Time tracking blog

Do you have a time clock like this in your office?

As the owner of a business, when it comes down to time keeping and accountability, you’re pretty much on your own.  You are the only one who really feels the pain of timesheet and time clock inaccuracies.  In fact, in a lot of organizations, employees are paid extra for adding 10-15 minutes to their time card.

When they come in the office at 8:09 they’re thinking, “I got here at 8am.” And when the clock strikes 4:45pm, it’s time to pack things up (yes, even the honest ones do this.) However, you, as the business owner, know that you pay for every 10-15 minutes your employee “fudges”.  In one shift this could be 20-30 minutes, and across the period of a month this could be 7-10 HOURS of extra payroll that you pay out PER employee.

So don’t be surprised when your employees have objections when you decide to incorporate a technology like TSheets or another honest and accurate time keeping system.  You’d have objections too if you were getting a pay cut of $1,560 a year, PLUS you had to consistently remember to clock in AND out.  (Boy, what a hassle. ;-) )

But with the $77,460.60 that you’ll save every year by bringing accuracy to your 50 employees’ time cards, surely you’ll be able to make it up to them.

The Math:

“20-30 minutes”
10 min. x 2(for clock in and out) = 20 min.
15 min. x 2(for clock in and out) = 30 min.

“7-10 HOURS”
20 min. x 5 (5 days in a working week) = 100 minutes
100 min. x 4 (4 weeks in a month) = 400 minutes
400 min. / 60 (60 minutes in an hour) = 6.667 hours

30 min. x 5 (5 days in a working week) = 150
150 min. x 4 (4 weeks in a month) = 600 minutes
600 min. / 60 (60 minutes in an hour) = 10 hours

 ”$1,560 a year”
10 hrs. x 13 (Wage Rate of $13/hr.) = 130 x 12 (12 months in a year) = $1560

“$77,460.60“
$1560 x 50 (50 employees) = $78,000
$44.95 (50 employee TSheets license) x 12 (12 months in a year) = $539.40
$78,000 – $539.40 = $77,460.60

*Photo courtesy of http://www.insightoutsight.co.uk

In this age of technology, the paper time card is still the primary employee tracking method used by most small business owners. Why is this?

Small business owners (and their bookkeepers) know the issues with paper time cards – inaccurate entries, poor penmanship, the hours spent prepping payroll. Why do they tolerate it? They really don’t have a choice. Of course, they can get the old-fashioned punch clock. But they are expensive, only solve part of the problem and are well, old-fashioned! The next logical step is software. Time keeping software is typically bundled into a larger payroll or HR system, or available as a PC/network based application. Because of the price and complexity, they are typically used by larger enterprises. Online software is available, but misses the original simplicity of the clock-in/out function of analog punch clocks. In short, most software packages are too complicated or too expensive for most small business owners.

Enter “Timeclock 2.0″ – an initiative to create a standard for modern time keeping – to go beyond the Timeclock 1.0 world of analog punch clocks and truly make time keeping technology available to anyone by being simple and affordable.

Timeclock 2.0 made possible by a new technology called “Software as a Service” or “SaaS”. In essence, this is a web-based application that allows you to use software through your internet browser rather than download software to your PC. Examples of SaaS companies include Google’s Gmail, Salesforce.com, and Yugma.

The primary benefits to SaaS are:

• Cost savings – most SaaS models have a monthly subscription, rather than an upfront price.
• No upgrades – because the software is web-based, all users are on the same version.
• No network setup – because there is no download of software, any PC (or mobile device) with access can use the software.
• Pricing is typically scalable based on number of users.
• There are usually no contracts or hidden fees.
• Support is typically included in the monthly fees.
• Data is secured and backed-up off site.

“Timeclock 2.0″ follows these same rules, plus some specific time-keeping elements:

• Clock in/out from any authorized PC with web access.
• Clock in/out from a mobile device.
• Manage employees and timesheets for multiple locations.
• Integration to Quickbooks and other payroll packages.

In short, Timeclock 2.0 is the first real reason for small business owners to affordably and efficiently move away from paper timesheets or punch clocks. As such, Timeclock 2.0 should create the same mass adoption as seen with other SaaS applications.

As part of TSheets‘ mantra, we’re all about helping you get control of your time and attendance in a simple and affordable manner. This means bringing down to the minute accuracy to your time tracking, eliminating the amount of time it takes to gather information and run reports and allowing you to get a real time view of what is going on within your company.

How do we do this? We help you eliminate paper timesheets and all of the time and money that you loose using them. No more employees fudging hours based upon estimated times. No more hours spent on collecting, correcting, compiling or calculating times to run a single report. Overall, with an online timesheet we’re helping you streamline your time and attendance system, while bringing you more accuracy at SIGNIFICANTLY lower costs.

TSheets is all about helping small to medium sized companies gain control of their labor time and attendance. That’s why we take a deep concern in the security of your employees clocking in and clocking out.

One of the biggest problems that business owners face is what we all know of as buddy punching, Friends/Co-workers clocking each other in before they even arrive to work. To get rid of this money pit, all of our Customers use the ability to assign passwords for their individual employees to use to log in to their online timesheet.

By assigning each of their employees their own unique password based upon their social security number, they eliminate the temptation to share passwords. No more shared passwords equals means more security and no more buddy punches.

New advanced permission editor brings our online timesheet a whole new level of usability. You asked for more flexibility with user account security, and there are now several new options.

Why more permission options? As usual, we don’t sit around dreaming up useless features. The majority of the features we add come directly from you, the users of TSheets. Recently we’ve received a lot of feedback asking for more options when it comes to security and permissions. I’ve heard things like “I want my book-keeper to be able to download payroll reports, but not modify timesheets.”, and “I want my managers to be able to review and edit timesheets, but not be able to modify global account preferences or add new employee accounts.”, and “I’d like my receptionist to see who’s currently working, but nothing else.”

There are now three account types: Administrator, Custom, and Employee. Administrator and Employee are exactly as they were before today. The new “Custom” option allows you to add any combination of the five new permissions we’ve added to any user account, as you can see in the screen-shot above.

Go ahead, remove the “Administrator” privilege you’ve assigned to all your managers, receptionists, and book-keepers. Now you can give them access to just the areas of TSheets that they actually need access to.

New feature! You can now authorize individual computers for employee time entry by “cookie” rather than by “IP address”.

(more…)

Added a checkbox to the punch card that provides a choice of staying logged in after punch in/out. Keep talking, we’re listening!