Thanks for your interest in Chronotek Pro. That’s an excellent first step in calming the chaos. If you want all your onboarding steps all together, you are in the right place. Before you forget, bookmark this article.
Here are the steps to get started:
(I promise you it is not that hard!)
How to log into your account and Add employees and jobs
How to download and use the app and Send employee invitations
Teams get things organized
How TimeTiles ensure your employees are on-site when clocking in
Steps to Prepare Payroll Hours
Communicate with Your Teams
Set up Scheduled work: start with the plan, optionally add people to schedules
Here we go!
▶ Let's Get Logged In.
1 - Login to Chronotek Pro
https://secure.mychronotek.com (bookmark your admin site😊)
Enter your 10-digit cell number, followed by the access code sent to your cell.
2 - Watch this 5-minute getting started video
That is a good stopping place. Let us know if you have questions.
▶ Download the Chronotek Pro App & Send Invites
Let's get you and your employees logged into the app.
1 - Get the app (or scan the QR code)
Optional step: documents and instructions you can post at job sites to help employees.
4 - Go ahead and clock in. We created an office job for you to clock into. Switch to the My Work tab, select your schedule, and clock in.
Just a note about employees clocking in. They don’t need schedules to clock in. They can clock into unscheduled jobs under specific conditions. We’re careful to prevent employees from clocking into the wrong jobs.
Now, let’s get your people organized.
▶ Organize Your People with Teams
You’ll organize your people with Teams, a foundational system concept. Employees are on Teams, Teams determine clock-in availability, job shifts are assigned to Teams, and communication runs through Teams.
Here’s an article explaining Teams in more detail.
▶ Know People are on the Job. Set up Location TimeTiles
You’re off to an excellent start, so let’s keep the momentum going by solving your biggest remote employee problem - ensuring they’re on-site when clocking in.
TimeTiles are square PVC tiles equipped with near-field communication (NFC).
By definition, a person must be “near,” less than an inch away, to tap their phone to the NFC device, like paying for groceries.
You’ll apply the tiles in designated spots at your job sites, and of course, your employees must be there to clock in.
On to setting up TimeTiles.
You must code the TimeTile to your location. Don’t worry; you don’t need a computer programming degree. It’s easy. Just follow these instructions.
What if you have a stack of TimeTiles on your desk and can’t remember if you coded one? No worries. You can check a TimeTile’s status.
What you need to know about how employees clock in with TimeTiles.
See how employees clock in with TimeTiles (video starting at 1:18)
TIP: We recommend setting up a TimeTile for your office. As you onboard and train new employees, you can demonstrate how to clock in from the convenience of your desk.
Note:
A few cheaper Android models don't have NFC technology, so the system will automatically let them bypass the TimeTiles, and we’ll flag these events.
TMI - no way😜. The person's Profile screen has Troubleshooting info about your employees’ phones, including NFC capability.
Let’s move on to preparing for payroll.
▶ Steps to Prepare Payroll Hours
First things first...📃
Understand how Pro captures travel time and set the thresholds.
Clear the red issue tiles and review the yellow tiles.
Resolve auto-bypassed TimeTile issues (if using TimeTiles).
Now you are ready.
Our Prepare Payroll Hours article lays out the steps for you in detail.
Special note: the system allows two open pay periods and your current pay period. Then we automatically close past pay periods to protect your time cards from unwanted changes. The moral of the story - resolve all of your critical red tile issues!
This article gives you more details about the auto-close payroll process.
That’s it. You’re doing great!
▶ Communicate With Your Teams
Are you starting to feel like a Chronotek Pro pro? Is your confidence growing that you can regain control of your daily operations?
Let’s move on to field communications. Do you handle that now with a swirl of text, email, phone, and voice messages? Maybe you can wade through that madness with 20 employees, but how do you scale it to 40, 50, or 100's of employees?
I see a giant black hole ⚫ where all of your vital messages are getting lost.
Chronotek Pro’s communication hub saves the day...
easy messaging between admins and the entire company
private messages between employees and team supervisors
group messages on Team boards
and job-related messages on Job boards.
Think about it.
Let’s say you have a team that cleans all Big Box Store locations, and you have a general message that applies to all sites. Send a message to that Team for everyone to receive it.
But what if you have a specific message to the cleaners at the Big Box Store location on Main St.? Your entire Big Box Store team doesn’t need to be interrupted by it.
No problem! Just post a message on that location’s job board.
So easy, right? 👍
Everyone is connected, getting the right messages when they need them.
One more step to go when we’ll talk about scheduling jobs for work and assigning your employees.
▶ Schedules - Phase 1- the Plan, optional Phase 2 - Assign Times and People
Does it feel like the end of the school year since this is our last lesson on getting started with Chronotek Pro? No worries, we are here when you need us.
Moving on to schedules. But wait, you don't assign specific times for people because they have flexibile work times? That's ok. Scheduling work has two phases in Chronotek.
Phase 1 is the work plan which is simply setting up the work to get done and selecting the Team(s) that can work the job. We engineered the system to ensure employees pick the correct jobs on their time cards. We are do everything to ensure ONLY the people you want to work a job can clock into it. This is accomplished by assigning Teams to a job through a shift. If a person is on that Team, they can clock into the job with or without an assigned time schedule (phase 2).
No one can clock into a job without a Team assigned to a shift.
Phase 2 is optional. Assign specific people to do the jobs at specific times.
Phase 1: Set up jobs so people can work them
The good news is the job wizard has you assign your first team/shift to the job. You don't even know you 'scheduled' the job. If you now need to add a weekend team, you do that through Schedules.
Now if you want to tell people when to work - please take the 2nd step in Scheduling.
Phase 2: Optionally, you can put times and people on the schedule. Good reasons to assign people:
You’ll ensure all of your jobs get covered with scheduled no-show alerts.
You can see into the future and manage your jobs to profitability with schedules.
You can override paytypes by person when you schedule them here.
Aren’t these three very compelling reasons to create schedules?
Ok, here’s everything you need to know about creating specific schedules for people.
Once more about scheduling. What did you learn? Every job must have a shift with a Team assigned to it, but an assigned schedule isn't required.
I hope these lessons have been helpful and you’re starting to feel hope about regaining control of your daily operations.
Let us know what you need. You know how to reach us...
Live Chat (icon at the bottom left of account screen)
800-586-2945
Online Help Center (go ahead and bookmark it)