5 ways time tracking software boosts your bottom line
Most people, when in an unfamiliar town, do not pull out a paper map to find their way to the nearest grocery store. They use Waze or Google Maps, far more efficient tools available literally at your fingertips. So why wouldn’t companies want to use the most useful tool to track their employees’ time—automated time tracking software? TCP time tracking and scheduling systems give you access to the most effective and efficient tools to manage and track employees’ time. Our workforce management solutions can boost your bottom line by reducing time theft, improving employee accountability and engagement, and by managing complicated schedules and payroll. We can also help to keep you in compliance. Are you still using an outdated manual process? Keep reading to discover 5 reasons to make the switch to automated time-tracking software.
1. Reduce employee time theft
Studies by the American Payroll Association (APA), tell us that 75 percent of businesses across the U.S. are affected by time theft. That theft, the APA says, can cost companies up to 7 percent of their gross annual payroll. For companies carrying a $1 million payroll that adds up to $70,000 worth of stolen time every year. You may be thinking, “Not our employees.” However, consider that when Software Advice surveyed shift workers, they found that 43 percent of hourly workers admitted to exaggerating the amount of time worked during their shift. A quarter of those surveyed said they report more hours than actually worked between 76 and 100 percent of the time. How much time do they add to their shifts? The highest percentage, 41 percent, said they add between 11 and 20 minutes to the hours they work.
Calculate your Savings:
- You can use the APA study result and calculate 7 percent of your gross annual payroll to determine your likely loss due to time theft.
- Alternatively, add a conservative 10 minutes to every shift for 41 percent of your workers. Add that up weekly, then yearly, and attach an average wage to the hours.
2. Improve transparency & fairness amongst employees
The Center for American Progress determined that the average turnover cost of a skilled worker is 213 percent of one year’s compensation for that role. A robust and transparent time tracking system not only reduces time theft, but it can play a role in employee satisfaction by creating a level playing field for employees. If your tracking methods or policies vary by department, this can generate a sense of unfairness amongst employees. Ever hear mumblings like, “Why do the administrative assistants get to write down whatever time they want on a piece of paper, while I have to clock in and out each day?” A single, online system creates consistency and offers transparency. It empowers employees to quickly clock in each day and easily see their logged hours—regular and overtime—anytime they want. At the end of the day, people just want to do their job and know that they are being paid fairly and accurately, and things like overtime, variable pay rates and various types of leave can really complicate things. A cloud-based time-tracking system offers a seamless, more accurate experience by identifying errors or exceptions as they happen, rather than when it’s time to run payroll. With the right processes and technology, you won’t find yourself having to retrieve overpayments or make employees wait for corrective action. Tired of looking up the number of PTO days an employee has every time they put in a time off request? Top-tier time-tracking systems have an attendance component as well that helps employees easily manage time off balances on their own. For employees, knowing the time that they have available is a great way to encourage them to take the time. It also helps the organization because employees can more effectively space out their time off, reducing stress on workers who may have to pick up the slack.
Calculate your savings:
- What would it cost your company if you lost even one highly skilled worker due to perceived unfairness regarding policies or inaccurate paychecks?
A cloud-based time-tracking system offers a seamless, more accurate experience by identifying errors or exceptions as they happen, rather than when it’s time to run payroll.
3. Simplify complex labor calculations
Often when working with companies to ensure they are getting the right time and attendance system, they share with us their extremely complex overtime rates and job roles. It boggles the mind to think they are trying to manage all this on paper or via a spreadsheet. Consider this scenario, you have an employee who performs two different jobs at two different pay rates. How do you calculate pay or overtime? It’s not an easy answer, and if you’re performing manual calculations, these complex situations really slow you down. An automated time-tracking system will help organizations simplify how labor is calculated and dramatically increase the speed and accuracy of payroll processing. With proper setup, users can correctly apply the information (via job code/rate or state overtime rules, etc.) beforehand and the system will calculate the correct employee pay, even if the employee has worked different jobs at different rates during the same pay period. This is a huge benefit for payroll teams currently responsible for manually calculating complex payroll environments and ensures your weighted or blended rates are accurate.
Calculate your savings:
- Industry experts estimate it takes 2.5 minutes to manually compute hours for each employee in a bi-weekly pay period.
- Based on 500 employees, we estimate payroll personnel spends about 541 hours calculating payroll per year. What else you could do with that time?
An automated time-tracking system will help organizations simplify how labor is calculated and dramatically increase the speed and accuracy of payroll processing.
4. Maintain Compliance
The Department of Labor requires employers to keep track of employee hours worked for at least three years. That information must be readily available if an audit occurs. An automated system makes it easy to store and save hours approvals, edits, additions and deletions. Also, the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) compliance is built into TimeClock Plus, taking the burden off your shoulders. As we mentioned earlier, many of our clients have very complicated labor agreements regarding compensation. They use our software to manage cost codes, shift differential processing, auto calculate overtime and double time, manage the prevailing rate for government contracts and job costing. This ensures they comply with their agreements. Moreover, you can leave the responsibility of securing all this critical data to us. TCP Cloud is hosted within industry-leading, certified data centers in the United States, providing you with 24/7 monitoring. Also, personally identifiable information is encrypted in motion and at rest, to guarantee maximum protection. You never have to worry about losing data because our certified security team performs continuous backups and adheres to strict recovery time and recovery point objectives.
Calculate your savings:
- The American Payroll Association estimates that manual payroll typically has an error rate of at least 1%.
- An organization spending $50 million per year in payroll has an estimated total cost of errors from manual calculations of $500,000.
- Using this formula, what is your total cost of errors?
5. Unexpected benefits
We won’t claim that internal HR audits to improve processes are ever easy. Still, an automated time tracking system can make it much more manageable. Automation of this process can free up your HR and Payroll staff to do more rewarding work, which will reduce stress and therefore reduce turnover. But it’s not just your HR staff that benefits. Your employees will benefit from improved transparency regarding time and pay, which cuts down on one of the most common employee complaints. Finally, with better visibility into the full picture of your workforce, you can avoid unnecessary overtime and rest easy knowing that payroll is accurate and on time.
Having accurate information at your fingertips in easy-to-read reports provides transparency across the organization from employee to management. This results in proactive decision making so that you can prevent issues instead of reacting to them.
Learn how to choose the right time collection solution for your organization.
TCP Software’s employee scheduling and time and attendance solutions have the flexibility and scalability to suit your business and your employees, now and as you grow.
From TimeClock Plus that automates even the most complex payroll calculations and leave management requests, to Humanity for dynamic employee scheduling that saves you time and money, we have everything you need to meet the needs of your organization, no matter how unique. Plus, with Aladtec, we offer 24/7 public safety scheduling solutions for your hometown heroes.
Ready to learn how TCP Software takes the pain out of employee scheduling and time tracking? Speak with an expert today.
