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.

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.