Time tracking blog

There are a lot of great things about working at TSheets.com.  Everything from the free bagel Fridays to the unlimited weekend of use of the corporate jet (ok, that might be a slight exaggeration).  TSheets is a great place to work.  One of the benefits of my job is that I get to talk to people.  I talk to A LOT of people.  Today I spoke with a gentleman who was just kind of frustrated. He was having a problem with his current time tracking system.  As I’ve heard all too many times before, he had originally started out by using regular old spreadsheets for his employees to fill out.

At the end of a given period he would compile the spreadsheets into one large document and run all of his reports. However, as his business grew he continued to run into a “creative” type of employee who would make his own spreadsheet.

While Michaelangelo’s “creative work” would usually look cute, it failed to meet the formatting of the larger master document. Forced to pull the reigns in on this young team member, he couldn’t help but step on toes and hurt feelings. This combined with the tedious process of compiling spreadsheets lead this business owner to realize that his process was ready for some much needed improvement.

Following the advice of his accountants he decided to try out the Peach Tree software that they recommended for him.  After experiencing several difficulties with this system, he became aware that the very accountants that recommended him use this software, weren’t using it. This left him shocked and even more frustrated.   He thought to himself, “If the product isn’t good enough for them, why are they telling me to use it?”

Needless to say he quickly discovered that Peaches should remain in the cobbler and started a new hunt for the “perfect” solution to his time tracking nightmare.  He’s looking for a way to track the employees of his small consulting firm while they work from several locations for several different companies.

A difficult conundrum that anyone interested in improving their business has no doubt at one point or another faced.

Here’s how TSheets could help someone in this situation:

1. First and foremost, JOB CODES brother!  Set up Job Codes to represent each company that your firm was working for.
2. Track those lil’ doggies!  Add your employees, give them access to work for their designated clients (ie. assign them to the appropriate Job Codes.)
3. You are now Authorized.  Once your employees have been added set up your authorization so that your employees can clock in from anywhere (you as the master administrator would set your security settings to Open.)

Three painless steps to sorting out months of nightmares?  Not only does it seem like the sensible thing to do, but also the fiscally responsible one as well.

To learn more about cases just like this one and how TSheets can save not only your sanity but your bottom line as well, sign up for a free test drive.  Take your best shot at TSheets and see if it’s the product for you.  If so, awesome, if not. . . no hard feelings, we’ll send you a postcard from our annual vacation to Jamaica.

Today I spoke with a gentleman by the name of Rob who was experiencing a very common pain point in his business. He, like many CEO’s, is very rarely in the office during the day due to the simple nature of his position. This in itself is not an issue. The issue is that his employee time tracking is based upon the honor system. Ouch. Whenever Rob is not in the office all of his employees turn into saints that never show up late and can clock out just in time to make a perfect 40 hour work week. Sound familiar?

I’m sure most all of us have been here at one point in our lives or another and just like Rob, we too have felt the pain of the “honor system.” Just think how many shekels have literally flown right out the window due to employees who fudge 15 minutes here or there.

15 minutes on clock in and clock out is an extra 30 minutes that you’re doling out to this employee every day. That’s 2.5 extra hours a week, 130 hours a year. At $6 per hour that’s almost $780 a year that you’ve lost to just one artful dodger of the timesheet. Can you imagine if you had a whole office fudging just a little here and there? And let’s face it, we’re not even sure that employees of the Vatican don’t push a number around once in a while.

Fear not Brutus of the Boardroom, there IS a solution to this. It’s called automated time tracking and it’s just one of the many beautiful things that TSheets.com can do for you! For just 10 bucks a month Rob could be saving his company thousands of dollars a year.

Is being on time important?  If so, how important?  As a company that sells a time tracking tool surely you can imagine what our answer might be, but we’re a little biased.

I just got done reading a blog post from Caroline4sumone.  In her post, Caroline writes about a situation at work where a woman known for being consistently late is hired onto a team at Caroline’s company.  Lo and behold this new employee shows up late for the very first day of work. The story is interesting but it isn’t what really got my gray matter churning.

What intrigued me were the comments that were left after Caroloine4sumone spoke about her frustration with this employee.  Here’s just a sample:

Frodo: Ah relax. being on time is overrated

highpriestess: If they are 5mins late then it’s ok but if they are an hour late and make a habit of it then it’s uncalled for.

Paul: There is nothing wrong with being late the odd time but if it is consistent then it is a problem. And it is usually the people who are consistently late that have poor productivity. Also it pisses off the other team members who feel they have managed to get in on time and have to pick up the slack. I would work with them to improve their time keeping but ultimately I would let them go if it did not improve.

Now, as far as the eagle flies, in my book output is much more important than input, but does this really matter?  Does it matter any more or less if said employee is hourly rather than salary?

If not, when does it start to matter?  How often can an employee be tardy until it’s no longer a good business decision to keep them around?

What do you think?

Here’s a fun calculation you can do.  Share your answers by leaving a comment.

L/60 x R x F = WC x 52 = YC/12 = MC

L = Average number of minutes an employee is late
R = Employee’s hourly pay rate
F = Avg. number of days per week employee is late
WC = Weekly Cost
MC = Monthly Cost
YC = Yearly Cost

*Please do not confuse this with Einstein’s theory of productivity, as that requires MC to be squared.  Squaring the TSheets theory of Being on Timeitivity could lead to the cataclysmic collapse of the sun.  DO NOT TRY AT HOME!

And finally, the winner of $500 and the opportunity to join the TSheets team! We’ve really enjoyed reviewing all of the entries that came in. The following entry stood out because it quickly engaged us, provided a laugh, and drove home the point of TSheets – to simplify the time tracking process for anyone and everyone.

Be sure to watch our blog for upcoming posts from Dan. Here’s his first (and winning) post – enjoy!

3000 BC: Fred Flintstone ends day by listening for high pitched squawking bird. Quarry Foreman spends hours pouring over timestones at the end of the week.

1634: Bells signal farmers to and fro the fields. Hungover bell maid causes hours of lost wages as farmers stand poised at edge of fields.

1868: Steam whistles pierce the industrial landscape. Drought results in days of lost productivity.

1913: IBM introduces the first ‘Punch Clock’. Band Aids become standard working apparel.

2008: TSheets simplifies your life and brings employee time tracking to a new millennium.

How many times has the wife/husband/significant other heard, “Babe…I’m so right there with you….just as soon as I get these time sheets calculated.”? How many times have you missed the game because, let’s be honest, assembling timesheets for payroll, while important, is as about as exciting as watching the grass grow?

TSheets was born from the best stuff on earth: necessity. Whether you’re tracking 5 employees or 5000, TSheets is a simple to use, LAMP based app that can keep track of all your employees.

Running a single office? Keep track of all your core employees, consultants, developers, freelancers, etc. all in one location. You can even monitor real time. Running multiple locations across the city, state, country, world? Man, you should own stock in Excedrin, as that has nightmare written all over it. Fear not young captain of industry… TSheets can take the tough sheet out of your time sheet.

Employees forget to clock in/clock out (when…when dear lord will they learn)? No problem, anyone you grant admin rights to can clock an employee in/out at any time. What about the subcontractors I’ve got running the electrical today? Bossman got a blackberry (and you KNOW he does) or other web-enabled device? No problem, give him the URL, and he can clock in/out from anywhere in the world. Better yet, your code ninjas strutting around with their new iPhone? TSheets has developed the TGadget that not only works as a Google widget, but functions flawlessly with an iPhone. What about that hacker we just hired to test our security features, I just have a feeling he’s going to change the clock time on his home machine, and cheat me outta 20 hours of ‘work’ while he’s off fragging somewhere. Consider that hacker PWND, ‘cause all times are stored in centrally in UTC time.

Whether you’re running a tiny (read self employed) business, or charting your way to the stars (read the guy in the armani), if you’re dealing with ye old adage, ‘time is money’, TSheets is a product you can’t afford to be without.

For more on TSheets, their products and services, check ‘em out at TSheets.com

*** Let us know what you think of our winner’s post by commenting below or email Matt Rissell – matt@tsheets.com ***

Coming in 2nd Place in our hunt for the best Copy Writer:

We love to elaborate about the money saving features of TSheets, but there is a human element that often gets overlooked. Transitioning to TSheets offers your employees a level of empowerment that a regular time clock cannot.

TSheets entrusts employees with a higher level of personal responsibility. In a company still using a time clock, a manager may not hear about an employee’s lack of attendance until a report is given to him / her on a daily, weekly, biweekly, or monthly basis. In some cases, a habitually late employee can go without reprimand for weeks! Welcome to job indifference.

With the immediate link TSheets creates between the worker and their employer, timely employees are instantly awarded with a sense of accomplishment. More importantly, untimely employees will find immediate attention to their attendance to be refreshingly respectful of their importance to the company.

There’s also an element of privacy that employees will appreciate as time clocks are typically located in high traffic areas of the office. A late employee has no choice but to clock their card in public view of other workers. This can lead to personal embarrassment or detrimental office gossip. By removing the time clock and transitioning to TSheets, records become private between employee and boss. An employee can login from their authorized workstation and keep his / her arrival time out of the minds of curious co-workers.

Employee empowerment may be an ancillary aspect of the TSheets experience, but using TSheets to establish a closer personal relationship with employees will definitely lead to a more productive workplace.

***Let us know what you think of our second choice by commenting below or emailing Matt Rissell at matt@tsheets.com***

Starting out the count down to #1, below is the entry that took 3rd place!

Voice your opinion by posting a comment or emailing the CEO, Matt Rissell <matt@tsheets.com>.

The freedom of running a business can be one of the most satisfying and rewarding ways to live your professional life, oftentimes offering personal and financial profits that far exceed working for others. Yet, with these rewards come the obligatory headaches that are inherent to operating any business—such as human resource management, billing issues, and sales stagnation to name a few. Getting caught up in these problems can drastically affect organizational efficiency that in turn cuts deeply into profitability.

However, nothing cuts into profitability more than the cost of labor—it is the greatest expense of every business, and the effective management of this resource can dramatically improve profit margins. It is with this all-too-common headache in mind that the Tsheets program was developed, for there clearly had to be a better way to control labor costs that didn’t require a great deal of expense and energy in and of itself.

Tsheets is an extremely cost-effective system that allows managers and business owners to control labor costs in a wide variety of ways. Whether you are trying to get a “big-picture” snapshot, keep tabs on a particular employee, or detect seasonal patterns, Tsheets offers you a simple and easy way to get a much tighter grip on your biggest expense.

In addition, Tsheets also offers the ability to greatly reduce payroll expense—automatically tracking, tabulating, and reporting individual hours worked to take most of the headaches out of processing your monthly payroll. Many of our customers have found that our product is more than worth the expense just for the benefit of this feature alone.

Finally, perhaps the greatest thing about Tsheets is that it can be accessed via computer or cell phone through any Internet connection, allowing mobile business owners the ability to track their operations from just about anywhere. This can prove to be an invaluable tool, for many of our customers find themselves getting real worth out of being able to study their labor costs and patterns at anytime as the navigate the hectic world of business.

So, whether you are running a small little shop or a multi-million dollar international corporation, Tsheets prides itself on offering customized solutions to your particular set of labor cost problems. Please take advantage of our free 30-day trial now and see what we can do for you.

In April, TSheets realized it’s need for a copywriter… As most businesses do, we posted the job opportunity and got a stack of resumes. However, that hiring process is daunting and usually isn’t very effective. Then, we got the brilliant idea – Let’s have a contest! Thus, we created the Rock Star Copywriter Contest and presented it to the world, which gave candidates the opportunity to show us their best “stuff”. They had to write a blog post about timesheets or TSheets and the winner gets $500, plus an opportunity to join the TSheets team!

Now – The time has come to unveil the results! Over the next 3 days, we will be releasing the winners starting with 3rd Place counting down to # 1.

Thank you to all for sending in your submissions… Choosing the winners was by no means an easy task. The TSheets team cast their votes and the deliberation went on for several days. However, we believe that the selected pieces best capture the essence of TSheets and we are pleased to announce the winners!

Without further ado let’s get to the results…

Matt Rissell

P.S. Feel free to post your thoughts on the contestants’ posts either through the comment box or by email to matt@tsheets.com.

Are you in sales? This one is for you!

Finally, an effective way to forecast and measure the effectiveness of your sales efforts!

We all know that managing results is NOT what helps build successful sales people but rather, managing the actions that lead to results. An unexpected benefit of a time tracking tool has been discovered.

Building on the notion that an effective sales manager manages activities vs. results, normally managers accomplish this by consistently reviewing each sales persons pipeline. At least this is the way they USED to do it! Now there is a much more effective way to manage their activities – tracking their time!

We have done case studies of sales managers that have more effectively managed their sales team’s performance through tracking their time.

Here’s how:

1. You need a time tracking device that can be used from the field (hhhmmm… let’s see, where could I get one of those? TSheets, maybe? Although a shameless plug, this can truly make the difference between big commissions and the unemployment line.)

2. Set up job codes such as “Pay Time”, “No-Pay Time”, “Cold Calls”, “Drive Time”, “Meetings”, “Emails”, etc…

3. Then as you or your sales people go throughout your day, track time by changing job codes.

At the end of the month you have a very clear picture of why you are successful and/or effective in one area of your life but not the other. For instance, an unsuccessful sales person might get in trouble for having a small pipeline and thus missing quota for a month. However, that same sales person could have been spending 60% of their time cold calling and just need training on how to cold call more effectively.

Bottom line – if you want a clear picture of the effectiveness of your sales team – track their time!

Here’s a nice note from one of our customers who is using TSheets‘ timesheet software for his telemarketing company.  Thanks Nick!!

To Whom It May Concern:

Results Telemarketing provides business-to-business telemarketing services for companies across the country. We have employees in our Phoenix corporate office and in various cities.

Managing hours worked and calculating totals for payroll started to become too time consuming to do manually and we were also thinking that there were errors in estimates that were costing us unnecessary dollars.

We began a trial of TSheets a few months ago and were pleased with the results. After the first week, we clearly spotted and corrected time and attendance issues. The software has been very easy to use for both management and employees and the reports help us to identify potential problems.

“After the first week, we clearly spotted and corrected time and attendance issues.”

Nick McCallion (Results Telemarketing)

The TSheets support staff is readily available and has always helped us promptly and with professionalism whenever we have questions.

I can confidently say that the savings from only paying actual hours worked and from the reduction in administrative time has paid for TSheets many times over.

We will continue to expand our use of TSheets and highly recommend it to any business that wants to automate this task and reduce payroll costs.

Nick McCallion
Sales Director
Results Telemarketing
602.264.2540
www.resultstelemarketing.com

Do you have a story about improving the effectiveness/productivity of your company that other business owners should know about?  You can either share it below or let us know and we’ll post it on our blog.

A lot of companies are outsourcing these days.  Whether it be an accountant, marketer, web developer or lawyer, the odds are that you have someone that you pay on a regular basis who isn’t part of your organization.  The Illinois Department of Transportation is no different.  Just like you, they trusted in another organization to take care of a task that they didn’t have the resources to accomplish internally.  However, the people that they trusted ended up cheating them out of more than $1 Million dollars by falsifying timesheets.

Kamleshwar Gupta, the owner of the Elgin-based engineering consulting firm being used, directed a bookkeeper to falsify employee timesheets.  (Conveniently it was company policy to write out the paper timesheets in pencil, so they could easily be editted.)  He then signed off on the fraudulent invoices before sending them to the Department of Transportation.  Luckily, a routine audit caught the fraudulent activity.

Is this kind of thing happening to you, certainly not.  However, how accurate are your vendors keeping track of their “billable time?”  Do you know the method they use to keep track of the hours they spend on your projects?  Do they even have a method, or do they just sit down at the end of the day and make an estimate on how much time they spent?

Don’t be afraid to ask vendors how they track their time.  Keep in mind that if they’re using a manually entered timesheet then it’s probably “padded” in their own favor.  If their method makes you nervous, don’t be afraid to ask them to use an automated system like TSheets or any other real time tracker.  After all you are paying them for the actual time that they work for you, not just what hours they think they spent.