Overview
The ARCTime system consists of 3 parts.

1. There is an Access97 database (Access97 is not required but recommended). This serves as file manager and stores the data.  If you have Access97, you can write custom queries, reports and forms to view your data in various ways above and beyond what we have done.

2.  ARCTime client program shown below is installed on every employees desk.  This program allows your staff to enter the time they spend performing specified projects.  They can do this in several ways, 1) manually enter each project selecting the time and duration; 2) through a timer that times how long they are working on a specified project; By selecting a project and selecting full day and then selecting either from a 3) data file or 4) selected project.

3. ARCTime maintenance program shown below is installed only on selected desk tops.  It is used to maintain all aspects of the database, including time codes, G/L codes, salaries and payroll periods.

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Employee Verify
Through our usage of ARCTime we have found there are often times that employees would use someone elses computer to enter their time.  When the employee that normally used the computer, they would enter their time under that other employee.

We determined that verification of the employee was necessary.  Therefore, everytime you open ARCTime it will present you with a splash screen followed by a verification of the employee.  This looks similar to the following...

If you answer Yes, then the main screen opens.  If you answer No, then an Employee selection screen opens which appears as...

This list is ordered by employee last name.  You click on your name and click on Select.  If the employee is new, you can click on New/Edit and you are taken to the employee entry screen.

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Task Maintenance
In order to enter a time task, you must first select a project from the tree on the right side of the ARCTime screen.  You cannot select headers, only a detail item.  You can distinguish between headers and detail by the appearance and icons for each.  The icon that looks like a piece of paper is a detail item while the folder which may be open or closed is a header.  Click on the plus or minus to open or close a header.

Next, you click on the start time button.  These buttons are those running down the center portion of the left side with times listed on them.  The times are shown in 15 minute increments which we have found from experience is about as fine as you want to cut it.  Alternative method is to double-click the area just to the right of the time buttons.

An edit window will open up as shown in the illustration below.  The top and bottom borders of the edit window are active.  The cursor will change shape and you can pull the borders up or down.  The upper border will change the start time and the lower border will change the duration.

Be VERY careful in changing these borders.  You cannot control the scrolling unless you remain within the visible portion of the day view. In the sample above, if you wanted the duration to go to 12 noon for example, pull the lower border down to 10:45 AM and then scroll with the scroll bar until the 10:00 AM block is at the top of the window.  Then pull the lower portion down to 12:00.

If you find that you cannot make the change scrolling like this, it is sometimes better to use the task editor.  Do this by right clicking in the day portion and select Edit Tasks from the context menu that will appear.  Alternatively, you may also select the Task menu and select Edit Tasks to get to the Edit Task Window.

After you enter your (up to 32,000 characters) text in the edit window, you may press the ENTER key.  This will cause the program to add the project you selected, a carriage return and your text to the task and close the window.  Note that you cannot see the text when the window is closed, only the first line which is the project information.  There will also be a colored block at the left.  This color designates the client color you chose.

On the far left side of this window is a time line showing the client color for each time span you entered for the day.

Note that the program will not allow you to enter tasks that occupy the same time span.  You may abut times, but not overlap.  Even though you may have more than one thing going on at once, since the program also provides payroll data, your company probably doesn't want to pay you more than once for the same hour.

You may edit a task by double clicking on the client block or anywhere on the task's first line.  The edit block will open back up again.

If you select a new project before double clicking the task, the program will offer to change the project for you when you press ENTER.  If you have the same project selected as the task already contains, it does nothing.

You can delete a task by single left clicking on the first line of the task then press the DELETE key.  Alternately, you may right click the first line of a task and select delete from the context menu.  The program will ask if you wish to delete the current task.  If you answer Y, the task will be deleted.  If you answer N, the program will ask if you want to delete ALL tasks for the day.  If you answer Y, all that day's tasks will be deleted.

You may also delete a task by selecting it and then from the Task menu select Delete.  You will have the same choices as there were from the context menu.

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Grid

The grid provides a convenient means of making quick changes to a number of day's tasks.  This includes the billing date if you, for example, entered your tasks for a two week period on the wrong dates.

The grid appears as follows...

The grid defaults to the records within the current payroll period.  You can change that by entering dates in the two date controls at the bottom and clicking on the refresh button.

The TimeBilledID is the date and time a record was entered and is the key for the record.  This information cannot be changed anywhere including Access97.

The Billing Date can be quickly changed from here for a large number of tasks entered with the wrong date.  You can change the first one, high light it, press CTRL-C and then DOWN-ARROW and CTRL-V.  This copied the corrected date to the clip board, moved to the next record's billing date field and pasted the new value over the old.

Be careful, it is easy to go further than you expected!

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Employee
The Employee Entry window has three tabs which allow you to add or edit employee information.  Normally new employee information would be entered from the maintenance program.  However, we have found that entering it from ARCTime is a convenience.

You access this employee entry screen from the main window's employee button or from the employee selection screen.  The window first appears as...

This first tab is personal data regarding the employee including their name, address, SS number and emergency contact information.  At a minimum you must enter the employee name.  The other information is available from the maintenance program for creating various employee reports such as a birthday list, directory, etc.

The second tab contains important information used by the program.  This tab appears as...

The date hired and department name is used through various maintenance program reports.  The Salaried check box will vary how this employee is treated regarding overtime and costs for their time.

The Inactive will prevent this employee from appearing on certain employee based reports such as directories, birthday lists, etc.  They will still appear on other reports if they had time on any projects included for the period generated by the report.

The third tab allows you to track any notes on this employee.  You could use it for a termination date, salary increase dates, etc.  This tab appears as follows...

Pressing the New button will allow you to create a new employee.  Update will save the new employee or any changes you make to an existing employee.  Refresh will requery the database to reflect any changes made by someone else.

The Set You button, will pass the current employee back to the main program, closing this window,  Close will just close the window.

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Calendar

There are times when you are not certain of what days you have entered and which ones you have not.  There are also times when you might like an overview of your month.

By pressing the Month button on the main window you can get an overview.  While there is not enough room to tell you what you did, it does reflect the number of hours and the last client color you entered for each day.  The month view appears as...

The smaller numbers in the lower right of each day are the number of hours for that day.  The colors are the client colors for the last entry of that day.

The buttons at the bottom allow you to print the calendar, expand to 3 months and close the window.  The scroll bar allows you to change the month and/or year.

The three month view appears as...

You have the same buttons available as well as the scroll bar for changing the months and year displayed.  The 3 month button has changed to 1 month.

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Date Entry
There are several places through out both programs that require the entry of a date.  Since this is an import part of time management, there are several methods for entering a date where ever you see the date control.  It appears as...

The above illustration shows the calendar dropped down from the date control.  To accomplish this you press the down arrow next to the date's spin buttons. The right side of this illustration .

From the drop down you can select a date within the current month or by using the scroll bar at the bottom to change the month and year.  Note that hourly employees are prohibited from entering dates outside the current payroll period.

Within the date control itself, you can place the cursor within the month, day or year portion.  You can then type a new date for that portion or use the spin buttons to increment or decrement the portion which contains the cursor.  The spin buttons are to the left of this illustration , the upward facing arrow increments the value and the downward facing arrow decrements the section.  Note that month and day will wrap when it reaches the end.  For example, when the month is 12 it will go to 1 not 13.

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Menu System
The menus provide access to various functions and abilities of the program.  Some provide alternate methods of performing standard functions.  The images below are live with links to take you directly to that section.

The menus from left to right are as follows...

From the File menu, you can create a daily file or remove a daily file.  You can specify a new database location, export records or create a local database.  You can also exit from the program.

From the View menu, you can open the Grid window, open the Monthly Display window, access the Employee window, open Budget Maintenance or Show Resource Window.

The Today line will bring the main program back to today regardless of where you were.

The Task Menu provides you much the same functionality as the context menu when you right click the task section.  You can maintain tasks by editing, deleting or adding automatically.

Reports allow you to create the 3 reports available through ARCTime.  You can create a timesheet, budget report or departmental budget report.

The Print Screen option will print the window to your printer.  This will be a graphic image of the actual ARCTime screen.

The Help section at this time launches the Windows Help System with a provided help file.  This file is the more recent and should be relied upon.

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Multiple Tasks
The program can assist you with repetitive tasks as well as timing a task for you.  You may set up a daily file and a weekly file of tasks.

To do a daily file, you fill in the tasks for a day and then press the Make File button.  This button is disabled unless there are tasks for the current day.  Note that you cannot use the daily file if there are ANY tasks already entered for the day.  It must be completely blank.

If you wish to do a partial day within your file, then you must select a project and then click the Full Day Button.  The button will not be enabled until you select a project.  The project you select does NOT have to be in the file.  After you click the Full Day button you can add additional tasks.

The week button changes depending on whether there are ANY tasks within the current week.  If there are, it will offer to create a task file which will over write any existing weekly tasks.  You would want to enter all your tasks for the week and then push the button to create a new file of weekly tasks.

If there no tasks entered within the week, it will offer to fill in the tasks for the week.  If you answer Yes, it will advise you how many tasks it entered.

The system also has a timer.  This will allow you to take a phone call for example and time it and have it entered into your ARCTime project to the closest 15 minutes.  The Timer button is visible only if you have a project selected.  That project is where it will be placed.  The timer appears similar to ...

The task will start at the closest 15 minute increment to the start time.  The duration will be the next highest 15 minute timer to the end time.  While the timer is active, it displays a panel with the Time Started and number of seconds so far.  As the timer works, it fills the panel with random colors from left to right.

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Budget Maintenance
ARCTime allows the employer/employees to enter some of the budgetary information if desired. Most of this maintenance is done through the maintenance program.

The budget is basically is matching how many hours it is thought that the employee will work on a specified project. This can then be compared to the actual hours the employee works on projects.

The maintenance screen for budgets appears as...

Whenever a field in this grid is current for Employee ID or Time Code, a drop down arrow appears on the right side of the field.  This drop down will cause a list of codes and descriptions to appear appropriate for the field in which you are working.

In the example above, we are in the first record (you can see the record selector on the left border that looks like a heavy black arrow), we are in the Time Code and have dropped down those codes,  In order to select a code, you need only double click which will select and close the drop down portion.  The ESC key will close the drop down without changing anything.

Enter the budgeted hours for that employee on the project code.  When finished you may close the window.

There are two reports an employee can create regarding budgets, one is for just the employee and the other for his department.

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Timesheet
The timesheet will vary depending on whether an employee is salaried or is hourly.  Hourly employee's timesheets are based on actual hours they have for the period.  Salaried employee's timesheet calculates the total hours and the results become a percentage of their salary for the period.

The Timesheet preview looks as follows...

As you can see, the timesheet provides the employee name, the payroll period this timesheet covers and a place for employee signature and a supervisor's signature.  The portions used or ignored are up to you.

In the center portion we have the headings, Day, Date, Hours, and a list of G/L code column headers as your company defines.  Beneath the headings we have the day and date for each day of the period selected.  Under Hours is a figure representing the total hours for that day.

Under each G/L code column heading (in the example above, these are: ARC, CMPSRV, ASEV), the hours for each of those project G/L Codes.  Note that you can combine G/L codes for multiple projects.  The number beneath the column headers is the G/L Number for that code.

Beneath the list of days, there is a TOTAL and PERCENT for each appropriate column.  The report footer reports the ARCTime version, employee name and page number.

Note that for hourly employees (sample not included), each week would have a sub-total showing overtime for that week.  At the bottom there would be totals for over time.  Note that in some states such as California over time is calculated on a daily basis.  There is a check box option under configure in the maintenance program.

Note that the bottom section allows you to navigate multiple pages, change the zoom ratio, specify which report pages to print, you can also save a report, load a saved report, print and close.

You can optionally include detail pages to the time sheet.  The detail reports on what tasks are included within the totals on the time sheet.  These pages are printed immediately after the regular timesheet and appears as...

As you can see this is page 2 of 4.  A normal timesheet for a two week duration would consist of only the first page.

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Budget Report

The Budget report available from ARCTime is fairly simplistic.  More comprehensive reporting is available through the maintenance program.

The basic report appears as follows...

As you can see we compare YTD budget to actual as well as Current Budget to actual.  There are sub-totals for each client as well as a total at the bottom.  This report covers only one employee, the current employee under ARCTime.

You can also print a similar report which covers and entire department.  This report appears as...

This looks almost exactly like the regular budget report except more than one employee may be contained within this report.  More sophisticated reporting is available through the maintenance program.

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Resources
Computer resources are not nearly the problem they were not too long ago.  Basically you need to have a certain amount of memory available to do any work.  As you load programs and data, memory can rapidly get used up.

Paging files allow the system to dump out programs and data from memory into a special file residing on your hard disk.  Newer operating systems automatically maintain the paging file and its size.  However, you must have an adequate sized hard disk with enough free space to handle your usage.

ARCtime has a window that will come up and tell you how much space you have available in various resources.  It appears as...

The free memory available is physical memory and your paging file maximum sizes.  It then gives the percent available and then a break down between physical memory and the paging file.

Obviously the more your activity takes place in physical memory the better.  Paging is costly in time.

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Import/Export

Currently, ARCTime allows you to create a local database, import the time codes and then export the tasks.  Most is handled through ARCTime.

The import/export function is accessed through the File menu. The window displayed appears as...

Warning:  In order to use the import/export ability, you MUST create the database through this function.  All updates must also be created through this function due to additional fields added to the local database.  DO NOT copy the database to create a local file.

You must be connected through the network to use this function, or create on your local computer and copy to a floppy or other media disk.

You must specify the Master Database where your employees and codes are located.  The button to the right with the ellipse (3 dots) will open a file open dialog box where you may locate the database.

Local database is where you want the traveling database.  If you are on a laptop, connected to the network, this might be somewhere on drive C:.  If you are on your computer and you are creating the traveling database on a floppy drive, it might be drive A:.

The Export Text File portion is for exporting time records.  You create a special comma separated values file.  That file can then be imported into the master database from the maintenance program.

The Export options allows you to specify the date range, employee numbers and whether to delete after export the time records you want to place in the master database.  While you are exporting the area just above the buttons will keep you informed of the programs progress.

As shown above, at first there are only two buttons available, Create and Close.  The Create button will create a local database with all the data except for the actual tasks it contains.

The Update button will allow you to update the local database with any new codes or employees without losing any existing data.  It must have been created initially before you can update.

The export button will output all codes within the date range and for the employees specified.  The date ranges are inclusive, i.e. the start date and end date are included in the data exported.  If requested, the program will delete all time tasks which were exported.  Deleted tasks are not available locally, but will be contained within the master database after import.

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Future
The future of ARCTime will have many enhancements.  Several are planned with the next release.

• Automatic Synchronization with a PocketPC version
• Multiple Daily and Weekly Task Files
• Export to payroll system
• Ability to disable or hide project codes
• Add your requests for enhancement now

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