Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/783510
29 ABOUT TIMECARD BUDDY WAIT, WAIT, WAIT. ANOTHER TIMECARD APP? Yes, but this one has a meaning. The premise is to make the transition away from paper as innocuous as possible. Also, Android hasn't gotten much love in this respect. As such, I have centered everything around images of payroll time- cards themselves. The fi elds are all the same, including sig- nature pads. And the result is a PDF of the original timecard for a given payroll company complete with entered fi elds. From there, we add some digital trappings. DOESN'T EVERYBODY LOVE DIGITAL TRAPPINGS? I certainly do! Fields can be stored in templates to be used from week to week (I call it, Autofi ll). Multiple employees can be managed at a time. And of course, no paper! WHAT ABOUT AUTOMATICALLY CALCULATING HOURS AND MEAL PENALTIES FOR ME? OK, so here's the thing. Paper timecards don't do that. And the entire premise is to make people comfortable switching to digital. So here's the rule: we don't automatically enter in anything. Users must be responsible for what goes on their timecard. However, there are hints provided. And to demonstrate why it is important to require users to enter in their own fi elds, here is one example of a hint. The Total Hours fi eld provides three suggestions: No Lunch, 30- Min Lunch and 60-Min Lunch. The suggestion calculates the time from Call to Wrap, but it doesn't know how much time to take off that total for Lunch. Nuances like this are rampant per location, per contract and per job. Timecard Buddy is in its early stages, but there are plans for calculations to check your pay totals. YOU SAY TIMECARD BUDDY IS IN ITS EARLY STAGES. WHAT ELSE CAN WE EXPECT? I don't want to make promises, but there are ways that Time- card Buddy still feels incomplete. More calculation is one. Also, having used it for the last job, it seems clear that more work should be done for managing multiple people. A daily times email seems like a clear winner. And a little more pol- ish. After which, I'll release a paid version. WILL THERE STILL BE A FREE VERSION? Yes. My goal is to make Timecard Buddy ubiquitous, and people have a right to be cautious when it comes to their timecard. It will be the same as the paid version but with ads. iPHONE