As part of our ongoing SaaS Reviews, this week we reviewed Time Clock Softwares. The FreelanceWeekly Choice is www.timeclockplus.com, meeting all of FreelanceWeeklys’ five requirements as an excellent SaaS provider. Simple set-up, attractive navigation, collaboration ability, available customer service, easy to move data.
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5 Comments
This software has been nothing but a problem for us. We’re using version 5.
After installing the database manager it’s unable to find the server/services necessary to make it run. As it turns out (and this is mentioned nowhere in the manual) there’s a program under the Microsoft SQL folder (several directories deep) that has a few options which must be changed. We used up our only ‘free’ support call figuring this out.
Do now we’re up and running, right?
I start the timeclock manager and I’m immediately told that it’s not up to date and to run autoupdate.
Autoupdate doesn’t work, it just brings up this huge screen full of HTML when it’s supposed to bring up a list of available updates. This window is so large that whatever options are available at the bottom are hidden. This window cannot be resized or moved in such a way that you can see what it says. At this point I push enter and the giant screen disappears and a small window pops up saying that the updates are being downloaded. After this claims to complete successfully, I restart the timeclock server only to be told that it’s not up to date and to run autoupdate again, I did this probably 15 times…it’s an endless loop. So I emailed their ‘support’ and was told they ‘would be happy to help’ …for $129.00 (since I used up my one support email trying to get this garbage running in the first place.)
I refuse to pay more money for something that was broken right out of the box, it should work, and if it doesn’t, they shouldn’t be selling it.
So, I can’t update it and their website offers no way to manually download the update (convenient for them$$)
However, I’m still able to enter the timeclock manager without updating. So I start adding user info. For each user I assign a PIN for a little added security. After creating an entry for each user I click ‘SAVE’. After they’re ‘SAVED’ I re-enter the Add/edit user and find that all of the PINs I’ve created are now blank. It simply refuses to save the information. Nice.
But all of the user personal info is still there, so I choose to create a backup of this to attempt to reinstall the software on a different machine in hopes of getting lucky. So I go into database manager, choose my database and select ‘backup’, it brings up a default name for the backup and I press enter; a progress bar comes up briefly and then I’m told that the backup has been created successfully! Great! But it doesn’t tell me where it’s saved to; no problem, I’ll just do a search for it. searching, searching, searching. It never found it. So I do a google search and find a ‘knowledge base’ entry at timeclockplus.com which says to simply add the location to the front of the backup name if I wish to save it to somewhere other than the default location. So I add C:\Documents and Settings\roman\Desktop\ to the backup file name and press enter,>>progress bar>backup created successfully. But nothing has been added to my desktop. At this point I’m thinking the developers did everything they possibly could to get people to pay them for the secret info that makes this joke of a program operational.
Save your money.
At my company, we now use TimeClock Plus WebClock v3… ..and we upgraded to this from a previous non-web version about a year ago.
As a user (also with admin rights) I find it highly surprising that the FreeLanceweekly would have the word “excellent” in an article on any TimeClock Plus software. Though the criterion of your software review may have been met by the features of the software, the GUI and Look & Feel aspects leave a lot to be desired. Navigation is miserable. You obviously did not use the software for more than the short duration of your testing.
Keywords for this package are: “Cumbersome”, “Klunky”, “Frustrating”
- completing tasks requires far too many mouse clicks.
- number entry into fields is quirky and must be done ‘just so’.
- for the novice, finding and configuring the correct report is a daunting task.
- most annoying- views revert back to default after making an entry. To make a subsequent entry, the slider bars must be fiddled with every time.
- Dialogs- Even at a resolution of 1024×768 the views/windows do not fit the screen. I have yet to find a way to configure the screens and must continue to play with the slider bars at every data entry refresh.
I agree with Roman above. This software is a waste of money. Take some time and find a better tool for your employees and yourself.
Thanks for your comments, we appreciate your opinion. I think this product has changed considerably since we wrote this article 2 hears ago, and sadly not for the better.
I suspect you two must be talking about something besides TimeClock Plus. What you describe has not been our experience at all, and we put this software in all over the U.S. By far, the most reliable and flexible piece of software I’ve tried, and trust me, I looked at a bunch.
If you in fact have TimeClock Plus in your hand, you should contact them about these issues – I can almost guarantee you’ve got something wrong on your end. I bet they’ll make it right.
This software has been nothing but problems for us too.
It costs $49 for an ‘incident’ or ‘activation key’ that makes something work that should be part of the software package. I should be able to change the start of my pay period without having to pay an extra $49 for an activation key. If you prefer you can pay $229 for an 8 incident yearly or $399 for an unlimited incident yearly contract. Here we are about to lose $49 for one simple change.
This software has been a waste of money.