Employees are people you want to track, for example, you want to assign items to them. An employee can also be a user (someone who can sign into the Tracker) but doesn't have to be (just as a user can also be an employee but doesn't have to be).

Employees can be primary or secondary assignments (see Tasks and Secondary assignments in Preferences).

Every employee needs a 'number' (which can contain letters, spaces and punctuation marks). If you already have employee numbers, they'll work in the Tracker. If you're interested in integrating Tracker data with your accounting system, now or in the future, use the numbers in that system. But if you're creating new numbers ...

• Keep them short. You'll be typing them often. Fewer characters = fewer typos.
• If your employees don't know their payroll numbers, consider using name abbreviations like 'Smith J' as employee numbers.
• While you can give an employee and an item, job, storage site or vendor the same number, we suggest avoiding duplicates, which can confuse users. You can't give 2 employees the same number.
• Avoid punctuation marks (which slow most typists down) and repeated spaces (it can be hard to see the difference between 1 and 2 spaces).
• 'Numbers' are sorted alphabetically, which can be confusing if they really are numbers (11 is before 2 when sorted alphabetically, just like AA is before B). If you want to use numeric 'numbers' and have them sort numerically, use leading zeros to make each number the same length (002 is before 011 when sorted alphabetically).

Employees can be imported.

ADD, EDIT AND DELETE EMPLOYEES

• Click the Data icon in the main menu then Employees.
• To add a record, click the Add icon in the grid menu in the upper right corner of the grid.
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• To edit, click the Edit icon. If you click in the record or the field in the record you want to edit first, the cursor will appear in that record or field.
• After you click the Add or Edit icon, the grid menu changes.
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• Click the Add icon to add another record, the Save icon to save, the Cancel icon to undo any changes you've made since your last save.
• Clicking the Add or the Edit icon puts you in editing mode. Once in editing mode, you can add or edit as many records as you like but can't change your search or move to a different page until you save or cancel.
• To delete, select the record(s) you want to delete by clicking checkbox(es) in the left-hand margin of the grid (you can select more than one) then click the Delete icon in the grid menu.

ASSIGN ITEMS TO OR PURCHASE THEM FOR EMPLOYEES

Select the items you want to assign to or purchase for an employee in the find and add to cart, fast add to cart or item assignments screens (the Assign to employee and/or Purchase for employee Tasks must be selected in the Preferences screen).

FIELDS

The Employees table contains a large number of user-definable fields. All fields, whether user-definable or not, can be given custom names. So you may see a field in your Employees screen that's not in this list:

• (Employees grid) EMPLOYEE NUMBER.
• (Employees grid) EMPLOYEE NAME.
• (Employees grid) COMMENCE. The employee's start date.
• (Employees grid) IDLE. Only active employees appear in employee lists.
• (Employees grid) NOTES. From a practical perspective, unlimited in length.
• (Employees grid) Address and contact info.
• (Employees grid) EMPLOYEE TYPE and HOUR RATE aren't used. We plan to add functionalithy to these fields in the future.

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