The following article is a reprint from the March 25, 2005 edition of Kibbles & Bytes (#407), a publication of Small Dog Electronics, Inc.

Virtual TimeClock Review
by Pat O'Rourke

We recently switched some of our staffers to an hourly based time schedule. We needed a time clock so they could punch in when starting their days. In typical Small Dog fashion, we wanted to solve our problem with Mac technology.

We needed:

   * OS X driven
   * Simple to use and administer
   * Flexible enough to grow with our company

Mark Engelhardt, Small Dog's consultant extraordinaire, started working his Googling magic. Mark started calling developers and liked what he heard from Redcort Software. We really liked the fact that they were existing Small Dog clients and now we could reciprocate by purchasing goods and services from them.

Virtual TimeClock was about to enter the beta stage for its next revision. Mark brokered a deal in which we could use the old version today and would get the license to use the beta product and its final version. The new version did everything we hoped it would and more. Lots more.

Virtual TimeClock is client-server based, easy to administer, and LDAP aware, with multi-tiered permissions for users, administrators, and owners. The tool also runs on many platforms. There are so many features that I could write a novel about them. Here is a link to the top 10 features in the new version. http://redcort.com/whatsnew.html

Then came the big test: deployment.

We stopped using the previous version and ran the software through the beta stages without any major problems. When we reported bugs, they were promptly fixed. When reporting bugs, I got personal emails from the developers with answers to my problems. They also foresaw other issues that might arise and how to plan to get around them until they could get the fixes in place. When the final version came out, updating was an easy process. I don't know if you have noticed yet, but ease of use and excellent followup by the developers is the central theme here.

In the 12 years or so that I have been selling and supporting Macs, I can't remember a software vendor following up AFTER the sale to find out if the product was functioning according to our needs and if there were any lingering problems. I guess there always has to be a first. Then came the doozy. A month or so later, I got a second follow up.

My answer to the second followup was "I almost forgot it was running, because I never get complaints about the tool being problematic or unusable."

This is a double thumbs up (maybe toes should also be included) review for this product.