Reports: Work Block Report

Work Block Reports were the first way to export information from SYNCrew and are still the most flexible. This article explains what the Work Block report is and how to use them. This report is necessarily complicated because it is flexible and powerful and please contact support@syncrew.com or your account manager directly with any questions.

Also, please note that work block reports should not be used for payroll and other places where overtime calculations are needed since the work block report only calculates daily overtime based on the information that appears from your filters. The Timesheets are the best place to see that information. [update on 8/1/20, some clients are using a “new” version of this report that shows overtime properly. To see if you are on that version, just look at the menu and if it says “new work block report,” then you can rely on the overtime values. Contact us at support@syncrew.com with any questions]

What is the Work Block report: Roughly speaking, a work block is a group of events in SYNCrew that mark out an amount of time between the clock in and clock out or change task.

Here is an example of how a day gets converted into work blocks: John Smith works the following day and records the following events in SYNCrew:

  • 8am: Clock in to 123 Main St
  • 11am: change task
  • 11:20am: clock in to 456 Elm St.
  • 12pm: start meal break
  • 12:30pm: end meal break
  • 4:30pm: Clock out

John’s day will show up as two work blocks, like this:

  • 123 Main st: 3 hours working, 0 minutes drive time
  • 456 Elm: 5 hours working, 30 minutes on break, 20 minutes of drive time

How to run a Work Block report:

  1. Select “Work Block Report” from the Reports menu 
  2. You should now see a screen where you can filter the information you want to see in the report. Filter your results however you want. See  the section below called “Filtering Details” for more information about how these filters work.
  3. Click “Run”
  4. The report may take a while to run depending on how much information is in your request. On most browsers, you can confirm that it is still running by looking at the page loading indicator. If the icon is still spinning or the bar is progressing, it is running. View the section below called “Work Block Report Results” for more details

Work Block Report Results: Once you click “run” and the report loads, you should see a report that looks like a grid. You will see additional columns if you have selected any options in the filter selection page (details below). The columns should be self explanatory but a few things to note are that:

  • Numbers are decimal numbers so 8.33 is 8 hours and 20 minutes. This format makes doing addition of time and multiplication of wages easier.
  • Location Warning: This will say “Yes” if any event during the work block was outside the allowed distance for the project.
  • Only the first 100 rows will be shown. If the report is longer, you will be able to click to different pages. The sums at the bottom are only for the 100 items shown.

Highlighted in colored boxes are these details:

  1. Edit Button [red]: Clicking this will show you all the events that make up that work block and you can click the red “edit” button for any of them to make changes.
  2. Open Photos [Red]: This will open a pop up where you can view all the photos taken. In this popup, Clicking “Save all Photos” will download all photos from the work block to your computer. Likewise, the “Send Email” will send an email that contains all photos, notes and times to the recipient you enter.
  3. Audit [orange]: You can view any changes that have been made to a work block (like editing the time of the clock in or out). For details, please see this article.
  4. Export to CSV [green]: Clicking this button will export the report to a Comma Separated Values. Small reports will be downloaded directly while larger reports will be emailed to your email within a few minutes, sometimes longer depending on SYNCrew’s overall system load.

Filtering Details: By default, the report will show all work blocks for the past month. Since that is too much information for most people, you can limit the results to only the dates, projects, people, and more as described here. All references to colored boxes are based on the image below.

  1. Teams, Workers, Skill, Projects [green]: Click in the text field below the way field you want to filter and a list  of options will pop up. You can pick from the list or start typing to search in real-time. Once you see the name, team, skill or project you want, click the name. You can pick multiple options in each field. You may also select multiple fields at the same time. The example in the image to the right shows a search for work done by Andrew Jackson, George Washington, and Martin Van Buren at either 1000 Brannan st or 123 Main St.
  2. Custom Fields [orange]: When you set up your company with SYNCrew, there are custom fields that each company uses differently. Some examples are Work Order, Cost Center, Where were materials purchased, etc. If these fields are enabled, you will see them here.
  3. Notes [purple]: You can type anything in here and the report will return results for any work blocks that contain that note anywhere in the general notes field or in any text-based custom fields.
  4. Dates [blue]: The default is last month, but you can pick any date range you want by clicking in the Start Date and End Date boxes. There are also some radio buttons below where you can quickly select from common options like “yesterday” or “last 7 days.”
  5. Report Options [red]: Selecting any of these options will add extra columns to your report after it runs. They are optional because
    1. Show On-Site and Drive Time: SYNCrew measures the time between when a Worker leaves one project and arrives at another. The drive time is included in the time for a work block, but this allows you to see how much of the work block was spent driving vs on site. Depending on your company settings, the drive time will be assigned to the project the worker is departing or arriving.
    2. Show Start and End Time: Selecting this option will add two columns called “start time” and “end time.” These columns show the time that the work block started and ended (inclusive of the drive time).
    3. Combine all Notes: By default, the work block report shows the note made with the clock out photo in the “notes” column. Checking this option will replace the notes column with a column called “combine all notes” that shows all notes taken anytime during the work block – any notes at clock in or any progress photos will be shown in addition to the clock out.
    4. Show Mileage: SYNCrew does not track the route a Worker takes, but the system can calculate the distance based on the recommended route in Google Maps. This may be different then the route the tech took. Additionally, SYNCrew looks this information up freshly each time you run a report with this option, the distance shown will vary a bit as traffic causes Google to alter the recommended route.
    5. Show Break Time: This shows the length of all breaks taken during the work block. If a worker takes more then one break, the sum total is shown here. Note that breaks are shown in decimal form so 0.5 is 30 minutes, for example.
    6. Add Labor Costs: This option will add a column with the estimated labor cost. This cost is calculated by multiplying the time worked by the hourly wage in the workers profile page. Daily Overtime is factored into this calculation.
    7. Only Show Work Blocks with Overtime: This option will only show days that have overtime. Some lines in the report might show 0 overtime but they are there because they are part of a day that had overtime for the same worker.

Work Block reports are very powerful and we know they can be a bit confusing for new and long-time users alike. Please reach your account adviser or support@syncrew.com with any questions.

Create a mandatory COVID-19 screening form at clock in

SYNCrew’s form functionality can be used to create COVID-19 check-in forms to capture daily health data for your employees. Employees can access the COVID-19 screening form through the SYNCrew app and answer all the questions there. A completion email will be sent to an address of your choosing.

The instructions below walk you through creation of a form and setting it to be mandatory.

How to create a new form:

  1. Click “New Custom Form” at the top of the page
  2. On the pop up, enter the name of the form and, optionally, one email address (you can add more emails while editing the form later)
  3. Click “Save”
  4. Now follow the steps to edit forms below

Setting up the form

This refers to the options at the top of the forms setup page

  1. Enable: This option just enables or disables the form. If there is a check box showing, the form is enabled.
  2. Send to project email: When this option is selected, completed forms will be sent to the email(s) that are listed for the Project. You can see these emails by clicking “edit project” from the project profile page.
  3. Email address for completed form: Whenever a form is completed, these emails will receive the form.
  4. Name: This is the name that shows up on the form list in the app and admin portal
  5. Project: This setting managed when the form can be seen by workers in the field. If you want the form to appear both clocked in and out, you just need to copy the form once completed and set the copy to have different project settings
    1. Clocked in project: The form will show anytime a user is clocked into any project (as you are now)
    2. Single project: The user will see the form when they are clocked into ONLY that selected project. They will also see that form if you select “allow user to see while clocked out” AND they search for that project.
    3. Allow user to select: These forms will only be seen while the user is clocked out. 
  6. ALWAYS CLICK “UPDATE” AFTER EDITING THESE SETTINGS OR THEY WILL NOT BE SAVED

Adding and editing the form fields

We will focus on a simple example for a COVID-19 screening form, for more details on forms, please see http://www.syncrew.com/faq/app/syncrew-forms-how-to-set-up/

In this example, we have three questions we want to ask:

1.   Within the last 10 days have you been diagnosed with COVID-19 or had a test confirming you have the virus?

2.   Do you live in the same household with, or have you had close contact* in the past 14 days with someone who has been in isolation for COVID-19 or had a test confirming they have the virus?  *“Close contact” is defined as living in the same house, being an intimate partner, being a caregiver, or being within 6 feet of an individual for longer than 10minutes who has COVID-19.

3.   Have you had any one or more of these symptoms today or within the past 24 hours, which is new or not explained by a reason other than possibly having COVID-19?

Possible responses should be Yes/No for the first two questions and a list of symptoms on the third.

After we’ve setup the header info (section above), we can add the questions one by one.

To add a question, click where it says “Check Box” in the bottom of the form and select “List” as the type for the first question. As the possible answers are Yes/No, we select “List” and then add the Yes/ No responses.

Click on submit and you will get a pop-up. In this pop-up, type (or copy/paste) the first question where it says “label” . This will be what the employees will see as the question in the app.

Click Save, then click on “edit” to the right, to add the possible responses. The pop-up opens again, this time allowing you to add the responses. Type the first response in the field that says “Add” and then click on the Add button. Do the same for every possible response, in this case it’s only Yes and No.

Click Save, then move on to the next question. Again, click below where it says “Check box” and repeat the same process.

The third question is slightly different, as the employee could have one or more symptoms at once. Hence, we pick “Multiple Pick List”, allowing the employee to select more than one response.

The rest of the process is the same, except we will add more possible responses than just Yes or No. Another important difference is to select “Optional” on top, that way a response is not required when the employee has no symptoms. Otherwise, the form will force the user to choose at least one.

When you added all the responses, click save.

To finish, click “update” to finalize the form.

Set the Form as required

Once your form is created, go back to the main forms setup screen and select your COVID form in the dropdown labeled, “Required at start of day.” Then click save to the right.

Now your workers will be required to complete this form before starting work with any clock in that follows a clock out. If they change task throughout the day as they work, they will only complete this form once. If they clock out and then come back to work for whatever reason, they would complete the form again.

Your workers will need to be sure they have recently updated apps so if they are able to clock in without completing the form, that is most likely the issue. Have them update the app and then leave it open for a few minutes with good wifi or cell signal and it should update properly to require the form.


How to review forms

The admins can now access the form via the Reports -> Custom Form reports Page.

Once on the page, select the Covid form (and any other desired filters for time, employee etc). Below you can also filter by responses (For example you can search all Yes responses to a particular question)

On the list that returns, you can click on any particular form where it says “View Details” to see the responses. You can also generate PDFs and manually email the forms from here.

COVID-19 on the phone app

This section shows how a worker can access the form manually. This is done in cases where not all workers need to complete the form or when the mandatory form is already used for another purpose.

Click on the menu button (three horizontal lines on the top left) and then on “Forms”

Then click on “Start New Form” and select the “Covid-19 screening” form

Respond to the questions just like in any other electronic form

Finally click “Send Form” And the form will be sent to the system

Audit Report

The Audit Report allows administrators to track what edits were made to employee’s times by which admins. It shows the affected employee, what was changed (time added or edited), the previous and new values, who made the edit and when.

To run this report, click on “Reports” in the main menu and then on “Audit Reports” on the submenu that opens.

This will open the Audit Report page. Here you can filter by Teams, Workers, Skills and Projects, as usual in most reports, but you can also filter by who is the admin who made the edit(s). Please note that time filter applies to the date and time of the work, not the date and time when the edit was made.

The resulting report can be viewed on the screen but also exported to CSV, where you can open it using Excel by pressing on “Export to CSV”.

Reports: Drive Time Reports

Drive time report is a way to quickly see what portion of the time your employees are engaged on a job during their clocked in hours.
We have had clients use this report to increase productivity greatly (over 10%).

If all employees are lower then you expect, it can be a sign that things could be more efficient across the board. Likewise, it may show a specific employee or group of employees being lower than expected. In all cases, we recommend emailing support@syncrew.com if you see something you do not expect because this report is sensitive to using the app exactly as designed. Some companies use the app differently, which is completely fine of course, but it can cause this report to be inacurate.

To run a Drive Time Report, do the following:

  1. Go to Reports in the left navigation and click Drive time reports. You will see the screen below where you enter the parameters to report on.
  2. Select time: Select the time period you want – please note that you can choose a week or a month and just click the drop down under your choice to pick the specific period you want.
  3. Select Team(s): Select the team(s) you wish to review.
  4. Non-productive projects: Optionally, you may add projects that are non-productive. Examples might be the office, supply house, or anywhere else the employees spend time but is not revenue generating. The report will show what percent of time is spent at these separately so owners and managers may gauge if there is an issue with too much time spent at these places.
  5. Click “Run”

Below is an example of what you will see when the results come back. In this case, we asked for November data for the San Francisco Team and noted that “800 Douglass, rwc” was a non-productive location.

As always, please contact us at support@syncrew.com if you have any questions.

Teams

“Teams” are a way to group Workers together in SYNCrew and are viewed on the “teams” tab and are also filters that can be used in reports, worker time review and timesheets. Each worker MUST be on a team and all companies have a “default” team created when their SYNCrew account is created.

Different companies use teams for different reasons but here are some common reasons:

  • Manager name: Group workers by manager, where the managers name is the team name
  • Work location: For companies with different branch locations or large customer sites, the name of the brach or customer site can be set as the name
  • Work type: Some companies have different groups and they name the teams for the work type.

How to create and edit team

Creating a team is simple. Go to Settings –> Manage Teams. The following screenshot shows how to add a new team and how to edit the name of an existing team

Assigning workers to teams

Workers can be assigned to teams in two main ways:

  1. When editing a workers settings or creating a new worker, there is a place to select the team and it will update when the settings are saved.
  2. When you create or edit a team’s name as described above, you can check the box next to a name to put that person on the team. When you click “save,” all users who have a check box will be added to that team.

Assigning a manager to a team

Each team can have a manager assigned. The Manager is used to route certain alerts like time change request and in-app help request. A manager must have an admin account (limited or full admin) and then you can select them in the green box below when creating or editing the team.

Select team manager

Rounding of time

Updated 5/25/19

SYNCrew can round work time in several places. Generally, rounding of time worked is legal so long as it is done in a mechanical way and such that it does not systematically work against the employee. Where SYNCrew uses rounding, it is done in such a way that is designed to be nuetral towards time worked when viewed over long periods of time.

Starting in May of 2019, SYNCrew is shifting the way rounding is done and as we make the transition, you may see different results in different places. If you have any questions about these deiscrepancies, please email your account manager or support@syncrew.com and we will be happy to discuss details anytime. Please check back at this page to keep up to date on the transition to the new methodology. We anticipate the transition will be complete by end of Summer 2019.

NEW: Rounding of punches:  SYNCrew’s new rounding methodology works as follows:

  • The company selects a rounding threshold of 5, 10 or 15 minutes
  • Clock in, Clock out, and change task events are rounded to the nearest clock time in the interval of the rounding threshold. That is, if 15 minutes is selected, all events of this kind will have minutes of :00, :15, :30, or :45. Likewise, if 10 minutes is selected for the rounding threshold, then the events will always have minutes of :00, :10, :20, :30, :40, or :50
  • Meal breaks will have their length rounded to the nearest threshold time. So for a company with rounding threshold set to 15 minutes, mealbreaks will always be a multiple of 15 minutes
  • If a worker works at multiple jobs in a given day, the time at each site ends up rounded as does the whole day

This new rounding methodology is used in the following places:

  • Quickbooks exports
  • Results for New Work Block report when option to “show rounded time” is selected (if you would like access to this beta feature, please email your request to support@syncrew.com)

OLD: Rounding of time worked:  SYNCrew’s old rounding methodology works as follows:

  • The time worked for the day is rounded to the nearest 15 minutes
  • Breaks are deducted before the time worked is calculated so they are not impacted
  • If a worker works at multiple jobs in a given day, the time at each site is not rounded

This old rounding methodology is used in the following places:

  • Timesheets (when rounding is selected)
  • Worker Time Review (when rounding is selected)

Sharing data between companies

Option 1: Share projects: This option is for when BOTH companies are clients of SYNCrew and lets one company see everything from the other company at shared projects only (work at non-shared projects remain private). This is often more information then either party wants, but it can be very useful depending on the project. 

To set this up, we connect two companies and then one company (usually the “General Contractor”) would “share” the project with the other (we’ll call it the “sub-contractor” here). Everything looks the same in the sub-contractor’s portal except that the projects will be “owned” by the other. The magic here is that all the info shows up in General Contractors portal just as it does in Sub-Contractors’. Specifically, the General Contractor would see:

  • When a Sub-Contractor employee clocks in, out, or takes a progress picture
  • General Contractor can run reports as they would with their regular employees
  • General Contractor can search photos and notes
  • Again, the General Contractor CANNOT see work that Sub-Contractor employees do at other projects that are not shared. The Sub-Contractor employees will basically disappear from General Contractor’s view if they do work for other clients

Option 2: Set up limited admin accounts: This requires no real setup and is typically used when a SYNCrew client wants to provide access to a client of theirs for just one or a few of their projects. To set this up, just create a Limited Admin account for the person you want to be able to see and configure that admin with the appropriate access. Limited admin accounts can be set up in many ways and you can consult this article or contact SYNCrew support for help.

Option 3: Email progress pictures taken by managers: This requires no real setup either. SYNCrew has many ways to share photos which may assist in sharing data:

  • Photos can be manually sent from the app at Change Task or Clock Out. The app user can just enter the email address then and all photos taken at the time will send
  • Rules can be set up so photos that meet certain criteria can be sent automatically to pre-specificied email addresses
  • Reports: Some reports including Work Block reports and Daily Site reports can be emailed automatically or manually (varies by report)

Quickbooks integration: Common causes of errors

Below are some issues we have seen on multiple occasions so we posted there in case you are having a similar issue.

EXTRA SPACES: Spaces in SYNCrew Accounting Name field. This is the most common issue we see. Clients will enter a space at the front or back of the field, or before or after the “:” that is used to break up the Project and Job. If you suspect this is the issue, contact support@syncrew.com and we can run a quick audit to check for this.


SAME ACCOUNTING NAME ON TWO PROJECTS: For the integration to work and prevent duplicate entries from being made into Quickbooks, each project in SYNCrew must have a unique Accounting Name (or Project Name if you are using that in your QB Sync settings).

MIDDLE NAME MIS-MATCH: Too many letters stored in the middle initial field in Quickbooks. This is a strange one but has popped up a few times and is hard to track down. The Middle Initial field in QB can only hold 5 characters but sometimes multiple names will get put in there. In the examples below, you can see that “Robinson” is the second, first name in SYNCrew, but just Robin fits in QB.

This particular problem will allow the Work Block to be written into QB, but it will NOT be confirmed within SYNCrew and re-running Web Connector will cause duplicate entries to be made.

Quickbooks Integration & de-duplication explained

One major issue when you connect critical data (like hours for payroll and billing!) is that you need to be sure that everything goes though AND that it only goes one time!

Technical steps to send data from SYNCrew to Quickbooks Desktop

1. Quickbooks user clicks the “Update selected” button in QB web connector.
2. QB Web Connector contacts SYNCrew and create a secure connection.
3. SYNCrew will then send the information over one Work Block at a time (think of each row of a Work Block report).
4. For each Work Block that SYNCrew sends, Quickbooks will validate that the employee and customer (& project if used) match.

IF THEY MATCH:
5. The hours are added to the Employee timesheet in Quickbooks
6. Quickbooks confirms this addition and SYNCrew notes that the Work Block has been send to Quickbooks. If the QB Web Connector connects to SYNCrew while the same time period is selected again, that Work Block will be skipped.

IF THERE IS NOT A MATCH:
5. The import process stops and QB Web Connector displays an error that describes what issue was found so the user can fix (usually by adding the Customer:Job or employee in QB.
6. Nothing is reported back to SYNCrew so that SYNCrew will try to send that Work Block next time.

What if additions or edits are made AFTER the sync to QB?

  • Work Block added AFTER sync to QB: If a work block is added to SYNCrew AFTER Web Connector has run, you can simply run the Web Connector again and only new events will be added to QB.
  • Edits made to a Work Block AFTER sync to QB: In this case, the Work Block as it was at the time Web Connector was run, will remain in QB and the updated Work Block will not be synced. This is because the Work Block has already been flagged as synced so the Web Connector skips it.
  • If you add time manually into QB or through another method (like an IIF file): These hours are NOT noted in SYNCrew as having been synced and so they will be sent again one time if you sync to QB.

Need Help?

We know this can be a bit complicated so if you something strange happened, please contact us with the details so we can detmine how it happened and advise on cleanup and also how to prevent going forward.

As always, if you have any questions, you can contact your account manager or email support@syncrew.com to get further details.

Quickbooks Desktop Integration

SYNCrew can export data to Quickbooks Desktop! This flexible integration will let you get hours your team enters in SYNCrew directly into Quickbooks

Initial Setup: The initial setup is a bit complicated due to the flexibility SYNCrew has built to make sure the hours get in how you need them. For that reason, we insist on helping you so please email support@syncrew.com and ask to get this going.

How to pull data: When you wan to pull data from SYNCrew to QB, just follow these steps. Note that most people run these at the end of each pay period but you can run at other times or use the custom dates. Regardless, we recommend not running while workers are still clocked in for that period.

START IN SYNCREW: Open SYNCrew and do the following:

  1. Open SYNCrew and click on Settings in the navigation section at the left (circled in yellow below)
  2. Select QuickBooks underneath Settings (circled in green)
  3. Select the pay period you want (circled in purple)
  4. Click Save (circled in red)

Configuration screen in SYNCrew before each QB export

MOVE TO QUICKBOOKS: Open QuickBooks and do the following:
5. Go to the file menu and select “Update Web Service”
6. You may be asked to approve SYNCrew’s access at this time, please approve.
7. A window will open that shows you available apps yous can update and use. Make sure the box next to SYNCrew is selected (circled in orange) and then click “update Selected” (circled in green)

8. Once you click “Update Selected,” it may take some time depending on how many employees you have and how long the pay period is, but status bars at the bottom will keep you posted. Once the progress bars get to 100%, you can check the status to see if it was successsful or if there were errors:

IF EVERYTHING GOES RIGHT, you will see a window like this that shows “last result: ok.” If you see this, you are done and all data should be in QB!

IF SOMETHING IS NOT RIGHT, you will see a window like this that shows “last result: qbwc error:…” and then a description of the error. The error will usually be that the Customer:Project or Employee is not in Quickbooks. Once you fix the issue in QB, go back to step 7 and click “update selected.” If your projects and employees are not up to date in QB, this make take a few tries to get it fully synced.


Please note, we always recommend reviewing hours in QB to be sure they are correct!


Further reading: This integration was built to be as seamless as possible, but it is a bit complicated out of necessity due to the many ways our clients use both SYNCrew and Quickbooks.