Personal Time Keeper v. 1.00

User’s Manual

 

 

 

Thank You for purchasing “Personal Timekeeper” by “MiT-98” Ltd. Current User’s manual reflects latest program features and issues.

 

1. Program Overview

 

“Personal Timekeeper” is intended and designed to help you keep track of your hours worked, especially if you need to combine different jobs. Program records your hours worked for different jobs by periods, chosen by you. “Personal Time Keeper” supports multiple users’ interface, which makes it easy that many people to use it on a single computer with no confusion. Each user can specify and save his personal settings. Program also supports two time formats: the 24 hours time format and the AM/PM time format, so that users worldwide can choose the one they’re more used to.

 

1.1. “Personal Timekeeper” Main Features

Below is a brief description of “Personal Time Keeper” features. Detailed information on each feature you will find in the corresponding sections below.

 

On the right is shown the main window of the program. All main Command Buttons are located on that screen. Here is a list of all available Functions:   Statistics-Shows Summary of All available database files, including total hours worked, check amount and check status.   Reports-This functions helps You create a report for all or a specific database file (period). You may include Dates, starting and ending hours, job pin etc. Afterwards You can save the file. This function is quite useful in case You wish to dispute incorrect paychecks with Your employer- you can easily e-mail reports to your Payroll department and show them a detailed tracks of Your hours worked.   Log Out-Use this command to change user or to just log out.   Exit- Exits Personal Timekeeper   Setup-Use this command to adjust program’s settings, as well as to change Your password.   Edit-Open a database file for editing- adding/removing hours worked, changing corresponding paycheck status, etc… New-Creates new database file.   Rename- Renames an Existing Database File.   Delete- Deletes a Database File NOTE: Deleted Files cannot be recovered!

 

2. Using the Program

 

2.1. Starting “Personal Time Keeper” for the First Time

The very first time you start “Personal Time Keeper”, you must first add a user. You will be prompted to do so by the following message:

 

Press “YES” to add a user, and set a password for it (for more information on How to add a user you will find below). However you may press “NO” and cancel adding new user, but this will prevent you from starting using “Personal Time Keeper” at this time.

 

2.1. Starting “Personal Time Keeper”

Start the Program the way you normally do start a program: From the start menu, of from a shortcut. Please note, than you may have only one running instance of “Personal Time Keeper” at any time. Therefore, if you start another copy of the program, on the welcome screen you will receive a warning message. In this case simply press the quit button and continue work with the first started copy!

 

2.1.1. Logging In

 

On the screen shown to the right, enter Your username and password. Names of all registered Users are shown in a drop down list. You can select one by picking it up from the list, or just type it. Names are not case sensitive, so there’s no difference between capitals and small letters. Then enter Your password. When You start “Personal Timekeeper” for the first time, You will need to add yourself as a user (see Adding New User). After You specify username and password, press Enter, or click on the “Login” button.

 

 

2.2. Adding New User

 

On the right is shown the “Add User” Screen. All information You need to specify is username and password. You also need to retype the password entered, to assure that no random password is entered. When You have filled out all fields, press the “Add” button.   NOTE: Please, remember Your password. There’s no way to recover lost or forgotten passwords.

 

 

 

2. Program Functions

All functions of “Personal Time Keeper” are described in details below. Access to these functions, you have from the main screen of the program.

 

2.1. Statistics

 

Using this function, you can display summarized information about current database files.   Gathered information is divided in two parts: Paychecks Details Summary and Worked Hours per Database. Below is detailed information about these two features.

 

2.1.1. Paycheck details

In this section you will find information fetched from all database files for the current user. Please, remember, that there’s only one corresponding paycheck allowed per database file. Each row in the grid represents a single paycheck and a period (usually a week). Displayed information contains:

1.       Check Status- Received or Not Received

2.       Net Amount- This Is checks net amount, which always differs from the gross amount you derive by multiplying the amount of hours worked by your hourly pay rate.

3.       Pay Rate- the amount of money you get for one hour.

4.       Source- this is the corresponding database file, which the information has been gathered from.

5.       Cached- Shows whether You have cached your paycheck or not.

 

2.1.1. Worked Hours Summary

In the second section you will find information fetched from all database files for the current user, displaying the total amount of hours worked for each database file (period). Both columns show:

1.       Week- single period, contained in a database file (usually a week)

2.       Hours- Total amount of hours for current period.

 

2.2. Reports

This is another useful feature of “Personal Time Keeper”. Using it you can create reports about hours worked (in a text file format). For example, you might need to send this information to your payroll department, in case you receive an incorrect paycheck. Below is shown the “Generate Report” screen.

On the left is a list of available database files (periods). Select the ones, you want to include in the report. In order to generate a report, you must select at least 1 database file. After you have made the desired selection, you can choose the report type- Standard or Custom. The Custom report can be further customized by choosing what attributes to include in the report: Date, Job Name, Job description etc.

Once you have specified the report generation preferences, you may preview the report, or create it, which allows you to save the information on a file. As mentioned above, you can use this information for your own records, or for example to send it to your payroll department.

2.3. Log Out and Exit buttons.

These two buttons allows you to log out current user, and to close the program, respectively. Logging Out closes your session on “Personal Time Keeper” and shows the Login screen, so that another user can use the program. The exit button closes the program.

 

2.4. Setup

Using the Setup Panel, you can change your preferences. These preferences are unique for each user. For current version of the software you can customize following things:

 

Change user password- In order to change your password, you need to confirm your old password, than enter your new password and retype it

Amount of regular hours per week- This is the amount of hours worked, which are considered regular time and a paid at your base rate. By default this amount is 40 hours per week. All hours added by you beyond this amount is considered overtime.   Overtime Hourly Pay rate Multiplier- this is the number, by which your base pay rate is multiplied for overtime hours. By default it is 1.5. For example you have worked 45 hours during a specific week and your pay rate is 7 dollars an hour. So you will earn 40 x 7 =280 dollars regular time, and 5 x 7 x 1.5 for the 5 hours overtime you have this week.   Time Format- Generally two time formats are supported by “Personal Time Keeper”- the 24 hours format, and the AM/PM format. You can choose the one that you like more. The 24-hour clock is a convention of time-keeping in which the day runs from midnight to midnight and is divided into 24 hours, numbered from 0 to 23. This system is the most commonly used time notation in the world of today However in the USA and Canada the AM/PM standard is more common.

 

 

2.4. Help

Press this button, to display “Personal Time Keeper’s” help file. The integrated help is divided into topics, so you can easily find the information you need.

 

3. Working with Databases.

 

All the information stored and manipulated with “Personal Time Keeper” is stored in database files, displayed in a list on the main screen. Available commands for manipulation of database files are: Edit, New, Rename, and Delete. Description of commands is shown below.

 

What does a database File represent?

“Personal Time Keeper” uses the concept of grouping days you have worked into periods. So one period is one database file. How to group days worked is entirely your decision. Generally you might wish to add to a period so many days, which make up one paycheck. For example- if you get paid weekly, so each period will have 7 days. After the week is over, simply create a new database file, and start adding days to it.

 

3.1. New- creates a new Database file and adds it to the “Available Databases” list. When you press the button, following dialog window is showed:

 

Enter a name for the database file and the press “OK”. By default you will see today’s date suggested for name of the new database. In case you have decided to use week based periods for storing of information, we recommend using for name of each file the same days of each week- for example the first day of the week, or each Monday.

 

ADVICE! As you can see above, the suggested date is in a specific format- Year-Month-Day. We strongly recommend this format, because files named this way, are much easier to find among others, especially when your databases list grows large. Files are first sorted by the Year, then by the month, and last by day, which makes it quite easy to find the one you need.

 

After you press “OK” the program creates the new database file. In case you have named the new file like an existing file, you will be warned, that a file with such name already exists. You may then overwrite the existing file, or select a different name for the new file.

WARNING! Overwriting a file cannot be undone. All the information in the file being overwritten is permanently lost!

 

3.2 Rename- With this command you can rename a file of your databases list. When prompted, choose a new name for the file and then press “OK”. Again- after you press “OK” the program creates the new database file. In case you have named the new file like an existing file, you will be warned, that a file with such name already exists. You may then overwrite the existing file, or select a different name for the file being renamed.

WARNING! Overwriting a file cannot be undone. All the information in the file being overwritten is permanently lost!

 

3.3 Delete- Use this command to delete a database file. You will be asked to confirm file deletion. You may press “OK” or “CANCEL”.

WARNING! Deleting a file cannot be undone. All the information in the file deleted is permanently lost!

 

3.4. Edit- Press the “EDIT” button, or double click a filename to start editing a database. After you have done so, following screen will appear:

 

As you can see, the first time you open a database file for editing, the “No Records in Database” message will appear. Below is a Panel divided into two sections – Information and Remarks. The purpose of them is as follows:

 

Information- Provides summarized information for current database file: begin and end of period, as well as total entries, Total hours worked, Pay rate. Program calculates your earnings, and divides them into regular and overtime. The values you may customize in this section are: Pay Rate, Check Net Amount, Check status- received/not received and whether check is Cached: cached/not cached. Your overtime pay rate is derived by multiplying your regular pay rate by a value you can specify in the setup panel.

Remarks- Here you can store any additional text information you might need.

 

 

To add a new entry, press the “Add” button. Depending on whether you are using the 24 hours time format, or the AM/PM time format, one of the two windows will show up:

 

Adding Hours in the 24 Hours Time Format

 

 

Adding Hours in the AM/PM Time Format

 

 

In the “Add Hours” window, you can add hours you worked on a specific day. There 6 Fields on the window:

 

1.       Date- This is the date you worked on. To use today’s date, press the “Today” button. Today’s date will be inserted in the field.

2.       Place- Description/Name of the job you worked at. Write any information you’d like.

3.       Pin #- A pin number associated with your job. May not be applicable always, so if your job doesn’t have a pin number, leave the field “00000”. This field cannot be left blank.

4.       Start Time- Starting Hour and Minute(s) when you started work/clocked in!

5.       End Time- Time when You finished work/clocked out!

6.       Total Hours- This field cannot be edited, its content is displayed automatically in accordance with the starting and ending times you specified.

 

NOTE: If using the 24 hours format, available time range is 0-23. While in the AM/PM format, available time range is 1-11. Once changed in the Setup Panel, all entered times in the program are displayed in the desired time format.

 

There are 3 buttons on the window:

 

Erase Fields- Clears all entered information

Cancel- Closes window and discards changes

Save- Saves information as a new entry in the database.