When is it time to get Time and Attendance Software?
Most businesses start off small. Often there is often only one owner and that owner does all the jobs. There’s no time and attendance software anywhere. The solo business owner has to do all the work and all the jobs He or she thinks up the business, comes up with the marketing idea or plan, rents the office or factory space, creates the products, makes up the advertising, does the cold calling for customers, gives the sales presentations, closes each sale, does the invoicing, delivers the products, trains the customers on those product, supports the product, creates product updates and on and on … have I missed anything?
With hard work, good market timing, smarts (and a bigger dose of luck than I had realized before running multiple companies for over 20 years) that company begins to grow. The first level of company growth is to expand to a handful of employees. Each person has a somewhat specialized role but they also cover a number of other areas too. Everyone in the company knows each other and the systems requirements are fairly generic. The business is almost as much as a family as a business.
With continued luck, maybe a small merger or a sophistication of the product, a second plateau in company size can be reached. This plateau is somewhere about the 25 employee mark. Everyone still knows everyone but they don’t always know where each other are or where they are at any given moment. This is often the first a time and attendance program is considered. Depending on the type of business it may be relevant to get a system now. At this level it is only going to be a basic system, probably with a time clock. But this isn’t really a time and attendance system.
The business owner is often now business owners. The company is growing to the next level and this is the level that consideration often begins for real software, time and attendance software – a true time and attendance system, not a basic time clock system. So what is that level? There is no hard and fast answer but rather an employee count range. That range is from 50 to 100 employees.
But, and this is a big but, there is a second factor. These numbers are the number of part-time or hourly employees in an organization. Time and attendance systems tend to not be very often used in full time employee situations. I would suggest then that this range is 25 employees for a basic time clock system to 50-100 employees for full software, time and attendance program. Many organizations are split between part and full time employees so it is usually only the part time workers that are put on to the system. For example, an organization might be 300 employees but the time and attendance system might only used for the 85 part time employees. One organization I worked with had over 600 employees but only the 125 or so orchard workers were put on to the in-house time and attendance program.
Other related articles, looking at the growth of an organization …
Can your Time and attendance system handle the company growth?
Do you need TimeandAttendance Software?
Tips on selecting Time and Attendance Software?
