View source for webBooks-Employees

The last of three mandatory modules in [http://wiki.cliquesoft.org/index.php?title=webBooks webBooks], the 'Employees' module defines the information on each employee including their personal information, user account, theme information, and more!  Just like the other two mandatory modules, this one will most likely not have much more use than the others.




= Tabs =
Each module will contain several tabs that help group the various types of associated information.  Below we will cover the details of each one currently available in the latest release of the module.


===?===
This tab is found in each module as the way to access helpful documentation and, when clicked, will load this wiki page for the module.  Of course you can always go directly to our [http://wiki.cliquesoft.org/index.php?title=webBooks wiki] and read through the entire software documentation.




===General===
Also found in most of the available extensions, this tab provides the general information associated with the module.  Below you will find the details of each field available on the form.


* '''Employee name''' As the name suggests, this is the name of the employee.


* '''(coming soon)''' These options will become active within the next version or two.


* '''Gender, SSN, DOB''' These fields should be self explanatory - the gender, social security number, and date of birth for the employee.  Please note that the social security number is encrypted.


* '''Race & Marriage''' Another set of fields that should be self explanatory - the race and marriage status for the employee.


* '''Drivers license''' Just like the social security number, the employees drivers license is encrypted too.


* '''With, Allow, Deps''' The abbreviations here may need a little explanation.  The three values correspond to additional withholdings to retain out of every paycheck, the declaration of personal allowances, and the number of dependents in your household.


* '''Home phone''' The employees home phone number.  To protect the employees personal privacy, their home phone number is encrypted.


* '''Mobile phone''' The employees personal mobile phone number.  Just like the 'Home phone', the personal mobile phone number is encrypted too.


* '''Email address''' The employees personal email address.  This too is encrypted since it is private contact information.


* '''Home address''' The employees personal home address.  Since the first line of the address lists the specific location, it is encrypted for protection.


* '''Work phone''' The employees work phone number and extension.


* '''Mobile phone''' If the employee also has been provided a work mobile phone, then that value would be entered here.


* '''Email address''' The employees work email address.


* '''Work address''' The employees work mailing address.


* '''Work location''' This list contains a single fixed value and a variable number of dynamic values.  The selection of the fixed value '_HEADQUARTERS_' defines the employees work location as the main office of the business (as entered on the 'General' tab of the 'Business Configuration' module).  The other values in the list are all the additional locations that were saved in the 'Business Configuration' module.


* '''Department''' Since there are no default departments that are defined in webBooks, this list is comprised of all the departments that were created in the 'Business Configuration' module.


* '''Supervisor''' Like the 'Work Location', this listbox contains a single fixed value (_NONE_) and a dynamic list of all the other employees.


* '''Position''' Just as there are no default departments in webBooks, there are no default positions either.  However, after adding the ones necessary for your company in the 'Business Configuration' module, they will be listed here.  This list is dynamic and will change the values based on your 'Department' selection.

NOTE: the following four lines will get populated once you have made a 'Position' selection, but it is important to note that these are the default values that were assigned.  As a result, they can be tweaked per employee.  So, for example, lets say that you are hiring someone who has many years of experience and instead of you providing the default wage for this employee, you have the ability to increase that value for just that one employee.


* '''Pay type & terms''' This line defines two values, the job type and payment terms, which are self explanatory.


* '''Standard & OT pay''' Based on the selected 'Position', this is the configured standard pay and overtime rate.  It is important to note that the prior value needs a little more understanding before entering a value.  If the 'pay terms' are 'hourly', 'salary', or 'salary + overtime', then the 'standard pay' value needs to be the total annual pay based on a 40 hour work week.  The software will calculate the hourly rate and OT rate (for salary) based on that figure.  If the 'pay terms' are 'commission + base', then the value will need to be the annual base pay which the software will automatically break down into monthly pay.  A value of 'commission' for the 'pay terms' will obviously not use the 'standard pay' field value since the employee will be working solely off of sales commissions.  Finally, 'by the job' (also known as 'by the piece') will also utilize the 'standard pay' field where it will need to have the fixed value of the pay for a completed job.  It is important to remember that a single Job can span multiple invoices.


* '''Leave increments''' There are two values included on this line that specify the personal and sick leave rate that are obtained by the employee at the end of every pay period.


* '''COLA & Reimbursement''' This line may be a little difficult to decipher.  There are three values which correspond to the annual cost of living increase rate, the mileage reimbursement rate, and the per diem reimbursement rate when traveling.


* '''Hired & Manager''' The first value on this line should be easy to understand and is the date that the employee was hired.  The second value specifies if the account should be considered a manager in their department.


* '''Username''' This line and the next define the login credentials for the employee into webBooks.


* '''Password''' There are two values on this line that may not be apparent at first glance.  The first value is the password that the employee should use to login.  The second value is the confirmation password.  This is used to verify that you entered the value you thought you did for the first password value.


* '''Account status''' This line also shows several values over two lines that reflect the employees account status.  The first value states the account status whereas the second value shows the number of invalid login attempts since the last successful login.  The next line shows when the account was first created with the second one showing when the account was last updated.


* '''Current login''' As the name suggests, this line shows the epoch when you logged in for the current session.


* '''Last login''' Similar to the value above, this one shows when you last logged into the system.


* '''Pay''' Another multi-lined block of information, this group specifies three different fields with two related values per line.  The top line states your income with the first value being the pay received over the last pay period and the second value being the year-to-date pay the employee has received.  The next line deals with the commissions received during the last pay period and the year-to-date.  The final line defines the reimbursements over the last pay period and the year-to-date as well.


* '''Accrued leave''' These next couple of lines show different types of leave, but have the same format.  The first value is the accrued personal leave for the prior pay period, the second value is the year-to-date accrued personal leave, the third being the sick leave accrued for the prior pay period, and the final value stating the year-to-date accured sick leave.


* '''Used leave''' This line has the same values as the 'Accrued leave', but obviously pertains to the number of hours used per category.


* '''Donated leave''' Like the above two lines, this one deals with any donated leave over the specified time intervals.


* '''Donate...''' Unlike other business management software, webBooks attempts to provide the most flexibility as possible.  This section enables your employees to be able to donate their own acquired leave to another employee for whatever reason.  For instance, lets say that one of the employees is having some health issues that require them to take off more than the leave they have accrued.  Their co-workers can step up and donate any leave they would like to in order to help out.

In order to donate, simply select the target employee on the first line, then select the number of hours you would like to donate, then the type, and click the 'Donate' button.  It is just that simple!

If your company does not want to allow this action, you will need to define that in company policy.


* '''Module access''' The last column defines the module access that the employee will have.  As you can see, there are four different levels of access and a large combobox that lists all the currently installed modules.  To modify the permissions, simply click on any of the modules and check the permission checkbox(es) that are required for the employee.  Afterwards simply click the 'Save' button and you are finished!

The individual permissions are detailed below:

Read: If this permission is checked, then the employee will have read-only access to the module.  This means that the employee can open the module, see its contents, and interact in every way with the exception of adding, modifying, or deleting content or records.  It is important to note that if this permission is not checked, then the employee can not open the module which will negate any other permissions set.

Write: This permission includes all the access of the 'Read' parameter, but enables the ability to add, modify, or delete content, but will NOT permit any action other than loading records.  For example, lets say that the 'Read' and 'Write' permissions are set on the 'Customer Accounts' module.  This will mean that the employee can open the module and interact with the entire form, but will not be allowed to add or remove records from the 'Contacts', 'Discounts', or 'Freight accounts' sections.

Add records: Although the name may imply that you can add records to a module (e.g. new customer accounts), it actually refers to adding or deleting information within a loaded item.  For example, if you have opened a customer account, this enabled permission will allow you to add records to the 'Contacts', 'Discounts', and 'Freight accounts'.

Delete records: This option works the same way as the 'Add records' permission, but enables the ability to delete records.

NOTE: For security reasons, the employee is not allowed to modify their own access permissions.  Instead the supervisor of the employee will be required to make these changes.




===Looks===
This tab enables an employee to customize the look and feel of webBooks for their account.  Instead of just bundling all aspects into a single theme, webBooks was designed with flexibility in mind.  As a result, the various aspects were broken down into three categories - skins, themes, and icon sets.  A skin refers to the overall look and feel of the interface and can cause the module layouts to subtly or dramatically change in appearance.  A theme, on the other hand, will more or less change colors and maybe make slight modifications to the form layout.  Finally the icon sets will change nothing other than the icons used in the software.

Each column has a '+' and '-' button that will allow the installation (from file) or uninstallation (from list) respectively.  To select which option you would like to use, simply click on the value in the list.




===Time===
This tab allows employees to enter any requested PTO and sick leave, and for managers to add or correct any issues with an employees timesheet.  There are two sections, the first being the editable fields to add or update a time record.  The second section is the timesheet for the loaded employee.  We will briefly cover the fields below, but for more information on how to add or update a record see the appropriate entry under the 'Common Tasks' section below.

The first line contains several values that include the date of the timesheet record, then the starting time of the record, and finally the number of hours for the record.  The next line contains a brief note and the type of record.  Keep in mind that the number of hours is only applicable if the 'type' is any value other than 'out'.

Please keep in mind that the timesheet values can be filtered using the date textbox above the 'Occurred' table row.




===Notes===
Also found in many of the modules for webBooks, this tab allows co-workers to add notes to your account.  Most likely the ones adding information here will be managers, but for flexibility anyone can add notes (access should be defined by company policy).  There are only three fields on this page with the 'Creator' and 'Note' values being self explanatory.  The first field, however, may need more details.  This listbox is used to define who has access to the note being entered and contains two fixed values along with any number of dynamic values.  The two fixed are '_EVERYONE_' and '_MANAGERS_', meaning that either everyone can see the note being entered, or only employees who have the 'Manager' flag set for their account.  Any other value in the list will be a dynamic value that corresponds to each department you have entered on the 'Business Configuration' module.  This in turn will restrict access to the note being entered to all employees that work in the selected department.




===Data===
Yet another tab found in many of the modules in webBooks, this page allows you to upload various data that you feel are important (or necessary) to keep on file for a particular record. You will see several default items that you can use, but you also have the ability to dynamically add any number of additional fields by clicking the 'Add new Entry' button. This gives you a way to name and select each added entry.

There is two different ways that you can upload your files. The first way is by simply clicking on the upload box itself. Please note that if you are using this way, you can click the checkbox in the lower right-hand corner to select multiple files at once. To the contrary you can also use a file manager to drag-n-drop file(s) onto the upload box. Either way will create an icon (with progress meter) for every file you are currently uploading. After you have uploaded at least one file, you will be able to select the file from any of the listbox entries. And after performing those steps, click the associated 'Update' button.

You may notice two addtional buttons next to the 'Update' buttons. These remove the entry and encrypt the file respectively. Currently the encryption button is disabled as this feature will come online in a future version.




=Buttons=
The buttons located in the header of each form will be covered below (see the respective sections above for inline buttons). 


===Clear (General)===
While the form loads your employee account upon opening the module, sometimes a supervisor or manager may want to load the account of another employee to review information or make changes to information.  Clicking this button will clear the form so that you can load an alternate employee account.  After the form has been cleared, type in the (portion of the) name to load into the 'Employee name' textbox box and press <ENTER>.  This will present you with a list of matching results or a message informing you that no matches were found.  If you received the former, clicking on the appropriate result will load that account.


===Save (General)===
One of two buttons available in the header of the 'General' tab, click this button once you have filled out all available fields to save or update a new or existing employee. It is important to note that this ONLY saves information listed on this tab - no others!


===Save (Notes)===
The 'Save' button on this page will add the note to the list.




=Common Tasks=
The below sections cover several common tasks that a user may need to perform at some point in their interaction with the software. These will be expanded as time elapses.

===Creating a New Employee===
When the Employees module is first opened, the account of the user is loaded by default.  In order to create a new employee, simply click the 'Clear' button in the header, fill out all of the information (on the 'General' tab) that you can, then click the 'Save' button.  You may notice that some sections are disabled while you are creating a new employee.  These will become enabled after you save the record.

===Loading a Different Employee===
As stated above, when you first open this module, your account will be loaded by default.  If you want to load a different account, simply click the 'Clear' button in the header and type a portion or complete name into the 'Employee name' field and press the ENTER button.  This will bring up a list containing all matching accounts.  After clicking on the desired account, all the information will be loaded for viewing or modification.

===Add or Edit a Timesheet Record===
There are two different tasks that can be accomplished here.  First, if you are an employee who wants to enter a PTO or sick leave record then you will need to concentrate on the 'Create/Adjust' section.  In this example, we are going to enter a PTO record, but the same steps are necessary for entering a sick record also.  To begin, we will need to enter the date when the leave will be recognized in the first textbox followed by the time when the leave will start and the number of hours that the leave record will consume.  So we may enter something like '2014-11-11', '8:00am', and '2' (indicating 2 hours of leave) respectively.  The next line could contain a small note like 'Annual doctors visit' with a 'PTO' selection for the following listbox (since this is a PTO leave record).  Clicking the 'Save' button will add the record to your timesheet.

The next example we are going to go over will deal with a supervisor correcting the timesheet of an employee.  So first they will need to open this module, click the 'Clear' button in header, and then enter and select the desired employee name from the 'Employees name' textbox results list.

If the supervisor needs to correct an existing record, click the circle next to the record to be modified, change the appropriate values in the 'Create/Adjust' section and click save.  It is important to note that if you select the 'in', 'pto', 'sick', or 'unpaid' record and make modifications, then the corresponding 'out' record will automatically be adjusted (so you don't have to modify both records).

If the supervisor needs to add a record for the employee (e.g. a sick record), the same steps are required that are outlined in the first paragraph of this section.