Saving Money with a New Time and Labor Management System

 

Up To 50 Employees = $30,290 - $35,000 per year

Up To 100 Employees = $60,580 - $65,000 per year

Up To 250 Employees = $151,395 - $200,000 per year

Up To 500 Employees = $302,790 – $350,000 per year

Up To 1000 Employees = $605,580 - $650,000 per year

 

 

Most automated time clock systems offer many different features that may not be important or relevant to your companies needs. However, if your intention is to use an automated system to save your company money there are 6 distinct ways to do so. You will also find a few questions to ask prospective companies to see how they measure up.

 

 

Many businesses are unaware of a common problem aptly named “Buddy Punching”. This problem is simply one or more employees clocking in for one another. This is commonly done with manual punch clock systems, badge systems and computer systems where the information is easily available to other employees. Commonly, when one employee is running late or not physically at work, they will communicate with another employee to clock them in fraudulently. There are many ways to cheat time systems, some ways include, claiming to lose a badge but sharing with a co-worker or sharing user ID’s and Passwords. The only way to eliminate buddy punching is with biometrics (covered later in this document) Buddy punching alone is estimated to cost over $1,000 per employee per year!

 

Questions To Ask:

 

1. Do you offer Fingerprint Biometric Terminals?

2. Do you offer Hand Geometry Biometric Terminals?

3. Does your system manage the biometric information and which device the biometric data is assigned to?

4. Does your system backup the biometric information?

5. Can your biometric devices provide additional information like employee name, last punch, total hours, etc.?

6. Does your system track failed biometric punches so attempts by employees to use other employees id’s?

 

 

One of the most time consuming aspects of labor management is entering employee timecards into a payroll application. Manually, this can take up to 3 minutes per timecard and may even be longer depending on sick and vacation calculations. Regardless, human error in this case is in escapable. Studies have shown that payroll error factors are between 1% and 4% of total payroll.

 

Questions To Ask:

 

1. Do you offer payroll integration?

2. How many providers can you integrate with?

3. Do you offer the ability to create new integrations?

4. Is the cost to create a new interface a flat fee or dependent on complexity?

5. Can the information be emailed automatically to an outside party?

6. Do you have checks to make sure that payroll is not exported before being reviewed?

 

 

One aspect of payroll preparation that affects productivity is policy management. Meaning that the policies, as they effect employees change based on specific factors, including how long the employee has been with the company, position in the company, pay type, vacation time, overtime limitations and other variables. In some cases these complex calculations, policy adjustments, time changes, etc. can add hours upon hours to the payroll preparation process. It’s important that you choose a system that will be able to manage all of these aspects easily and effectively.

 

Questions To Ask:

 

1. Does your system support an unlimited number of calculation policies?

2. Does your system automatically change the calculation policy assigned to the employee based on the employee’s tenure with the company?

3. Does your system have the ability to override the automatic calculations?

4. Does your system provide multi-level job costing?

5. Does your system have up to four levels of overtime?

6. Does your system support unlimited pay codes?

 

 

Reporting of labor data is extremely important in any business and having to run reports yourself on a regular basis can become time consuming. In fact it can take an average supervisor over 30 minutes a day to log in, configure the report and then print it. Even more time is used if it has to be emailed to multiple people. To avoid this time killer, choose a system that allows you to pre-configure reports in addition to being able to automatically email them to anyone at any time on a regularly scheduled basis. This can be especially helpful if they are emailed before supervisors and administrators come in to work, making it the first thing they see and address. In addition reports need to be able to accomplish complex analysis in an easy to read report. While you should definitely make sure that the system you purchase provides the reports you need, it’s important to make sure that you are getting analysis, even on things you don’t currently track but may need to be tracking.

 

Questions To Ask:

 

1. Does your system have the ability to email reports?

2. Does your system email reports in PDF, Microsoft Word, and Microsoft Excel formats?

3. Does your system have the ability to save common reports easy access?

4. Can the reports be customized easily?

5. Can users be limited to only a small number of reports?

6. Can users be limited to only print reports for the employees they are responsible for?

 

 

Rounding rules are often overlooked as a nicety to employees. In reality, time that is rounded toward the employee translates into dollars and cents that can be given freely to the employee or used to increase the profitability of the company. While some suggest that eliminating rounding and paying by the minute saves more money; it’s important to purchase a system that allows you to choose how the rounding is done (No Rounding, tenth hour, quarter hour, modified quarter and half hour rounding with the ability to establish an early and late grace period.) In addition, systems that let you change the type of rounding based on if it’s a clock in, break or clock out are preferred. This gives even more flexibility and control over where those minutes & dollars are going.

 

Questions To Ask:

 

1. Does your system have the ability to round time calculations?

2. Does your system have the ability to round In, Break, and Out calculations differently?

3. Does your system have a different rounding rule for scheduled and unscheduled time?

4. Does your system allow different rounding rules for different groups of employees?

5. Does your system have the ability to round individual punches, punch pairs, or the entire day?

6. Does your system have the ability to calculate the number of rounded minutes?

 

 

Scheduling is one of the most invaluable features in an automated time & labor management system. Scheduling can be used to identify those who are violating company policy (taking to long at lunch, leaving early, approaching overtime, tardy, absent, etc.) Solutions that offer scheduling sometimes even include the ability to lock employees out of the clock until their scheduled shift, which reduces overtime. In addition many scheduling features can help you manage your overtime by warning you when someone is approaching the overtime threshold. More importantly scheduling your labor allows you to easily monitor break times which is where a great deal of time theft occurs. If everyone in the company takes 5 minutes more than they should, it adds up over a month or a year to thousands of dollars. By monitoring breaks using a schedule you can be sure that nobody is taking advantage of you and your bottom line.

 

Questions To Ask:

 

1. Does your system have the ability to schedule employees?

2. Does your system have the ability to have re-occurring and automatic employee schedules?

3. Does your system support simple and complex shift differentials?

4. Does your system have an easy to use graphic schedule interface?

5. Does your system interface the schedule to the timecard calculations?

6. Can the employee request schedule changes and time off thru the system?