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Table of Contents: Article IndexPrintable Version

Applies to versions: 1.8



1.6 to 1.8 Migration Guide



TimeIPS version 1.8.x offers many upgrades and improvements over version 1.6. To make the most of the new version, please review the following changes:  Note: Some of the items listed require optional modules, which may or may not be listed in the description of the change.

  • All Employees
    1. My TimeIPS
      • The main page still defaults to a list of icons leading to commonly used parts of the system. But, this main page is now configurable with widgets that provide frequently needed information such as employee tardy reports, pending benefit requests, clock errors, excess hours violations, etc.
      • The main page configuration is per-employee and is accessed by clicking on the "Options" icon.
      • Main page widgets show information relevant to the viewer based on their permissions.
    2. My Work History
      • This page has been updated and the appearance is significantly different.
      • Benefit and holiday information is shown at the bottom in separate tables.
      • Adding notes to time events is now done by clicking the + next to the time row.
    3. My Benefit Requests
      • This page has been updated.
      • Employees now have the option to request one span of hours and have it automatically split into periods.  For example, one 40 hour request can be split into 5 days of 8 hours each.
      • In addition, new benefit "subclasses" may appear, if configured.
    4. My Settings
      • Several new options have been added.  For example, new employees may want to select the "Show Help by Default" option.
      • While employees are getting used to the new way data is saved when making edits in tables, the "Show Warnings for Unsaved Changes" can be turned on.
    5. Company Directory
      • Three new permission items can be configured to control the visibility of employees and the details that show in the directory.  The availability of the directory and its content when not-logged-in is configurable as well.
  • In addition, Managers also need to be aware of the following:
    1. System Menu
      •  The "Administration" and "My TimeIPS" sections are now both in the same menu so all options are available all the time.
      • Entire menu is now dynamic, meaning that all entries are hidden unless the viewing employee has permission to see and use the entry.
    2. Unified table format for editing and entering information
      • Most tables now have Save and Revert buttons to commit changes. 
      • Changes are no longer auto-saved when switching to a different tab or row.  A new My Settings option to "Show Warnings for Unsaved Changes" can help employees with this change.
      • Number of rows to show is selectable with pagination.  This allows greater scalability and allows better usability on slow connections or with web browsers with poor javascript performance.
    3. Employee Administration
      • Search and display options have been consolidated and the ability to save views of selected columns has been added.
      • Per-employee biometric settings are now a tab in the employee table.
      • Employee Badges - The employee badge generator now has many additional options for formatting and alignment including a two-column horizontal layout.
      • Employees can now be imported using the SSN or Badge Number as the key to allow updating the employee name by import and to accommodate imports with multiple employees having identical names.
      • Employees default job setting can now be a work-order job combination.
      • New IPSBRD module allows defining burdened rates and cost allocations per employee
      • Payroll admins have a Payroll Tool that allows seeing a summary of pending and completed payrolls for the employee
    4. Time Edit / Report - This interface has been improved significantly.
      • Date range selection is easier and more customizable.
      • Audit and approval summaries are incorporated on the page with the events.
      • Holidays can be approved or denied on the page.
      • The vertical bar graph has been replaced with an advanced option allowing Time Grouping to help visualize time by day, week, or any other time period.
      • The columns that are displayed can be configured for both summary and detail views.  In detail view, columns can be selected that allow editing of time in-place.
      • When editing a time event, new one-click options added to split and/or insert a break/lunch.
    5. Timesheet Approvals
      • Option to use the current incomplete payroll period.
      • Improved configuration of employee and manager approvals.
      • New timesheet approval audit report in Reports - > Special reports allows searching for approvals done in selected time ranges and by selected individuals
      • The approval history of any specific worked time is now available in Time Edit/Report
      • Timesheet reminder emails now contain direct approve/unapprove links to speed processing
    6. Jobs
      • Jobs now include employee membership, and the option to restrict job use to member employees
      • Jobs now include Coverage Alerts - Email alerts can be configured for when there are too few or too many employees working on any particular job.
      • Job pay overrides can now include rate, differential, multiplier at the same time.  In addition, there are new options to set the pay type and determine if work on the job counts toward overtime.
      • Jobs can now be imported using the job code as the import key, instead of the job name, to allow updating the job name.
      • Additional fields in Jobs for tracking codes, project numbers, cost centers, etc.
      • Work orders can be assigned a budgeted time per job and this is shown in the work-order report.
      • New IPSBRD module allows allocating work on jobs to multiple accounts/customers/cost centers
      • Jobs now have the ability to reassign worked time to another employee (for special cases when employees cover for each-other)
    7. Schedules
      • Advanced schedule engine (IPSASH) accommodates a wide range of complex scheduling and automation needs with multiple-condition rules and multiple-action results, flexible repeat ranges, custom date applications and much more.
      • New horizontal daily schedule import/export
      • Scheduled automatic jobs changes can be into a Workorder-Job
    8. Reports
      • Extended Tardy Report by Schedule to include much more information, making it easy to see schedules, tardies, absences, actual arrival times, benefits, holidays and unscheduled days at a glance.
      • Many enhancements to the abilities of the Custom Payroll/Custom Report engine, including chaining of multiple format presets into a single report, numerous new expression functions, expressions on summarized rows, access to schedule information, and improved feedback if errors are encountered in expression evaluation.
      • Tardy report now includes a numeric total number of tardies per day and per person.
      • Most custom reports now support full custom date ranges (rather than one week at at time)
    9. Overtime Options
      • Added ability to override pay type (standard time, overtime, doubletime, benefit time), and select if time will count toward weekly overtime levels. Can be set per time event, or per job. (requires IPSOTO module)
      • Added option to have weekly overtime requirement be reduced by OT that's given for daily limits or set as an override.  Used, for example, when employees are given some OT early in the week for a special project but still want to get weekly overtime after 40 hours total.
    10. Batch Time Entry
      • Many more options in batch time entry
      • Batch time import supports in-note and out-note
    11. Group Clocking
      • Added support for job changes
      • Added Work Order selection
      • Optional remote clocking fields can be set
    12. Benefits and Accruals
      • Benefit Approvals - Managers can have the ability to edit benefit requests before approving them. Interface has been improved.
      • New vertical Import format
      • Added ability to sett a minimum level, such as 0 hours, below which benefits cannot be used
      • Added ability to set use Increments, such as 4 hours or 8 hours, to force employees to use benefits in correct amounts
      • New benefit Subclasses can be used to track cost centers or classification of benefits, for example, using sick time can be designated as FLMA or Standard.
      • When using benefits, per-benefit option to require a note explaining the use
      • For each benefit, a new option to show a custom pop-up reminder message, such as "A doctor's note is require for more than 2 days of sick time"
  • In addition, Administrators need to be aware of the following:
    1. Divisions/Company Settings
      • A significant number of options have been added for configuring behavior of divisions.
      • Option to configure division alerts to notify when employees are added or modified in any way.
      • Ability to customize the error messages shown for three different types of failed login attempts.
      • Configurable defaults for new employees on many items including Accrual Group, Holiday Group, Department, Payroll Type, Workweek Group, Schedule Group, etc.
      • Configurable new-employee defaults for per-employee ("My Settings") options.
      • Configurable help page content, allowing custom instructions, names, contact number, etc.
      • Ability to customize the name of each menu item to fit the naming convention of your organization.
      • Company documents can now be created per division (when using IPSDIV modules)
    2. Reports
      • Reports have been moved out of the payroll menu.
      • Reports have been reviewed and improved.
      • Automatic Report module (IPSEML) can automate creation and emailing/FTPing of custom reports and sign off reports.
    3. Holidays
      • Completely updated holiday engine and administration system
      • Enhanced automatic holiday generation engine allows almost any type of holiday to be entirely automated.  Support added for more more pro-rate rules, additional adjacent day options, and full control of pay type and pay differentials for work done on the holiday.
      • New holiday groups allow sets of employees with the same holiday options to be configured at one time.  This replaces the settings in 1.6.x where all employees in a payroll type followed the same holiday settings.
      • Holidays that fall on special days can be configured in advance, and can be different for each holiday group.
    4. Payroll
      • New 4-4-5 payroll period
      • Added support for Global, Division and Personal presets for custom payroll and custom report.
      • Workweeks now calculate for employees in the time zone of the workweek, rather than te timezone of the employee.  This allows consistent FLSA 168-hour workweeks even when employees are in a DST time zone.
      • Added option to unlock a finalized payroll export.
    5. Custom Data
      • To facilitate complex reporting and exports, custom data can be entered or imported into the system and used by the Custom Report/Payroll engine.
    6. Time Tracking and Rounding
      • New option to track "real time" as well as paid time (adjusted by time rounding or time snaps). Real time can be used to improve reporting and auditing when rounding or other adjustments are frequently made.
      • New Duration rounding option.  This allows the total worked time to be rounded to a selectable quantity, rather than rounding the in and out times.  This is more resistant to employee "gaming" of the rounding system.
      • New rounding options of 1/100'th of an hour (36 seconds) and 1/20th of an hour (3 minutes) to facilitate reports and payroll running in decimal hours with two decimal places.
    7. Shift Differentials
      • Shift differentials are much easier to configure and manage. (When using IPSSFT shift module)
      • Shift differentials can now be simultaneously combined with other job differential rates (IPSJOB) per event overrides (IPSOTO) and holiday overrides (IPSBEN).
    8. Clock Configuration
      • Clock configuration moved to Clocking menu group
      • When using Divisions, default division for new clocks can be assigned
      • Option for additional audible clock confirmation of the clocking time available for IPS120T and IPS125T
      • New option for clocking thresholds to prevent employees from "double punching" (accidentially clocking in/out within a few seconds)
    9. Import/Export and API
      • Extended Import/Export (and IAPI) with many new options including accrual group membership, site jobs, site clocks, clocks and divisions.
    10. Backups
      • New IPSABO advanced backups module allows configuring multiple backup times per day, multiple backup destinations, and automated backups to remote servers without an active backup account.
    11. System Email
      • New options and selectable destinations for various types of system messages (rather than a single system-wide destination for system messages).
      • Improved e-mail link support for both internal and external (port-forwarded) networks including port numbers and dual links.
    12. Securiy
      • When using a security certificate for HTTPS access, new options have been added to include a chain file when uploading a certificate.
      • When generating your own certificate, a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) is also generated and made available to facilitate the signing process, if needed.
      • Enhanced web access logs now include filtering based on time range, employee and pages accessed.
      • New Company/Division option to require employees to change their passwords on a periodic basis.
      • Ability to restrict remote-clocking/web-clocking to an IP whitelist (when using IPSREM modules).
      • Enhanced Audit Report allows viewing time/edit audits on single or groups of employees, for audits made by or on those employees, and restricted to the source of the audit and/or type of data changed by the audit.
      • Auditing added to all employee fields, such as title, address, badge number, etc.
      • Permission system upgraded with custom target groups.  These simplify assignment of responsibility for managers over special groups or all employees in several departments, sites, etc.


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TimeIPS is protected by one or more patents. Patent No. US 7,114.684 B2.