Your business uses the same time tracking system it had in place for the last decade. Keeping up on exactly when employees come in, how many hours they work, what they're spending their time on, and whether time is accounted for properly is all in question. Your time tracking system is essential for accurate payroll, employee vacation tracking, and analyzing how much time is spent on particular tasks. If you suspect your system is better off in the stone age, look for these three signs to determine whether it's time to find a new one.
1. Your system forces employees to track their own time manually.
Time clock and timesheet-based time tracking systems puts full responsible on the employee, requiring the employee to remember to clock in and out in order to track their total hours worked. Employees may game the system to have another person clock them in to manipulate hours, forget to clock out for lunches, and completely forget to clock in for the day at all. Timesheet based time tracking is even worse in this respect, as the employee has to write down the times they worked. It's rare to get exact time measurements in these situations, risking inaccurate calculations for payment.
2. You experience recurring scheduling nightmares.
If you don't have a way to easily see which employees are at risk of moving into overtime, you've got a problem. Paper time tracking and scheduling requires a significant amount of time to handle, especially if you manage mainly hourly and contracted employees. Hourly employees can easily end up with skewed schedules that put them well over 40 hours. While mishandling contracted employees may mean essential gaps aren't filled and more money may be sent on contractors than intended.
3. You have difficulty determining job costs.
At first glance, this many not seem like much of a problem if you have salaried employees, but it's a significant issue if you pay hourly or your staff works on contracts. However, if you offer business consulting services, for example, how long does it take a team (even a salaried one) to come up with a thorough business plan? Without a time tracking system in place to monitor the resources going into a particular project, you may be charging more, or less, than your services are worth. An insufficient time tracking system in this situation also takes time away from employees' work by forcing them to keep track of what they're doing throughout the day, instead of using an automated system.
