1.8 to 1.9 Migration Guide

TimeIPS version 1.9.x offers many upgrades and improvements over version 1.8. 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.

• Managers may need to be aware of the following:
  
  1. Group Piecework is now available in addition to the standard piecework system. Group piecework allows an amount of pay (usually pooled tips or a group bonus) to be allocated to a group of employees, based on the number of hours that they worked in a specified range, on selected jobs and/or selected benefit types.
  2. Benefit accruals waiting periods have been split into an accrual waiting period (don't start accruing until this waiting period is over) and  use waiting period (accrue, but don't allow use until this waiting period is over)
  3. Benefits have new options to have tenure levels that expire to allow easier configuration of complex benefit accrual rules.  Examples include special higher-amount accruals that only apply during years 5, 10, and 15.
  4. Benefits have a new option for periodic modifications to handle special cases such as granting and losing benefit time outside the normal accrual process.  Example applications include yearly or monthly loss of unused benefits, yearly or monthly grants of lump-sums, or periodic loss of a percentage of unused benefits.
  5. Benefit tenure levels can be configured to start at various times other than the employee's hire date.  If company policy prefers to use a different date, such as the 1st of the month, 1st of the year, etc., that an employee is hired, this can now be easily configured.
  6. Custom clocking fields and selection list options can now be restricted by job.  This can be useful when there are large numbers of clocking fields, but only a few are applicable to certain jobs.  Employees can select and specify custom data when clocking in faster and with fewer errors.
  7. A new benefits report allows viewing benefit levels at any point in time, or over any range in time and quickly viewing the total amount of use, accrual and/or available levels, for one or multiple employees.  Example uses are when looking for total accruals for last year, or benefit levels at the end of last month.
  8. A message can be set by managers that employees will see when they clock in/out, either at walk-up network clocks, or when using web clocking.  This allows an easy way to give instructions or messages to employees.
  9. For employees who do "on-call" or "call-in" work that guarantees a minimum duration, jobs can be configured to always pay a minimum amount.  If employees work more than the minimum, they'll get the actual time worked.
  10. When releasing an employee, it's possible to have time, benefits, piecework, etc. in the future.  In some cases it may be desirable to leave these in place and allow the next payroll to include them in an employee's final paycheck.  In other cases, these could be weeks or months into the future and would not be desirable.  When releasing employees, a check is done for future payable items and a pop-up warns of them to provide a chance to edit or delete them before releasing the employee.
• In addition, Administrators need to be aware of the following:
  
  1. When editing time, new sanity checks can be applied to make sure the time is not too far in the past, too far in the future, clock-in time is not too large and, if using "real time" tracking, that the difference between the paid time and real time is not too large. By default these new sanity checks are on. They can be configured and/or effectively disabled on the Divisions/Companies, Time Edit tab.
  2. When editing time results in overlapping clocked-in time, a new option can be set on the Divisions/Companies, Time Edit tab to provide a warning.  This is on by default.  Keep this on if you have problems with managers accidentally getting employees clocked in multiple times at once. Turn off if you may have overlapped time, for example when using time to track equipment use or when billing customers.
  3. New Time Rounding options to always minimize or always maximize time are available.  These can be used when billing customers, or with exempt employees to always round time up or always round time down, as needed.
  4. Holiday settings have become more flexible and allow easier management of complex configurations where different settings are used for different groups, different holidays, or specific observances.  Settings can now be  made for global, per-holiday, per-holiday-group and/or per-holiday-observance settings that will be used to generate future holidays.  When upgrading from 1.8.x, the last holiday observance for each holiday will be used to create a per-holiday-observance setting that will be used for future holidays.  This setting can be removed if per-holiday, per-group, or global settings would make holiday management easier.
  5. Email reminders can be configured to alert when employees reach a set number of hours, tenure, etc.  These can be used to help managers remember reviews, certification renewals, pay-changes, etc.
  6. Email templates can now be configured for almost all email sent by the system.  New template selections appear in many places in the system when email alerts/messages are configured.  The templates allow configuration and customization of the email content to provide employees and managers with additional instructions or information if needed.
  7. A default shift can be specified so that new employees will automatically be assigned to the shift when they are created.
  8. Changes to settings in the Automatic Time Adjustments area are now audited to provide better visibility to historical settings and the employee responsible for changes.