One of the largest school districts in Indiana, South Bend Community School Corporation serves approximately 13,000 students across nearly 30 buildings. With around 3,000 employees, the district operates like a small city.
Luisa Brand has served as Deputy CFO for four years. She oversees payroll, accounts payable, and accounts receivable. She also leads projects that make district processes more accurate, efficient, and transparent to taxpayers.
A paper process that never stopped
Before TimeClock Plus, every hour worked across the district was captured on paper timesheets. Payroll secretaries entered each sheet into the payroll software by hand, then the payroll team checked their entries. As soon as one payroll closed, work on the next one began.
Employees couldn’t see whether their hours or time off were recorded correctly until their pay stub arrived, and any mistake meant reprocessing payroll.
“The payroll department is the customer service team for our own employees,” Brand says. “With so much manual entry, discrepancies could happen and employees had limited visibility into their time until they received their pay stub, which added more manual work for the payroll team.”
The district needed more accuracy, less time spent on data entry, and more transparency throughout its time and attendance processes. Its software selection committee wanted a solution that could deliver all three, backed by proven K-12 experience and a working knowledge of Indiana requirements. TimeClock Plus was the best fit.
Built for school districts, backed by TCP experts
Brand took over the implementation in early 2023 and calls the project her baby. For about ten months, the district worked side by side with the TCP Support and Implementation teams, meeting weekly to shape TimeClock Plus around how the district runs.
“We learned from TCP Software, but at the same time, they learned from us about what our school district needs,” she says.
The district built virtual trainings and printed guides, then trained payroll secretaries to coach employees in their buildings. The transportation and food and nutrition departments (about 300 employees) went live in December 2023, followed by the remaining buildings by the first quarter of 2024. Today, the district uses TimeClock Plus to accurately track time for non-certified staff year-round, certified staff who take on extra work like homebound tutoring, and every summer school employee.
From data entry to review
TimeClock Plus goes beyond replacing paper timesheets. It gives employees, supervisors, and payroll a live view of time and attendance across the district, handles the district’s overtime rules, and keeps a complete audit trail for every punch. It turned time tracking from a time-consuming, error-prone process into a source of accurate, payroll-ready data employees and payroll staff alike could trust.
Payroll secretaries now review exceptions throughout the pay period, and color coding makes it easy to spot anything that falls outside standard procedure. When the pay period closes, the team moves a file from TimeClock Plus into its payroll software in less than an hour. Attendance work that once filled five days a week now takes one or two, and the payroll team puts that time toward managing variances, accuracy, and reporting.
The TimeClock Plus product and engineering teams built a feature around the district’s approval process to make it easier to track and manage overtime. Every Friday, TimeClock Plus adds an overtime segment to each employee’s timecard for building and department heads to approve or reject. It handles two overtime rules side by side, covering employees who earn overtime after 40 hours in a week and those who earn it after eight hours in a day.
Audit-ready records on demand
Time and attendance records are an important part of the district’s audit documentation, and TimeClock Plus has made responding to audit requests much more efficient. Before TimeClock Plus, each auditor request meant a trip to the district’s filing rooms to gather records and prepare documentation. Now, the team pulls records straight from TimeClock Plus, showing the hours worked, the pay rate, and who approved each segment, with audit logs tracking every edit along the way.
When state auditors asked how TimeClock Plus keeps data secure, TCP prepared the documentation the district needed.
“Board confidence and accountability to the community come from good, accurate reports,” Brand says. “Having accurate, accessible records gives us confidence that we can provide the documentation needed during an audit.”
Employees who own their time
Once employees saw their hours in real time, they embraced TimeClock Plus. They can check their time as they work, as well as request time off and see when it’s approved. If they miss a punch, TimeClock Plus alerts them so they can fix it with their timekeeper right away. With leave management in TimeClock Plus, supervisors see on a calendar who will be out and when, so they can plan coverage ahead of time.
When the district brought about 200 facilities employees back in-house in 2025, those employees noticed the difference. With their previous employer, they could clock in and out but couldn’t see their time. Now they can.
“It’s about being responsible and being the owner of your information,” Brand says. “If something isn’t accurate, employees flag it right away, so the payroll rework isn’t happening anymore.”
District leaders gained greater visibility, too. From the administration building, they now have a centralized view of time and attendance across the district, with features like geofencing providing additional support for time and attendance management.
The reporting capabilities in TimeClock Plus also allow payroll to provide overtime information to district leaders as requested, helping them better understand overtime across their teams. Employees can manage their own time, giving both employees and district leaders greater transparency and accountability throughout the process.
Looking ahead
The district’s TCP customer success manager checks in regularly to see whether new district, local, or state policies call for changes. And Brand credits the TCP team for understanding the district’s deadlines and being consistently responsive.
Brand can’t picture going back. She says, “All I remember is there was no time for anything.”
Other Indiana districts have reached out to Brand about TimeClock Plus. Her advice is to share every current process openly with the TCP team, treat the rollout as a team effort, and stop doing it all on paper.
TCP Software’s employee scheduling and time and attendance solutions are flexible and scalable to accommodate your business and employees as you grow.
From TimeClock Plus, which automates even the most complex payroll calculations and leave management requests, to Humanity Schedule for dynamic employee scheduling that saves you time and money, we have everything you need to meet your organization’s needs, 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.
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