As business owners, we try to keep things as simple as possible. We start out tracking the hours of our three or four employees on a clipboard hanging up in the back, or maybe just by their scheduled hours in a spreadsheet. However, now we have 20 employees, and it has become a constant headache of making corrections and asking employees if their hours are correct, all with no way to check if they are telling the truth or not.
Does this headache sound familiar? If you are an employer who is not currently utilizing an effective timekeeping system, it probably does. Not only are you subject to all the stress and confusion keeping track of your business’s payroll by hand can bring, there are a variety of other benefits you are missing out on that could potentially help your business. The benefits of using online software to track employee hours include:
1. Reduces Errors
If you are manually keeping track of your company’s payroll, you are opening yourself up to a rather large margin of error. It could be an issue of hard-to-read handwriting, logging the time in the wrong section of the spreadsheet, or accidentally listing the hours for one employee under another.
Switching to a time management system will greatly reduce your risk of incorrect payrolls because it takes away much of the need to second guess the numbers reported. You can trust the automated system.
With all the cloud-based systems now available, business owners have a multitude of low-cost options for time and attendance tracking. These systems can work with traditional punch clocks to biometric clocks to apps for your smartphone. Meaning, it is even easier to track your hours and reduce errors in your payroll reporting.
2. Saves You Time
Let’s face it. The old system of keeping track of your employee’s time is outdated. Long gone are the days where it is efficient to have your employees write down their hours each day in a spreadsheet for you to review at a later time.
Not only does this method create plenty of room for errors in your tracking system, it is time-consuming. Your employees waste time calculating their hours workers, you waste time verifying the hours, and then you waste even more time trying to calculate the amount of time that was used for unpaid breaks or paid time off for each employee on your team.
By choosing to use a time management system, you don’t have to worry about all this wasted time. Instead, your employees can easily clock in and out on a web based system, you get a weekly report of hours worked, and the computer will automatically deduct any unpaid time reported. This means all you have to do to submit your payroll is look at the total hours listed by each employee and key it into your payroll system.
The system will also track any paid time off used by your employees, as well as how much paid leave they have left per your company policy, making your payroll system that much easier.
3. Better Recordkeeping
There are two reasons why you should care about keeping track of your employee’s hours. First, you don’t want to get caught underpaying or overpaying your employees. Using software to track employee hours will allow you to see exactly how many hours your employees works, and pay them accordingly.
You don’t have to worry about estimating nor whether or not your staff is telling you the truth. Instead, all you have to do is pull up the report. This will both save you time and money.
The second reason using software to track employee hours is important is it helps you remain compliant with the new standards set by the Affordable Care Act. By having an accurate number for your employee’s time, you can better monitor which of your team members qualifies as full-time or full-time equivalent in terms of whether or not you need to provide health coverage.
4. Built In Schedule Builder
You will love having the ability to easily build your weekly or monthly calendar directly in your time management system. Instead of flipping back and forth between requests off’s, open jobs, office hours, and any other variable you have to consider when creating the schedule, you can easily pull up a forecasted schedule in the system, as well as view your available resources and build your schedule accordingly.
For example, if one of your employees has an approved vacation day coming up, you don’t have to worry about accidentally scheduling him or her on the day they requested as the system will not give you the option. It will also keep up with holidays and overtime hours for you to make the scheduling building process easier.
We can assist you in identifying what type of software to track employee hours best suits your needs. We can also work with your system to integrate the data with our customizable payroll system for easy payroll reporting.
