If you operate in the service sector, you already know how important it is to maximize your time… and particularly the time of your staff members. Your organization lives and dies by your ability to deliver a superior experience and value through your people… and every minute counts. Because your success and profitability is so tied to the time of your staff, you must find ways to maximize that time. Did you know that for this reason implementing an automated timesheet and scheduling software solution is one of the best investments you can make as a service business owner?

Immediate Savings with a Timesheet Solution

Most business owners recognize that time is money. This phrase is often repeated… even daily. But business owners don’t always recognize how to take action on this principle. What is often overlooked is that employers frequently overpay employee wages by hundreds and thousands of minutes every month due to inadequate tracking technologies that invite costly employee habits to occur.

In contrast, what you may not yet realize is that using an online time clock and scheduling solution can often cut labor and overtime costs immediately, resulting in thousands in reduced expenses each year while increasing service performance. Because employee labor is often one of your greatest expenses as a service organization, this problem… though seemingly small at first… is something very much worth addressing.

Simplify with an Automated Time Card Calculator for Service Industries

Daily life in a service organization is fast-paced, dynamic and ever-changing. Fortunately, much of the chaos related to managing a service organization can be greatly reduced with today’s online automated time and labor tools.

For example, as a service provider, you’re juggling employees schedules at all times. Your workforce is diverse in skill and availability. Employees often work multiple schedules at different locations and at differing pay rates. Employees frequently need to adjust their availability on short notice, leaving supervisors and customers at risk for suffering the consequences. You may even have employees both on-site and off-site. For these and many other reasons, managing time is a never-ending stress, and accurate time tracking has never seemed realistic.

Although this cycle continues day after day, the good news is that these challenges can be minimized with today’s advanced scheduling software, especially when combined with a simple, affordable time card calculator app.

A few examples of how automation helps:

• Creating Schedules – Create, adjust and swap employee schedules in minutes with simple, drag-and-drop scheduling tools.
• Shift Trades – Simplify employee shift trades with automated text and email collaboration tools that notify employees and supervisors of shift swap opportunities.
• Mobile Employee Self Service – Simplify how employees view their schedule, time card, approve their time and request time off through a mobile app.

Cost of Not Using Automated Time and Attendance

When employers are not using both an automated timesheet solution and scheduling software, it can be very costly. Not only will this result in countless extra hours of administration for employees, supervisors and HR, but will also result in numerous forms of overpaid wages. Take a look at a few examples:

• Inflated overtime costs – When labor hours are not tracked to the minute and controls are not in place that can easily identify overtime concerns, employers end up paying for more overtime every pay period.
• Employee Punch Rounding – If employees are asked to manually record their hours in a spreadsheet or timesheet, inevitably, employees will round punches in their favor. Most commonly, punches are rounded to the nearest 15-minute increment for each punch. With an average of 4 punches per day, this can easily result in 15-45 minutes of overpay per day.
• Employee Buddy Punching – One of the most common forms of employee time theft is referred to as “buddy punching,” or employees clocking in/out for one another. As employees arrive late, take breaks and leave early, employers often pay those wages anyway due to a buddy punch. Using a biometric solution will fix this immediately.

Success as a service organization has everything to do with proper time and people management. Few tools can reduce the cost and simplify this effort better than automated time and attendance. Contact 941 Timekeeping to learn more about saving on your cost of labor.