Time tracking blog

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!

With gas prices hitting all-time record highs, many are considering alternative ways to reduce costs and conserve energy.  While most have to physically be at their jobs (manual labor, retail, etc), a large percentage of the workforce can attend their jobs virtually.  Not only does this save in commute time, it also can help significantly reduce fossil fuel consumption.

While telecommuting hasn’t always been possible, current technologies enable you to work virtually from almost anywhere that has an internet connection.  Technologies such as instant messaging, video conferencing, online document sharing and online time tracking have helped open the door to the virtual workplace.

Most employees will agree that not having to commute to work is a good thing, but how does this benefit the employer?  According to these survey results, the employer benefits from more productive (and happier) employees.  In fact, most employees are more productive at home than at the office.

While working from home may be more productive, it certainly is more energy efficient.  On average, most Americans travel approximately 50 miles each way to work, or 100 miles round trip.  If your vehicle gets 25 mpg, you use 4 gallons of fuel per day, or 80 gallons per month!  This doesn’t even count any other extra driving you do.

With the price of gas being $4 per gallon, this amounts to $320 spent on gas traveling back and forth to work per month.  While working from home every day might not be feasible for some, working from home one day per week can result in fuel savings of up to 16 gallons, or $64 per month.

How much can working from home one day a week reduce your carbon footprint? Considering that a gallon of gasoline produces 19.4 pounds of carbon dioxide, you can reduce your carbon footprint by 3,725 pounds a year!

So, if you’re an employee or employer alike, you should strongly consider the excellent benefits that can be achieved from telecommuting.

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.