Why do you need to use an automated timekeeping system?

View a short video on the cost benefits of our ATA system

Time & Pay’s Automated Time and Attendance services (ATA) and systems can help your business in many different areas. In order to quantify the benefits of an ATA system, you first have to know what to look for. There is no doubt that an ATA system will help ensure compliance and save your business money by eliminating a great deal of manual labor involved in calculating hours worked and more accurately tracking your employees’ time on the job. Here are some of the other areas to look at in greater detail for judging the benefits of implementing Time & Pay’s ATA solution.

Implementation of Accurate and Objective Timekeeping

One of the major problems of any timekeeping method is taking care of the exceptions – filling in the missing times when employees “forget” to clock in or out. A good ATA system will give you the ability to easily monitor those employees who “forget” on a regular basis, accurately fill in the blanks in a timely manner, and manage the problem quickly and objectively.

Improved Data Quality

Manual timesheets must be key punched into a computer in order to be processed for payroll. Whenever data is keyed into a computer from a hand-written document, errors will be made. These errors can cost you in many direct and indirect ways:

Incorrect pay. How many employees complain if they get overpaid? If even a small number of employees keep their over-payments, it is costing your organization plenty. And when employees get underpaid and complain, issuing a new paycheck or adjustment is costly.
Without accurate information, you lose the ability to make informed decisions. Employee pay is one of, if not the biggest, controllable expense in most organizations. You should have accurate information about hours worked, departments worked in, jobs worked on, etc. to help you make good decisions for your business.

Labor Regulation Compliance

Quality ATA systems like the one Time & Pay offers eliminate the error subjectivity that can be involved in manually tracking time or manually adding up hours. Our ATA systems are set up so that employers automatically comply with FLSA regulations and are able to compile the data and provide reports to verify compliance.

ACA Compliance

Starting June 1, 2013, the newly implemented Affordable Care Act requires most businesses to report to the IRS verifiable data confirming Full Time Equivalent employees (FTE’s) for a certain time period . Our ATA systems are able to generate the reports employers need to verify FTE’s.

Paper Reduction

Timekeeping software can reduce the cost associated with creating and distributing paper timesheets or timecards. Cost savings result from:

Direct savings from reduced paper, printing, and distribution costs
Indirect savings from time spent handling paper timesheets.
Direct Savings from elimination of maintenance costs on manual time clocks.

Paperwork Transfer

A big expense with a manual timekeeping system is that of transferring time sheets/time cards from one person to another. For example, the employee needs to get blank timesheets from the HR department. They fill out the time sheet and walk it over to their manager. The manager signs the time sheets and walks them to the payroll department. Payroll gives the time sheet to HR to review to make sure PTO is correctly accounted for. A very conservative estimate of the direct time spent on simply working on manual time cards, transferring the paper back and forth, etc. would be 2-3 minutes per employee each pay period.

Time & Pay’s ATA system eliminate all that work.

Fewer Pay Check Corrections

Issuing new paychecks or manually calculating adjustments to pay is a very time consuming (and frustrating) process. Good timekeeping systems like Time & Pay’s will minimize or eliminate this problem by:

Ensuring accurate data reaches payroll by checking all pay policies at the point of entry and approval.
Providing an online method for employees and managers to verify times and request corrections.
Allow easy access to prior periods thus providing the ability to easily calculate required adjustments

Elimination of Duplicate Data Entry

If your time and attendance is being keyed into one or more than one system, you have a cost that can easily be eliminated. Check the following systems to see if any time and attendance data is being keyed into a:

Time tracking system.
Payroll system.
HR system.
Job Costing/Work Order system.

It is easy to understand how a good ATA system will eliminate this duplication of effort.

Electronic Notification of Time & Attendance Tasks

Payroll is performed on a regular basis. This means that employees and/or managers must review and approve time sheets on a regular basis. Without an automated system that allows for easy access, this can be a very burdensome task. But when the parties involved fail to do so by the payroll cut-off time, a series of even more time consuming events occurs in any organization:

Payroll has to figure out which managers have not submitted approved time sheets.
The payroll dept. contacts the manager(s) and/or employees and requests their time sheets.
The managers will track down the employees and request their delinquent time sheets.
If the manager is not available, they attempt to find an alternate who can approve the time sheets.

A good ATA system will significantly facilitate verification and approval of time sheets eliminating all of this mundane, inefficient work and free managers up to work on productive tasks.

Fewer Inquiries to the HR Department

A good ATA system will provide useful information, traditionally requested from the HR or payroll departments, to those individuals with employee self-service. By making this information available on-line, your HR and payroll depts. will spend less time answering employee inquiries. A good ATA system will make the following information readily available:

Hours worked.
PTO hours paid for.
Balance of PTO available.
History of dates when PTO was taken.

Complete, effective design of the ATA system

If you have been looking into automated timekeeping solutions, you know how the systems are usually packaged. Of course you have to start with the standard package. Then if you have over 50 or 100 employees, you need to add an accommodating module. If you want to retrieve attendance history, you need to add another module. If you want to have multi-access by multiple users, add another module. Track PTO, add another module. Job cost, add another module. And so on! By the time you get to the system that will really meet your needs, you have significantly added to the cost, complexity and maintenance of the ATA system.

A good ATA system should be designed and built to do want you need it do, when you need it to do it, without any additional updates or modules. When you log into Time & Pay’s system, you log into a top of the line, full feature system. There is no need for additional modules, no hidden costs, no additional charges for added features.

Flexibility in the use of the ATA system

As noted above, a number of people play key roles managing the data relating to employee hours. How difficult is it going to be to create and grant access to the ATA system for those key players? The beauty of a web-based system is the ease in which you can allow access to the data to as many people as is required. There is no network software to administer or maintain. If you have multiple locations, or if you add a new location, there are no wide area network requirements. (Adding that new location is done as soon as that location has access to the web.) Once you get through data security, logging into the system is quick and easy. You can grant access starting with administrators, who have access to all the data, all the way down to employee “self-service”, which allows employees access to only their information.

Make sure you don’t need to get your IT dept. involved every time you want to update your system, add a location or a new user. Make sure the system you are looking at is simple to use and always the latest version available. Make sure it is easy to add users to, easily expandable to multiple locations and flexible enough to meet the needs of all who manage time and attendance. Keeping it simple will reduce the cost of operating and maintaining your ATA system.