This article builds on the First steps for employees - ZEP Clock article. The fundamentals of daily ZEP Clock usage described there are not repeated here.
This article focuses on system setup, basic configuration, and the most important administrative tasks for administrators and users with additional permissions.
Note: Everyone whose role has the Administration Area permission under Roles & Permissions sees the Administration menu item. Administrators always have this permission. With the Locations & Departments area, department managers can also take on individual administrative tasks for their assigned departments.
Note: During the trial phase, email dispatch is initially deactivated and must be activated by ZEP. Until then, ZEP does not send any automatic system emails (for example access data, password resets, absence request notifications). For details, see Account – Administration.
Setup assistant on first login
When you open a new ZEP trial for the first time, a setup assistant guides you through the basic configuration. It appears automatically before the first login and creates your administrator account in the process. The assistant asks for three things:
Access data — language, first name, last name, username, email address and password for the first administrator account.
Product line and modules — you choose your product line and enable the add-ons you want.
Country — country and federal state of your company.
Once completed, ZEP starts normally. The assistant does not appear again. You can change everything entered there at any time: your company data under Administration > My Company, product line and modules during the trial in the main menu under My Trial, and after you sign your contract under Administration > Account > Subscription.
Note: The setup assistant runs once per instance. If you need it again, please contact ZEP support.
Defining Basic Settings Before First Use
Before your team starts working with ZEP Clock, you as an administrator deliberately configure the central basic settings under Administration. The most important areas at a glance:
My Company — default language, password policies, and optionally Single Sign-On for login.
Employees — default values for new employees such as regular working hours, vacation entitlement, and work break regulations.
Working Hours — central recording rules: how far back and ahead entries are permitted, whether notes are required, whether manual entry is allowed at all, and whether entries can be made on public holidays or days without target working hours.
Overtime & Absences (with the Absences & Overtime area) — introduction date, absence reasons, public holiday calendars, and surcharges via Special Times. From the introduction month, employees record their times in full.
System — device management for multi-user apps and terminals, and tasks to automate recurring checks.
Note: The work break regulation is particularly important. You define one or more rules with minimum rest period, maximum working hours, automatic break deduction, and minimum breaks, and then assign them to individual employees.
Tip: If you want to clock in against activities, enable them under Working Hours and then create them in the Activities settings area. More on this in the article Times and receipts – Administration.
Creating Employees
You create new employees under Employees with the Create new employee button. A wizard guides you through the setup step by step. The default settings for new employees from the section above are already filled in:
Master data — username, first and last name, user role and login details, optionally department, address and contact details. If your employees log in through an external login provider, you also enter their ID with that provider here.
Working time model — employment period, regular working hours with target hours and working days, holiday calendar and work break regulation, and with the Absences & Overtime area also the vacation entitlement.
Settings — language, attendance recording with the ZEP Clock App and rules for time entry.
Note: Under Password Assignment, you choose whether ZEP sends the employee a link to set their password by email. Without a business email address, set an initial password with "Enter password" and share it together with the username. More on this in the article Creating, editing and deleting employees.
After you save, ZEP opens the Employee File of the new employee. There you add or review the following as needed:
Working time model — you maintain employment periods and regular working hours later under Employee File > Working time model. For a mid-year start with a non-rounded entitlement, it is best to work with two employment periods.
Overtime & vacation balance — enter carried-over vacation days and overtime under Employee Management > Balancing overtime and holidays and offset them there in future.
If you add HR Management, the Employee File also includes contract details, compensation, tax & insurance, skills, employee reviews and notes.
Data migration during onboarding: ZEP migrates existing data from a previous system as part of onboarding — in ZEP Clock typically employees, working times, and absences. You can additionally import the recorded working times yourself via Excel (see Personal reports). For the remaining migration, contact ZEP support at [email protected]. ZEP provides Excel templates for this, which you fill with your data and send back. How to fill in the templates is described in Filling in the Import Templates.
Defining Time Entry Methods for Your Company
Decide early how working hours are recorded in your company. ZEP Clock offers the following options:
recording in the browser via the clock-in icon at the top right,
the Working Hours menu item, provided manual time entry is not disabled,
the ZEP Clock App with a single-user mode for personal use and a multi-user mode for shared use,
the ZEP browser extension for Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge,
as hardware the ZEP Terminal and partner terminals (Datafox and EasySecure).
Which features your product line brings along is shown in Product lines at a glance. For the rollout, the key factor is not the range of technical options but a clear decision: which employee groups record in the browser, which use mobile, and where do terminal solutions make sense?
Tip: You can find detailed information in the article Project times and working times.
Knowing the Key Administrative Workflows for Day-to-Day Use
For administrators and department managers it is important to know where corrections and additions are made day to day.
Under Employees > select the employee > Employee Management, you record, change, and correct the working hours and calendar entries of other employees. In the internal note you document the reason for the change. This note is visible to the employee in their working hours history. This gives users with additional permissions a dedicated place for daily administrative tasks, for example to add a forgotten clock-in.
Using Automations Effectively
Under Administration > System > Tasks, you automate recurring tasks. Particularly helpful from the start are:
the reminder for missing time entries,
the reminder to clock in,
the automatic logout at a fixed time or after a certain attendance duration,
notifications about employment periods, absence requests, shortfalls in target hours, or the monthly lock.
This stabilizes day-to-day operations early and helps prevent incorrect bookings.
