Most of the time, workers will clock themselves out without issue. But on occasion, an admin may need to clock the worker out. The most common reasons are that the worker’s phone broke or they may no longer work for you.
If you find yourself clocking people out every day, we recommend that you talk to the employees and make sure they know how to ensure their app is syncing with the server as described here: Why events sometimes don’t sync
On to why you are here – how to clock somebody out! There are two ways to do this:
Worker Profile Page: Go to the Workers profile page (click their name on the dashboard or tames page). If they are currently clocked in, you will see a “clock out worker” button at the top-right of that page. Click that to clock out the worker.
Worker Time Review: In worker Time Review, you can click on the day that does not have a clock out and you’ll see a “clock out worker” button at the bottom of the activity. Click that to clock out the worker.
This article talks about settings that can be set for a specific worker account. If you want to see about company-wide settings for ALL workers, see this article HERE.
The system is highly configurable so if you do not see how to do what you want here, please contact us at support@syncrew.com or in the chat box at the bottom-right.
All the individual settings can be accessed clicking on Settings –> manage users, then clicking the worker’s name.
Worker Type: Worker type impacts how the app functions and is not an indicator of the worker’s position or title. Details of these types have their own article HERE.
Work.syncrew.com options: There are three options related to work.syncrew.com. There is more information about the worker portal HERE available but here is a quick summary:
Allow to view time at work.syncrew.com – This will allow a worker to go to www.syncrew.com and click “worker login” and view their hours. Since Hourly Workers and Manager Workers can easily see this in their app, this is mostly used for Managed Workers (whose time is added by others)
Allow to add time at work.syncrew.com – This will allow a worker to add time in the Worker Portal. This is most commonly used by office employees. Be sure to enable the option above for this.
“Allow to edit time at work.syncrew.com” – this final option allows the worker to edit their time from the BOTH the Worker Portal and the app directly. If you select this check box alone, the worker will only be able to edit the time from their app
Allow to upload photos from the photo gallery – Check this box to allow workers to upload progress photos from their camera’s pictures. This does NOT allow uploading photos for clock in and clock out. This is convenient for workers but since the photos are taken from the phone’s memory, SYNCrew cannot guarantee when or where they were taken and a watermark is applied to note this. If this box is NOT checked, the only way a worker can get a picture into SYNCrew is to take it in real-time with the app.
Don’t require photos: There may be some workers who you don’t want to require to take a photo at their clock in and clock out. Checking this box will make it so the worker will skip the photo at clock in and out, but they can still take progress photos and the app works identically in all other ways.
Allow user to edit their own time: If you want your employee to be able to edit their own time from the app, click the box next to “allow to edit time at work.syncrew.com”. Note this is referenced above but it’s commonly asked about and we wanted to highlight it.
Name: This is how the worker’s name will show up in the admin portal. Typically it is just the workers proper name like, “John Smith” but it sometimes has additional information like nick-names. If you with to have this field not be the property name, but need a property name to connect to payroll, you can do that by enabling the “Employee ID” field or another custom field – learn more HERE.
Email: This is the worker’s email and it’s optional since worker’s log in primarily with their phone numbers. If you do put an email address in here, they worker can also use that to log in.
Phone: This should be the worker’s cell phone number. They will use this as their primary login and they can reset their password from the app if they can get text messages at this number.
Team: Each worker is assigned to a team and this is where you set that. Learn more about teams HERE.
Skills: Each employee has skills that are a subset of the skills that a company has. You can read more about company skills HERE.
Each worker has a list of skills and must have at least one skill enabled. To change the skills, edit the list in their employee profile settings by putting a check box next to the desired skills and then click save.
If the employee only has one skill, all their work will automatically get assigned to it. If more then one skill is set up for a given employee, they will be prompted to select the appropriate skill at each clock in.
Hourly Cost rate: This is typically the employees wage but some clients put the fully-burdened rate in. This rate is used in the budgets, labor cost in Work Block reports and anywhere else labor cost is referenced.
Hourly Billing rate: This rate is shown on the project and worker profile pages – anywhere labor billable values are referenced.
Regular Hours: Start and End time are the time that this employee typically starts work. Workers will be able to work different hours than these, but these times are what the system uses for reminders to start work. These default to the values that were set in Settings –> Configuration.
To prevent workers from clocking in before their start time, go to Settings –> Configuration, scroll down to the “General” section, and then check the box next to “Enforce clock in time” (then scroll down to the bottom and click “save”).
Tolerance: This is how many minutes the system will wait before sending a notification. For example, if the worker’s start time is set to 8am and the tolerance is set to 15 minutes, the system will wait until 8:15am before sending the reminder the clock in.
SYNCrew is very flexible to allow many different kinds of companies to use the system with as much complexity as they need, but without adding un-needed information for those who do not need it. The items below can be turned on or off at the system level and will apply to all employees.
There are lots of other options that can be enabled at the employee level and you can read about them HERE.
Items that can be enabled
The following options are all configured by going to Settings –> Configuration and scrolling down to the section called “employee options.”
Employee ID: This simple field allows you to enter a value for the employee. It can have numbers or letters. If enabled for the company, it becomes a required field. The Employee ID will show up on the Teams page, on timesheets, and in many reports.
Category: This is a pick list that is used in connection with data integrations to other systems like Quickbooks. The purpose is that companies will often have different groups of people who need different things imported to the other system, like office vs. field work or salary vs. hourly. This category option is not visible in reports or anywhere else so if you want to use it to group certain workers, user the pick list described below.
Pick Lists: There are three identical fields that allow you to create lists to assign employees to. Each one allows a company to set up a list of options to be selected for each employee. If enabled, selecting an option is required when creating or editing a worker account. Data in these fields will be included in Work Block Reports only. Examples of use cases include:
worker classification (contractor vs. employee)
worker home location (Hayward branch, Oakland branch, san Jose branch, etc)
worker union classification (apprentice, master, foreman, etc.)
Employee Custom Fields: There are three identical fields that allow you put additional information into an employee record. Each one is a text field that can have any value (numbers, letters, etc) in it. If enabled, this field cannot be left blank when creating or editing a worker account. Data in these fields will be included in Work Block Reports only. Examples of use cases include:
Employee Address
Secondary employee ID (beyond the field described above)
Assigned equipment serial numbers (like truck ID for this worker)
Important note: DO NOT PUT HIGHLY SENSITIVE INFORMATION LIKE SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBERS INTO THE FIELDS. SYNCrew is a secure system but it typically has a lot of users outside of HR and mis-configuing user credentials could result in this information being seen by many who should not see it! If you have questions about this, please contact us at support@syncrew.com.
SYNCrew allows limited and full admin to approve work hours. Approvals can be made in Worker Time Review and the the approval status is shown in both Worker Time Review and Timesheets
How to approve time
To approve time, run Worker Time Review for the period and teams you want to approve. You will see two ways to approve:
Approve all: This button will approve all time for the period for all workers on the selected teams.
Approve worker-by-worker: Along the right side of the screen are “approve” buttons. These allow you do approve a single worker at a time.
Once approved, the buttons will turn gray and you cannot press them again. See below for how to undo an approval. Additionally, please note that approvals can be made by any admin even when the period is locked.
How to undo approval of time
Once time is approved, it can be unapproved by making an edit. Once any time in the period is changed, the whole period for that worker will be unapproved. Additionally, if new time comes in from the Worker’s phone or an admin adds time, the period will become unapproved again. To approve, simply click the approve button again.
Reviewing approvals in Timesheets
The Timesheets page allows the admin to see the approvals along side the hours. In the area shown in red below, a green circle indicates that the time has been approved. Placing your mouse on the green circle will open a small pop up (highlighted in purple below) that shows the details of who approved the hours and when.
SYNCrew can export data to Quickbooks Online! 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. Unfortunately, due to the complex nature of the interactions between QBO and SYNCrew., we cannot help troubleshoot issues on the QBO side.
How to pull data: When you want to pull data from SYNCrew to Quickbooks, 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:
Open SYNCrew and click on Settings in the navigation section at the left (circled in yellow below)
Select QuickBooks underneath Settings (circled in green)
Select the pay period you want (circled in purple)
Click Save (circled in red)
5. Once the page reloads, pick “QBO” from the options under Quickbooks 6. Click “authorize quick books” to log into your QBO account
Now we need to set up the categories. Again, under settings, but this time click on “Configuration” and scroll down the page to find the “Employee Options” section.
You need to create at least one Category. If you create only one, it should be a simpler setup. Type a category name (Can be whatever you want) and click “Add”.
Then go back to the Quickbook settings, and into the “Time Sync Settings” and select the category.
If you added only one category, all the employees will be added to that category. Any employee of the selected category will have the hours imported into QB.
Finally, you have to make sure ALL EMPLOYEE AND PROJECT NAMES ARE THE SAME ACROSS SYNCREW AND QBO.
When you are ready to sync the hours, click on Update Quickbooks.
After you complete the steps above, check your email for a status update. If there were any issues with matching projects or workers to your data in Quickbooks, it will noted. Once you fix those issues, click “update quickbooks” again to send those hours over.
This article explains how your employees see schedules in the Android and iPhone app.
Alert for newly scheduled event: When you create an event in the admin portal, the employee(s) who had the new event scheduled will get a simple alert like the one shown below. This alert shows on the phone regardless of whether the app is open or closed (but the user does need to have alerts enabled for the SYNCrew app):
Home Screen if events are scheduled for current day: If the employee has an event scheduled for that day, their home screen (what they see when they open the app) will show the next scheduled event as you see below on the left. They can see their full schedule for the day by clicking “jobs today” as shown at the right:
To see future days: The user can select “My Time” from the menu and then click the “scheduled” button (circled in red below). That will show today by default but the user can click the arrows (circled in green) to see different days.
If you do not use scheduling for a given user, or they just don’t have any events scheduled in the near future, they just see the project selection screen shown here:
Worker Time review is the fastest way to check hours for your pay period. We recommend using Worker Time Review to quickly check how many hours your employees had each day, including overtime. Required edits can be made here, meal breaks added, missing days of job locations added and most other common changes as well.
This video is the easiest way to see how worker time review works:
Video is the easiest way to see how Worker Time Review works
How to run the Worker Time Review
Select Worker Time Review from under the Manage in the left navigation panel
On the page that loads, select your options:
Team: select the teams you want [red underline below]. You can pick one team, a few teams, or all teams. The system will remember the teams you selected last time.
Period ending: This is end date of the the pay period you want to review [green underline below]. Once you select the date, you may see a box pop up to indicate that the period is locked (more info on period lock). If you don’t see the right pay periods for your company, please email support@syncrew.com with details on your pay period cycle.
Click “Run”
After you click Run, the hours will load you can easily see each worker’s activity. There are two views and the system will remember which you used last. Neither option is better and both show mostly the same information, so have a look at both and use the one you prefer.
Hours and Break Summary View
This is the more common view since it does the math of calculating hours for you! To enter this view, make sure you click on “hours and break summary” [circled in red below].
You can see each worker’s name, total hours for the pay period and then a break down of hours on each day, with breaks taken below. There are a few tricks as well:
View Photo and edit time: By clicking on the hours worked on a given day [examples are circled in purple above], you will see all the events in that day, as shown below.
If you click on an event, you can see the photo. For example, if we click on the 5:52pm clock out above, we will see the box below. In the box below, you can see any notes the employee may have left and also make any needed edits by clicking on the arrows [circled in green below]. You can also click on the numbers [circled in blue below] to open a number pick box and prevent clicking 30 times to edit 30 minutes!
Add a break: From the hours and breaks summary view, you can also add a break on days where there is no break. To do this, click the box that says “no break” and follow the onscreen instructions.
Note that if there is already a break, but it’s not the correct duration, you can edit the start or end time of the existing break as shown above to correct the time.
View Clocked In Hours View
This view is used by people who want to see the time of the clock ins and outs. To enter this view, click on “View clocked in hours” [circled in red below].
View Photo and edit time: By clicking on any of times shown [examples are circled in purple above], it will open a box to show any notes the employee may have left and also make any needed edits by clicking on the arrows [circled in green below]. You can also click on the numbers [circled in blue below] to open a number pick box and prevent clicking 30 times to edit 30 minutes!
Time Period Lock is a feature that allows you to prevent Limited Admin users from editing of hours after the payroll has been run. This article explains how to enable and use this feature.
Feature Description:
Time Period Lock allows FULL or PARENT ADMIN to “lock” a time period so that LIMITED ADMIN cannot make edits to that period while it is locked. Parent and Full admin are able to make edits to locked periods but will get a reminder that the period is locked before any edits are saved.
Full or Parent admin can lock and unlock any time period at any time. The time periods are based on the payroll schedule configured in SYNCrew. If you have quesitons about that, please contact us at support@syncrew.com and we can help set that up properly.
Limited admin will be able to see that a period is locked in Worker Time Review and Timesheets but will not be able to change the locked status. Additionally, in places where edits can be made (work block reports, activity reports, worker profile pages, etc), the buttons to edit and/or save edits are simply removed so that they cannot be edited. An example of this in a Work Block report is shown below.
The period that contain the bottom 3 rows has been locked so Limited Admin cannot make edits. The top rows are not locked so the edit buttons remain.
Note that when using the Time Period Lock, it is very important that only payroll administrators and people who understand the implications of editing time after payroll are set up as Full or Parent Admin. Everybody else needs to be a Limited Admin.
How to enable Time Period Lock
Time Period Lock is a company-wide setting (so it cannot be enabled for a single user or team) and is disabled by default. To turn it on
Go to “Settings” in the left-navigation panel and select “Configuration”
Scroll down to the “Timesheets” section of the configuration page
Check the box next to “enable time period lock” (shown below)
Scroll all the way down to the bottom and click “save”
How to lock or unlock a period:
Once you have enabled Time Period Lock as described above, locking or unlocking a time period is done by doing the following:
Go to the Manage Menu in the left-navigation and select either Worker Time Review or Timesheets
Select the time period you wish to lock or unlock
If you are a Full or Parent admin, you will see either a green or red button appear at the right side of the screen. A green button indicates the period is unlocked and a red button indicates that the period is locked
Click the button to change the option from unlocked to locked, or locked to unlock
When time period is unlocked, the indicator is green. Click to lock the period. When time period is locked, the indicator is red. Click to unlock the period.
A few details
As with all things, the devil is in the details so here are a few of those:
If a period is locked and events come in from a users phone, they will be discarded. As a practical example, If a person clocked out on their phone on Friday while they were out of cell coverage, then the period was locked on Sunday night. When the worker arrives on Monday and the clock out sends, it will be discarded by the system and never be seen. SYNCrew admin will attempt to preserve Progress Photos since they are not part of the timekeeping system.
Events cannot be moved into a period. If a worker was accidentally clocked in overnight and the starting day is in a locked period while the ending day is not, you will be able to edit the clock out so long as it stays outside the locked period. This will have the effect of changing the time shown in a locked period since SYNCrew puts all hours on the day of the clock in.
When using Work Orders to instruct your field team on what to do, they can view and close them from the field. This article explains how Workers can do this.
Closing Work Orders from the Admin Portal
Before going into that, many clients simply close It is also possible to close the work Orders from the office by clicking on the work order you want to close to view and edit the details. At the top, select “completed” from the “status” field toward the top of the screen. Then scroll down and click save. The work order will now be closed.
Closing Work Orders from the Worker app
In order to close a work order, a worker my open the work order on their phone. When they arrive a project where they have a work order assigned to them (or where there are unassigned work orders), they will see the screen below.
Clicking “open” above will open the work orders page that will show their work orders at that location. they can also see unassigned work orders by clicking on that tab below. They will see the title and summary in the list and they can touch a row to open it.
They will then see all the details of the work order. Clicking “Work on this WO” will alert the system that they are going to accept that work order and start working.
As a confirmation, they will see the work order number they working on as circled below:
When they go to change task or clock out, the system will ask if they want to close the work order (click “yes”) or leave it open (click “no”)
Once they click “yes” to close, the work order will be closed in the system.
This error comes up pretty often when a client first starts using the Quickbooks Desktop integration. It is caused when the Quickbooks company file is moved from the computer where it was created. This can happen if you created your company on a desktop machine and now use it on a server or if you simply bought a new computer.
The instructions below are on Intuit’s website and while we at SYNCrew have followed them with success, we do not guarantee this since it is based on another company’s product. We also strongly recommend backing up your company file before starting this.
