The Time Clock Ability is used to manage employee hours. The Time Clock is capable of tracking regular, paid time off, sick time, paid break time, personal days, and other data. Employees can visually see their time accruing, and Managers can review and edit clock in and out times as necessary. A few reports are available to review overall Time Clock information for some or all employees as needed.

Time Clock is available upon request for all offices. If you don't have access to it, please contact MacPractice Support and ask to have Time Clock enabled.
It is important to note that the Time Clock does not calculate how much pay is owed your employees, only the hours worked. It is also important to note that the Time Clock works the best when each unique employee has their own user account, and logs into MacPractice with it daily.

This guide will teach you how to set up the Time Clock, and will explore the functionality this feature has to offer.

Setting Up The Time Clock Ability

This section will cover the set up process for the Time Clock. We'll add the Time Clock Ability to the Toolbar, set up our Preferences, and we'll also set a User as a Manager and assign Users to that Manager. We'll also touch on User Privileges for the Time Clock.

Adding the Time Clock to the Toolbar

Adding the Time Clock to the Toolbar is very simple. You'll first right-click or Control-Click an empty space in the Toolbar. This will pop up a menu. Select "Customize Toolbar..." from this list.
From there, you'll left click and drag the Time Clock icon onto the Toolbar.

Configuring Preferences

Next, we'll need to review Time Clock Preferences. To access Preferences, navigate to the MacPractice Menu and click "Preferences".

From there, the Preferences window will open. Scroll down and click "Time Clock".

For convenience's sake, you can check the "Show Time Clock Icon in Status Bar" option to have access to clocking in and out from anywhere on the desktop, not just when in MacPractice. This Icon will be placed in the upper right corner of your Status Bar.

When current user is Clocked In
When current user is Clocked Out
When current user is Clocked Out on Break

The Icon is a Local Preference, meaning it is set for each Client Computer individually. We recommend having this preference enabled on each computer so all users can easily access the Time Clock Panel.

You'll absolutely want to configure the Pay Period Frequency to match your pay schedule, and set an Initial Payroll Start Date which determines when the Time Clock starts calculating your Pay Periods.

If you provide your employees a paid break, you can configure how much break time an employee accrues. Here at MacPractice, for example we offer 15 minutes of paid break per every 4 hours, usable by using the Clock Break option (Discussed in Clocking In and Out, and Clocking Break)

You'll also want to review the Overtime options. You can set the Overtime calculation threshold based on how many hours per week, and you can also set a daily limit on how many hours can be worked before Overtime accrues. Configure these as it makes sense for your office. 

If you don't see all the Preferences listed in the above screenshot, you should double check the logged in user's privileges in User Group Privileges. Global Time Clock Preferences, such as the Pay Period Frequency, can be hidden from most users (and you typically want only the Office Manager to have access to these!) Preferences are covered in Adjusting User Group Privileges for Time Clock Permissions.

Setting up Time Clock Managers in the User Reference

Next, we'll want to set up Time Clock Managers and configure Users to report to their appropriate Managers. This is important, as it will allow a particular MacPractice User who's set as a Manager to be able to review and edit their employee's time blocks.

Setting Users as Managers is handled in the Users Reference Node. You can access the Users Reference by navigating to the References Ability, then scrolling down in the sidebar and expanding the Users node.

You'll need to first determine who in the office is the Manager or Managers. You can have as many Managers as needed, but for most small practices you'll only need one.
In the above screenshot, you can see the highlighted section of a User Reference labeled "Time Clock Management". There are two options present: a drop down menu labeled "Reports to Manager", and a checkbox labeled "is Manager". The drop down menu pulls from all User References that have "is Manager" checked. 

First, you'll select the User who will be your Manager, and make sure "is Manager" is checked.
Then you will select all Users who should report to this Manager, and select the appropriate option for "Reports to Manager".
If done correctly, the Manager will be able to view all their employees listed in the Time Clock Ability and be able to edit their time blocks accordingly. We'll cover this functionality later.
Here are two examples of Manager hierarchies. Each Manager user is able to see anyone who reports to them. This includes other managers and their staff users.

Adjusting User Group Privileges for Time Clock Permissions

The final step in configuring Time Clock is to confirm your User Groups have the appropriate level of permissions that your office wishes to grant your Users.  To complete this, you'll first review the "User Group Privileges" Reference, right above the Users Reference in the References Ability. Select a Group, then click on the "Timeclock" section. You should see a screen very similar to the image below.

The four Time Clock privileges you can enable are:

• Add/Modify/Delete Time Clock Records: Enables the User to add, modify, and delete Time Clock records.

• View Global Time Clock Preferences: Enables the User to edit global Time Clock Preferences in the Preferences window.

• View Time Clock Batch Record Creator Manager: Enables the User to access the Time Clock Batch Record Creator in the Managers ability.

• View Time Clock Resources: Enables the User to edit Time Clock Resources.

Whomever your Manager is should have access to Create/Edit Time Clock Records, View Global Time Clock Preferences, and View Time Clock Batch Record Creator Manager. View Time Clock Resources should also be enabled for the Manager.
The Time Clock Resources node controls whether a User can set up their Time Clock view to see other user's time blocks. You'll want to determine whether you would prefer to allow or disallow your users to see their co-worker's clock in and out times.

Once you've configured your groups appropriately, you'll want to confirm your Users belong to the correct User Groups by navigating to the Users Reference and clicking on the Privileges tab. Here, you can verify what Group each User belongs to.

And that's it for configuration! Now to cover how to use the Time Clock.

Using Time Clock

Now we'll cover how to clock in and out, checking and using the Vacation Calendar to track Users' planned vacations, use the In/Out Report to determine who's all clocked in or out, how to edit and adjust time blocks, and how to generate Timesheet Reports.

Clocking In and Out, and Clocking Break

When a User is logged in, at the bottom bar of MacPractice you can see your Clock In/Out/Break buttons. This is usually to the left of the middle at the bottom of the MacPractice window.

From here, you can easily use the buttons to Clock In or Out or on Break. To the right of the buttons are a time tracker. The time before the / indicates how long you've been clocked in today. The number after the / indicates how much time you've accrued over the current Pay Period, defined by your Time Clock Preferences.

Clocking Break is handled slightly differently. When you Clock Break, you are granted an amount of time based on what you had set in Configuring Preferences. For every x number of hours, you are granted x number of minutes of break. All Clock Break time will count as clocked in time until the pre-set amount is met, at which point Clock Break acts as if you're Clocked Out.

For example: Dylan is working eight hours today, and Preferences are configured to allot 15 minutes of paid break per every 4 hours. If Dylan clocks break halfway through his shift, he has 15 minutes of earned break time. He is two minutes late coming back from break. He's used 17 minutes of break time. 2 of those minutes count as extra time clocked out, until he works enough into his eight hour shift to have earned the full 17 minutes of break time.

In the Time Clock Panel, this "earned" break time is represented by Vested Break.

Time Clock Panel

The Time Clock Panel provides information about the current user's clocked in/out status, as well as your break time usage, including a summary of your clock in and out times. 

You can access the Time Clock Panel via the Window Menu > Time Clock Panel.

If you have the Preference "Show Time Clock Icon in Status Bar" enabled, you can also access the Time Clock Panel by clicking the Time Clock status icon in the upper right hand corner of your Mac desktop and selecting "Show Window".

Here we can see our clocked in time. Currently it is set for "This Pay Week", which you can change to "Yesterday" or "Today. The Clock In/Out/Break buttons are available, and you'll also see time entries for the current period of time. You'll also note that there is a Total line for Regular time, Break Time, Vested Break, and Total Time. Vested Break refers to how much break time you have earned, based on Preferences Set.

Vacation Calendar

The Vacation Calendar is a Node in the Time Clock Sidebar that allows a MacPractice User to quickly note at a glance who is taking time off when, and if days are marked as Blackout Days (Days that the Manager has indicated no time off can be taken)

A Manager has the ability to set Vacation Days for any of their reporting Users and Blackout Days to prevent Users from scheduling days off. 

To assign Users to a date on the Vacation Calendar, simply right click (or Control-Click) a day. In the contextual menu, you can assign a User to a day, in which case their name will display on the day.You can also mark a day aBlackout Date, which will draw a Red X on the Calendar, which all users will be able to see. You can do this by right clicking a day and selecting Blackout Date.

You can also select multiple days by clicking and dragging across a date range, then right click/control-click to either select a User or select Blackout Date as necessary.

If you have a particularly large office, individual calendar days may quickly run out of space for names. If you need to review every User who has scheduled a particular Vacation Day, you can right click/control-click and choose "Show All Users" to view a pop up with all the Users who have scheduled for that day.

The In/Out Report

The In/Out Report allows a user to see who's all clocked in or out at the time. It'll tell you the time of their last interaction with the Time Clock for the day. This is particularly useful if you're looking for someone and aren't sure if they are clocked in or on break.

The In/Out Report is presented in the following columns:

• In, Out, Break: The current status of the Time Clock record.

• Time: The Time on which this Time Clock record (In, Out, or Break) was last updated. If a person clocks in or out, it will display the time they clocked in or out.

• Name: The Name of the User

• Timestamp: The date and time which the In / Out Report was loaded. The In/Out Report does not update in real time until you refresh or revisit the Report. Click the Reload button on the Toolbar to reload the In / Out Report. 

Time Clock Node and Resources

The Time Clock Node is similar to the Schedule Ability, except it displays Users and their time blocks as they've clocked in and out.

You can control which Users are displayed in the Time Clock Resources node in the sidebar by expanding the node and checking/unchecking the users you wish to observe in the main window.

Time Blocks are color coded to determine what kind of block they are at a glance. These colors cannot be changed.

• Regular

• Break

• Sick Time

• Vacation

• Personal Day

• Paid Holiday

• Military

• FMLA

Adding, Modifying, and Deleting Time Blocks

You can add, delete, and edit Time Blocks if you have the required privileges as shown in Adjusting User Group Privileges for Time Clock Permissions. To add a time block, simply locate the user's column, and left click and drag to create a time block as in the Schedule Ability. 

Deleting a time block is simple. Click the block you wish to delete, then click the Red Minus in the sidebar.

There are two ways to edit a time block. You can either click and drag the top or bottom of a time block to extend the times of the block if that's all you need to adjust.

Alternately, you can double click the time block to bring up the edit window.

Here you can edit a time block precisely. You'll note that there is a checkbox for "Current Record", as well as a "Record Type" drop down. Current Record indicates that this is an active time block, as in, the user is currently clocked in and this record will be active on the user.
Record Type allows you to control what kind of time block this is. You can choose from Regular, Break, Sick Time, Vacation, Personal Day, Paid Holiday, Military, and FMLA.

If you need to create several time blocks for many users (say in the case of a paid holiday), please refer to the Time Clock Manager - Batch Record Creator Manager article.

You can also mark time blocks Suspect for further review. Blocks marked Suspect will have a light redish color strip on the left side of the time block, while normal time blocks have a yellow strip.

Timesheet Reports 

There are four different Timesheet Reports that you can use, accessible from the Timesheet Reports node. You can click the links to be taken to an article covering each of these reports.

• Accounting Report: This report is essentially a printable time sheet that can be printed for a pay period. It'll break down all Record Types of Time blocks and calculate how many hours of Standard, Overtime, and PTO have been accrued/used for the given pay period for the selected user. It also includes signature fields for employees and supervisors.

• Accounting Summary: This report allows you to take a glance at the total standard/overtime/pto hours for a particular employee for the pay period.

• Clock In Report: This report is used to track the clock in/clock out for each user for each day over the pay period. This is a good tool to determine whether you have a user who is chronically late.

• All Records Reports: This report is an expanded version of the Clock In Report. For the users and record types selected, it will display all Time Clock records. Clock In, Clock Out, all record types. It will also break down percentage breakdowns of all recorded time blocks.