In the Administration > System area, ZEP bundles central tools for administrators: the month-end closing, the management of recording devices and RFID chips, the list of system-generated short URLs, and the overview of scheduled background tasks.
Month-End Closing
The Month-End Closing finalises a calendar month. It combines the working times overview of all employees, the closing action itself, and the employee locks for that month in one area.
In the filter, you choose the Month, optionally a Department (with the add-on module Locations & departments) and an employee Category. ZEP shows below an overview of all recorded working times per employee and day. In ZEP Compact and ZEP Professional, you additionally select the display option Working time or billable/non billable proportion and a threshold Red less than …% of normal working hours; days highlighted red fall below this threshold. A note line always tells you the last month already closed.
Only the action Close month locks the values of the month and blocks the recording of the period. Through the employee locks, you additionally control whether individual employees are blocked for their own retroactive corrections.
The full workflow including initial setup, lock logic, and re-opening is described in the article Month-End Closing.
Note: The Month-End Closing depends on the add-on module Absences & overtime. Without the module, the submenu item is not visible. Access to the System area of the administration is granted to the administrator role. In addition, controllers may open the Month-End Closing submenu item and the Export for accounting area — the other submenu items of the administration remain reserved for the administrator role.
Device Management
In Device Management, you maintain all recording devices of your organisation. ZEP distinguishes three device types based on the login mode of the ZEP Clock App or on the hardware setup of a ZEP Terminal: User App (Single-User mode), App (Multi-User mode), and Terminal.
The filter bar above the table offers the fields Type (App, User App, Terminal), Status, and a free Search term. Per device entry, the table contains the following columns:
Name — freely chosen identifier of the device (for a User App pre-filled by ZEP with the name of the person)
Recording period — optional time-of-day restriction (from/to) during which the device accepts stampings
Employees — explicitly assigned person or persons allowed to use the device (empty for a Terminal; the assignment there is done via RFID chips)
Categories — assigned employee categories, if defined in the master data
Location — last GPS position transmitted by the device, if location transmission is enabled
Status — current device status (see per device type below)
Department — only visible with the add-on module Locations & departments
Via the action icons per row, you edit a device, delete it, or use an email icon to re-send the access credentials to the assigned person. Via the link Add new ZEP Clock App above the table, you create a Multi-User app; via Add multiple new ZEP Clock apps, you create several entries in one step. ZEP Terminal devices are not created manually: as soon as you put a terminal into operation and it connects to the ZEP URL of your instance, it automatically appears as an entry in this table.
User App
The User App is created as soon as an employee logs in for the first time in the Single-User mode of the ZEP Clock App on their personal smartphone. ZEP creates the device object in this list automatically — with the name App + full name of the person and the 1:1 employee assignment. Manual creation via the list is not provided.
In the editing form, you can subsequently adjust the auto-generated Name, store an optional Recording period restriction (time from/to), and switch the status between active and inactive. The 1:1 assignment of the app to the person is fixed after login and cannot be changed.
App
The App serves the Multi-User mode of the ZEP Clock App — typically on a tablet placed at a central location at which several employees clock in one after another. The creation runs via the links Add new ZEP Clock App (single) or Add multiple new ZEP Clock apps (in bulk). When saving, ZEP generates the device access code; via the email icon in the table row, ZEP sends the access credentials to a person.
Per app, you maintain the following fields:
Name as identifier
Administrative PIN code (up to 8 digits) for opening the administration view directly on the device
Department — assignment with the add-on module Locations & departments
Employees — multi-select of the persons allowed to clock in on this app
Categories — additional narrowing via employee categories
Transmit location — checkbox for the GPS transmission per stamping
Limit recording period with time from/to
Force remark with an activity list (separated by vertical line), only available in ZEP Clock
Display on device — checkboxes for the values shown in the app per employee: start time, duration, daily total, normal working time, monthly total, monthly upper limit, overtime balance, activity description
Status — active or inactive
Terminal
The Terminal is the fixed-installation hardware stamping clock from ZEP. Unlike apps, you do not create a terminal manually in the list: you put the device into operation on site (power supply, network connection, ZEP URL of your instance configured). As soon as the terminal connects to ZEP for the first time, it automatically appears as an entry in this table. The employee assignment is not done at the terminal through the app mechanism but through the RFID chips managed in the next area.
In the editing form, you maintain:
Terminal — the unique device identification (device key, not changeable)
Name — freely chosen identifier
Time zone — time zone in which the terminal records stampings
Language — display language of the terminal
Limit recording period with time from/to
Status — Configuration restart, Restart, inactive, active, or active in teach-in mode (for learning new RFID chips, see the next area)
Hardware setup, putting the device into operation, the configuration via smartphone or laptop, and the employee login at the terminal are described in the collection ZEP Terminal.
Note: Device Management is visible by default in ZEP Clock. In ZEP Compact and ZEP Professional, it appears as soon as you activate the option Record attendances in addition to project times under Administration > Settings > Employees.
RFID chips
In the RFID chips area, you manage the contactless cards and key fobs that employees use to stamp at a ZEP Terminal. Per entry, you see the columns RFID (chip identifier), Created (date and time), and Employees; for persons currently not employed, ZEP additionally marks that in the list.
You do not create new chips manually but learn them at the terminal. The workflow:
In Administration > System > Device Management, open the desired terminal and set its status to active in teach-in mode.
Hold the new RFID chips one after another up to the reader of the terminal.
ZEP automatically creates a new entry in the RFID chips list for every chip that is not yet known.
Open the newly created entry in the RFID list and assign it to the matching employee.
Set the status of the terminal back to active afterwards so that unknown chips are no longer created automatically.
If a chip is lost, you remove the entry from the RFID list; the employee master record stays untouched, and a replacement chip can be assigned to the same person afterwards. Further hardware hints on stamping at the terminal are described in the collection ZEP Terminal.
Note: The RFID chips area is visible by default in ZEP Clock. In ZEP Compact and ZEP Professional, it appears as soon as you activate the option Record attendances in addition to project times under Administration > Settings > Employees. RFID stamping itself is only possible at hardware terminals.
Urls
Under Urls, ZEP maintains the short links that the system generates automatically — for example for the download of a scheduled report file or for the subscription link to an iCalendar feed. Manual creation is not provided.
In the table, you see per entry the columns Type, Url (in a short display with a copy button and a click-to-open icon), a key icon for password-protected links, the assigned Employees, and the creation date. Via the Employees filter, you limit the list to the short links of a single person.
In the standard, ZEP creates three kinds of short links:
Download link for a scheduled report — short link to the output file of a scheduler task (see submenu item Tasks). Use case: a recipient downloads a recurring PDF or CSV report through a fixed link without having to log in to ZEP.
iCalendar subscription for the company-wide absence overview — short link with which an external calendar (Outlook, Apple Calendar) subscribes to the overview of all holidays and absences in the organisation. Use case: team-wide visibility of absences in personal calendars.
iCalendar subscription for the personal absence calendar — short link with which an employee subscribes to their own holiday and absence calendar. Use case: the personal ZEP holiday entries appear automatically in the employee's own Outlook or Apple calendar.
Via the delete icon, you remove an entry — the underlying content remains, but the external link no longer works afterwards and would have to be created anew.
Tasks
The Tasks overview lists all scheduled background jobs of your ZEP instance. A task is a recurring action that ZEP executes automatically on a fixed schedule — from reminder emails through the delivery of saved reports to the synchronisation with connected third-party systems.
In the table, you see per task the following columns:
Name — designation of the task; a click expands the recent executions with their result files
Status — running, paused, or failed
Schedule — execution plan of the task (e. g. daily, weekly, monthly, or a freely defined schedule)
Last Execution — timestamp of the last execution
Last Result — success or error message of the last execution
Download — file icon for the last generated output (for example the PDF of a report)
Next Execution — timestamp of the next planned execution
Employees — person who created the task
Via the action icons per row, you edit or delete a task, pause or resume it, and start it immediately regardless of the schedule. The list refreshes automatically in the background. System tasks do not have these action icons — they only run automatically.
Creating a task
Via the link New Task, you open the creation dialog. You choose the desired task type from the list, take over the suggested name or enter your own, define under Schedule the execution plan (daily, weekly, monthly, or a freely defined schedule — depending on the task type), and save. For report tasks, you additionally specify the Report period and can optionally compress the result file as ZIP, encrypt it with a password, and additionally have it sent to your own email address stored in ZEP.
Available task types
Which task types are available to you in the creation dialog depends on your product line and your add-on modules. In the standard, the following tasks are available.
Standard functions (all product lines):
Check of weekly/monthly limits — administrators are notified by email if the configured upper limit of hours is exceeded in the configured period. Parameters: number of weeks and number of months to check.
Employee information / reminder of missing time recording — every employee who falls below their target hours by more than the configured percentage receives an email. You choose between the modes Check days individually (parameters: days not to check, length of the check period, percent threshold per day) and Check previous week as a whole (parameter: percent threshold per week). The mail template is located under Administration > Master data > Employees > Mail templates.
Check of employment periods — informs a configurable recipient list by email about employees whose Employment Periods end in the coming days. Only available if you have activated the pre-employment-end notification under Administration > Settings > Employees.
With the add-on module Absences & overtime:
Overtime remainder not met/exceeded — email to department managers or administrators if employees fall below or exceed the configured minus or overtime threshold. Employees with normal working time of 0 are not considered; the mail template is located under Administration > Overtime & Absences > Mail templates.
Reminder for applications for leave not yet processed — reminder mail to responsible persons if an absence request stays open longer than the configured number of days.
Employee lock — locks the time bookings and receipts of all employees in the current month against changes. Use case: monthly mandatory step before payroll.
Reminder to lock for month — reminds employees of pending time corrections before the monthly lock.
Continue all holiday calendars for the subsequent year — system task that automatically extends the existing holiday calendars into the following year at year-end. The maintenance of the calendars themselves is described in the article Master Data Absences & Overtime.
In combination with ZEP Clock or active attendances:
Reminder to clock in — email to employees who are not clocked in at the configured time although it is a workday.
Clock out employees — logs out employees who forgot to clock out automatically. The logout occurs either at a fixed configured time or after a configurable duration of attendance. Administrator and employee receive an information mail so that the affected time can be corrected if necessary.
With the add-on module Ticketing system:
Check mailboxes for tickets — periodic query of the configured mail inboxes and automatic conversion of incoming emails to tickets.
Ticket response time — email to project leads if new tickets have not been processed after the configured number of days.
Ticket deadline compliance — email to project leads and assignees if a ticket deadline is reached in the configured number of days.
With the add-on module Quoting:
Reminder to follow up on offer — reminder mail to the quote-responsible persons before or after the expiry of a quote.
In ZEP Professional (Receipt inbox):
Fetch Receipt Inbox Mailbox — periodic query of the mail inbox configured for the receipt inbox; incoming emails are imported as receipt inbox entries. Further hints on receipt entry are described in the collection Travel expense management.
In ZEP Compact and ZEP Professional:
Fetch exchange rates — updates the exchange rates maintained in the master data with the current daily rates. Further hints are described in the collection Revenue & costs.
Interface synchronisation (with connected third-party system licence):
DATEV synchronization — handover of the ZEP data to DATEV according to the mapping defined in the interface configuration.
HR WORKS Synchronization — data exchange with the HR software HR WORKS.
HubSpot import — update of master data from HubSpot.
Personio synchronization — data exchange with the HR software Personio.
Salesforce import — update of master data from Salesforce.
The central recipient list for error notifications of all tasks is maintained in the Scheduler area of the article Other – Administration.