all clients.

9.2. Staff Hourly Rates

When staff book time on their timesheet the system calculates the staff member’s costs and charge values from their hourly rates.

The charge values are only applicable to time charged work but the costs are always used to determine the manual costs of the project.

To create hourly rates for a staff record, select the Edit Hourly Rates option from the in-line menu.

Initially, the list of hourly rates will be empty – click the New button to create an hourly rate.

The first item of information you need to enter is an effective date. This MUST be on, or prior to, the first timesheet entry expected from the new employee. Subsequent effective dates will be entered into the system as time elapses however we recommend you set the first effective date to the staff member’s start date.

Timemaster stores hourly rates by effective date, with each change in hourly rates having a different date. This ensures that the correct hourly rate is picked up when time is costed. For example, annual pay awards would require a different set of hourly rates each year.

Timemaster applies the Resource rate as the internal cost of timesheet hours, and the Recharge rate as the charge cost of timesheet hours. The difference between the two is profit.

Within Timemaster you can also apportion values such as office and team overhead costs against each staff member’s hourly rate. These figures can then be reconciled against figures stored within external accounting systems. This will be covered in more detail during you implementation training.

Once you have saved your hourly rates, you need to repeat the process for each overtime type. (Overtime may be costed using a different set of rates to normal time). Overtime codes are defined in the Windows client under the setups pull-down menu options and may be added or removed if not required.

9.3. Custom Rates

Timemaster allows you to charge out different rates for different projects (or even parts of a project). This is implemented by creating custom rate tables and allocating the custom rate table to the project. Once the table has been created you must then create a rate under the table for each person who would book time to the project.

Custom rate tables are beyond the scope of this guide but are fully documented in the online help.

10. Setup Codes

A number of code setups are available in the Web client, for example, Client codes, activities, expenses, etc.

Before a client may be allocated to a project, or an activity code can be used in a timesheet, the relevant codes must be created under the Setups menu.

Not all code setups have been implemented in the Web client – rarely used code setups are accessed from within the Windows client.

Here, the data entry for activities is described. Data entry for all other code setups is the same although the more complex ones may have multiple pages to visit before saving the entire record:

10.1. Activity Codes

Activities are an optional column in the timesheet and if used, allow reporting across the activities carried out across all projects.

Click the New button above the activities grid. The Create New Activity Code page is now shown.

Option	Description
Service	This is the service which will be using this activity. If you are a multi service organisation and you would like another service to also use this activity you must create the same activity for the alternative service.
Activity	A three character code to define the activity.
Description	A description of the activity.
Available for use?	Check if this code is available. You cannot delete codes once they have been used on the timesheet, however you can set them as not available so they cannot be used in the future.
Force timesheet notes	Check if you want to force users to enter a note on the timesheet when using this activity.
Percentage Factor	This option allows a multiplier to be applied to the hourly charge rate when time is booked to this activity.

11. Reporting

▪The top Reports menu provides links to summary reports for staff, timesheets and projects.

▪The Project Listing > Reports menu provides links to detail project cost reports for the currently selected project.

All reports are explained in the on-line help – this guide just shows you where to access them.

▪Complete a date range for the period you wish to report on. The date range is mandatory on all reports.

▪Each report will have “quick selections” you can make using a drop down list. These are commonly used selections for that type of report.

1. Introduction