timeQplus Biometric Time and Attendance System
Software Configuration Step By Step
Complete the Pre-Installation Preparation Document
Your timeQplus Biometric Installation Guide booklet contains a “Pre-Installation Preparation Document.”
We strongly recommend you complete this form before installing your software.
Need another copy? Click here to download: English (PDF format, approx. 6 MB) | Español (PDF format, approx. 1.8 MB)
To make sure your employees' time is correctly recorded and they are correctly paid, you should make sure the system is correctly configured to reflect your particular payroll options before you begin entering employee punches.
Connect the Terminal
To begin, connect the TQ100 terminal to your computer using RS232 or RS485 or to your local area network (LAN) using Ethernet. For more information, refer to the connection diagrams included in the documentation packet included with your timeQplus Biometric product.
Note, if you are connecting the terminal directly to a PC, you should power down the PC before connecting the terminal to the PC.
Install the Software
If necessary, restart your PC.
When the PC is restarted, insert the software CD into the CD drive on your computer. The CD should automatically launch the software installation program. Follow the on-screen prompts to install the software on your computer's hard drive:
- Accept the End User License Agreement.
- Enter your name and your company's name.
- Enter the install key (provided with your software). Without a valid install key, the software will run in demo mode only.
- (Network edition only) Select if you are installing the server or client software on this computer. Note you must install and configure the software on your server computer prior to installing the software on client computers.
When the software is installed, you will be prompted to restart your computer.
When the computer completes the restart, the Attendance Rx Setup Wizard will automatically launch. At this point, you will find it useful to have completed the “Pre-Installation Preparation Document” as recommended.
TQ100 Terminal User Manual (English) | Manual de usuario para la terminal TQ100 (Español)
Setup Wizard
Note 1: if necessary, you can later change the values you initially set up. Use care about making changes to your payroll settings after employees start clocking in and out. For best results, it's a good idea to make sure your software is correctly configured to reflect your pay practices before you allow employees to begin punching in and out through the system.
Note 2: You must click the Finish button at the end of the Setup Wizard to complete the process; if you do not, the Setup Wizard will run again the next time you try to launch the program.
Note 3: You have the option of setting times using a 12-hour or a 24-hour clock. Use care with AM and PM settings when using the 12-hour clock. If you are setting times using a 12-hour clock, 12:00AM corresponds to midnight and 12:00PM corresponds to noon.
When you are ready to proceed, click the Next button to begin the Setup Wizard.
Step 1: Pay Period Length
Select your pay period:
Click the Next button to proceed.
Step 2: Current Pay Period Start Date
This should be the date the current pay period started — either today's date or a date in the past.
Click the Next button to proceed.
If you have selected a Semi-monthly pay period in Step 1, you will then be prompted to enter the start date for your next pay period. If you have selected Weekly, Bi-Weekly or Monthly as your pay period, this screen will not appear.
Step 3: Calculating Overtime
Enter the hours an employee must work before qualifying for overtime pay. You can enter two different levels of overtime; for instance, if an employee qualifies for time-and-a-half at a certain level of hours and double time at a higher level of hours.
You can enter thresholds at either the daily or weekly level, or both, as determined by your pay practices and applicable wage and hour laws in your area.
You can disable overtime entirely by setting all thresholds to zero (00:00) hours.
If you click the checkbox to enable 7th Day Overtime, when an employee works all seven days of a given work week, the seventh day will be forced to overtime, regardless of the number of hours worked or your other overtime settings.
This setting may be mandated by laws in your area.
If you have selected a Semi-Monthly or Monthly pay period, you also must specify on what day of the week your pay period begins.
Click the Next button to proceed.
Step 4: Pay Interval Round
The Pay Interval Round setting forces punches to be rounded to the nearest one, five, six, ten, or fifteen-minute interval. The default setting is one minute.
For instance, if the Pay Interval Round setting is 10 minutes, a punch at 8:14 will round back to 8:10, while a punch at 8:15 will round forward to 8:20. If the Pay Interval Round setting is 15 minutes, a punch at 7:07 would round back to 7:00, while a punch at 7:08 would round forward to 7:15.
Step 5: Maximum Time on the Clock
Use this setting to control how long an employee can be continuously clocked in before the system assumes an “out” punch has been missed and automatically clocks the employee out. The system will display zero accumulated time for that punch and note the missed punch on the Time Card Report and the Hours Summary Report.
The default setting is 12 hours (12:00). If you typically have employees who work longer than this in a given day, you will want to adjust the number upward. If you prefer to disable this feature entirely, set the Max Time on Clock to zero hours (00:00).
Step 6: Paid Holidays
Indicate whether you want to automatically pay employees for designated holidays. If you select Yes, you will be prompted to enter the number of days an employee must be on your payroll before the employee is eligible for holiday pay:
Click the Next button to proceed. If you select No, the system will proceed to the next step in the Setup Wizard. If you select Yes, enter the holidays you want employees to be paid for:
Click the downward-pointing arrow at the right hand side of the Date field to display a calendar. Click the appropriate date on the calendar to insert that date into the Date field. Type the name of the holiday in the Holiday field and press the Enter key on your keyboard to open a new line for the next holiday.
When you have entered all your paid holidays, click the Next button to proceed to the next step in the Setup Wizard.
Step 7: Salaried Employee Information
If you plan to track attendance of salaried employees using the software, enter how many hours your salaried employees work each pay period.
Also, indicate whether salaried employees should be automatically paid for holidays. If you click the box to designate you want to automatically pay salaried employees for holidays, you will be prompted to enter how many hours you want to pay for each holiday:
Click the Next button to proceed.
Step 8: Time Card Approvals
You can prevent time cards that have not been approved by a supervisor from being exported to your payroll program:
Click the Next button to proceed.
Step 9: Define Shifts
If you do not want to set up shifts, click the Next button. You can add shifts in the future if desired through the Attendance Rx Administrator. If you do wish to set up one or more shifts now, click the New button to launch the Shift Wizard. Enter the name of the shift:
Click the Next button to begin setting up the shift rules:
Enter the time the shift is scheduled to start work and the time the shift is scheduled to stop work. When entering time using a 12-hour clock, remember that 12:00AM corresponds to midnight and 12:00PM corresponds to noon.
Then, if desired, specify the shift rules for rounding, grace and docking. We recommend you set these to be the same as your current timekeeping practices.
For instance, if you do not normally round employee punches today, you should not set Shift Rounding rules in the software. If you normally allow a grace period of five minutes late clock in during which employees are considered to have arrived on time, set the Grace minutes for Shift Start to 5 minutes.
Grace and round rules will take precedence over your Pay Interval Round settings for punches that occur within the designated round and grace “windows” around the scheduled shift start and stop times.
For example, if you set the Shift Round time to 10 minutes for Shift Start and Shift Stop, during the 10 minutes before and after the scheduled shift start and stop times the shift round rules will apply, no matter what you set for Pay Interval Round.
- Round: Enter the number of minutes before the shift Start Time that an employee's “early punch in” will be treated as though it occurred at the exact scheduled start time. Enter the number of minutes after the shift End Time during which an employee's “late punch out” will be treated as though it occurred at the exact scheduled stop time.
For instance, if the shift is scheduled to start at 8:00am and you set the Start Round to 10 minutes, for the purpose of calculating accumulated hours the punch of an employee who clocks in at 7:52am would be treated as though it had occurred exactly at 8:00 am. - Grace: This is essentially the “flip side” of the Round rules — that is, this is the number of minutes after the scheduled shift Start Time that a “late punch in” will be treated as though it occurred at the scheduled shift start time, or the number of minutes before the scheduled shift End Time that an “early punch out” will be treated as though it occurred at the scheduled shift end time.
For instance, if a shift is scheduled to end at 3:30pm and you have set the Grace period to 10 minutes, an employee who clocks out at 3:23pm will have that punch treated as though it occurred exactly at 3:30pm. - Dock: This is the number of minutes an employee will lose from his or her daily total hours for clocking out early or clocking in late (that is, outside of the times set by the Round and Grace settings).
Click the Next button to set the lunch rules for this shift:
You can choose to disable lunch rules even though you enable and use other shift rules.
If you choose to enable the lunch rules, you will be prompted to enter the earliest time employees should clock out for lunch, the latest time they should clock back in. If an employee clocks out during this “lunch window” that off-the-clock time will be treated as a lunch break (regardless of when the employee clocks back in), and the lunch rules you set will apply. Breaks that start outside this window will not be treated as lunch breaks.
When a break has been identified by the software as a lunch break, Lunch rules override your Pay Interval Rounding rules for that break.
- Lunch Duration: You may optionally specify a standard number of minutes to be automatically deducted from the employee's total hours for a lunch break. If an employee is clocked out for lunch for fewer minutes than the Lunch Duration, the system will automatically adjust the employee's lunch break deduction to the designated duration. If an employee is clocked out for lunch for more minutes than the Lunch Duration, their accumulated hours will reflect their actual time off the clock.
Use caution with this setting: if employees leave for their lunch break outside of the designated lunch window, their off-the-clock time and a standard Lunch Duration will be deducted from their accumulated hours. In that event, you will need to manually adjust the employees' time to ensure they're paid correctly.
If you do not wish to designate a standard Lunch Duration, leave the field set with the default of zero.
- Auto Lunch After: The Auto Lunch After specifies the number of hours on the clock after which the lunch duration will be deducted from the employee's elapsed time, even if the employee has not clocked out for lunch. This is useful in the event an employee forgets to clock out for lunch, or in the event you do not wish to require employees to clock in and out for their lunch breaks.
Again, exercise caution with this setting. If you have set a number of hours for Auto After and an employee works through his or her lunch break, the system will still automatically deduct the Lunch Duration after the employee works the number of hours set in the Auto After field. You will need to manually adjust the employee's time to ensure they're paid correctly for the number of hours they actually worked.
If you do not wish to automatically apply lunch breaks, leave the Auto After field set with the default of zero.
Click the Next button to set the holiday rules for this shift:
If you select Yes, you will be prompted to enter the number of hours to pay for each holiday. This will be paid for each holiday you previously set up in Step 6.
Click the Next button:
Click the Finish button to create the new shift. You will be returned to the Define Shifts screen, with the newly created shift listed in the large box. If you wish to create additional shifts, click the New button and go through the steps to set up the rules for each one.
You may configure up to 12 shifts. When you have finished entering your shifts, click the Next button to proceed.
Step 10: Password
Set your administrative password. This is the password you will use to access the Attendance Rx Administrator to review and approve time cards, edit punches and adjust the system configuration.
Click the Next button to proceed.
Step 11: Import Employee Information
Indicate how you intend to enter employee information into the software. You have the choice of entering information directly, or of importing from Acroprint's HRx software, or of importing from QuickBooks:
Click the Next button to continue.
Step 12: timeQplus Biometric Settings
Configure your system to recognize and communicate with your TQ100 terminal.
Click the timeQplus Settings button to configure communications with the TQ100 terminal.
Configure Terminal Communications
First, select the communications protocol(s) you plan to use for connecting your TQ100 terminal(s) to your PC or network:
Click the Next button to continue.
If you select Ethernet or Both, continue to the Ethernet Configuration section below.
If you select Comm Port, skip to the Comm Port Configuration section.
Ethernet Configuration
If you select Ethernet or Both, the software will open the Ethernet configuration screen:
Click the checkbox to enable Ethernet connectivity, and set the Polling Interval, Update Time and Update Frequency.
- Polling Interval: The default is for the system to poll the terminal every 60 minutes. You can adjust this to meet your needs. Employees cannot clock in our out while a polling cycle is running at that terminal; typically, a polling cycle takes 30 seconds or less per terminal.
- Update Time and Frequency: During an update cycle, the software downloads updates to the terminal for changes to employee names, In/Out status and total hours worked for the pay period. You can adjust the defaults to meet your needs.
Employees cannot clock in or out while an update cycle is processing. Therefore, we recommend you avoid setting an update time that is within 15 minutes before or after a scheduled start or stop time, to avoid interfering with employees trying to clock in or out for work.
If you have both COM port and Ethernet TQ100 terminals on your system, set different update times for each communications type to avoid conflicts. A difference of 15 to 30 minutes is generally sufficient.
Click the Next button to continue.
To configure a new Ethernet terminal, click the Add Terminal button. The system will launch the Add Terminal Wizard.
Click the Next button to continue.
Enter the Port, IP Address, and Device ID for which you originally configured the terminal hardware. Refer to the Hardware Configuration Step By Step guide for more information.
Click the Next button to continue. The system will attempt to establish communications with the terminal.
If you selected Both, continue to the Comm Port Configuration section below.
If you selected only Ethernet, skip to the Finalize Configuration section.
Comm Port Configuration
If you originally selected Comm Port as your communications method, the system will open the Comm Port configuration screen. If you selected Both, the system will open the Comm Port configuration screen once it has completed the Ethernet Add Terminal Wizard.
Set the Polling Interval, Update Time and Update Frequency as instructed in the Ethernet configuration section, above.
Click the Next button to continue.
To configure a new Comm Port terminal, click the Add Terminal button. The system will launch the Add Terminal Wizard.
Click the Next button to continue.
Enter the Serial port number, Baud rate and Device ID for which you originally configured the terminal hardware. Refer to the Hardware Configuration Step By Step guide for more information.
Click the Next button to continue. The system will attempt to establish communications with the terminal.
Finalize Configuration
Click the Finish button to complete the Wizard setup.
When the Wizard completes, the Attendance Rx Administrator will launch with a confirmation message. Click the OK button to clear the message. You are now ready to begin entering or importing employee information.
