The Whole Picture

Say you’re considering automating a few time-intensive tasks. Good thinking. Such necessary operations as staff scheduling and timekeeping eat up hours and therefore dollars. Speaking of dollars, chances are your next consideration will be the cost of that automation, so you investigate. A cursory glance at your options will offer a choice: Do you go with a web-based application or client-server software? In other words, do you buy a packaged program you install and maintain locally, or do you subscribe to an online scheduling/timekeeping system? Your first reaction may be “Why should I take on the ongoing expense of any subscription service when I can make one purchase upfront, own the software, and be done with it?” For the answer, we suggest you assess your current operation (IT staff on hand, number of users you’ll have, potential for company growth or downsizing) and compare features of both options with that assessment in mind. The best choice for you will be the one that saves you the most in staff time and errors, requires the least staff intervention, and provides optimal automation of your selected tasks. Here are a couple of aids to help in your research:

Automated Timekeeping: Time to Choose

Automation Line by Line

Employee Scheduling and Timekeeping
Client-server Automation vs MyTimeCards.com (MTC)
	Client-server	MyTimeCards
Upfront Costs	Yes	No
License Purchase Required	Yes	No
Upgrades & Migrations	Customer’s responsibility	By MTC with no additional fee
Service Contract	Yes, up to 20% of cost/yr	No
IT Support	Reliant on customer’s staff	Unlimited at no charge
System Customization	Limited by product	Highly Customizable
Accessible by Multiple Users	With purchase of licenses	Unlimited # of Users
Accessible from Multiple Locations	Local network only	From anyplace w/ Internet
Record Storage	Limited by user server space	Unlimited
Server Speed	Depends on user system load	High speed hosted servers

Plumbing 103 for HR Managers

What about what I like to call the "fudge factor?" Do you have a means to verify and substantiate suspicions of employee abuse of your timekeeping policies – the early punch ins or the late punch outs – without human (and costly) supervision? Does your current system show employees' clocked hours compared to approved/scheduled hours, over one day or over one or many pay periods? Can you determine at a glance which employees may need a reminder of clocking policies, or would you need a supervisor to spend hours monitoring employees to substantiate the reminder?

The devil is indeed in the details, and the details you should be concerned about are irregular schedules, exceptions to policies, the need for staff intervention in timekeeping, and clocked vs. scheduled hours. So take a look at how closely your current tools and procedures actually match the reality of doing business the way it's done in your own company. If the fit isn't good enough to plug the hole, it's still a hole.

The minimum wage for covered nonexempt employees was raised on 7/24/09 to $7.25/hour. Remember, under FLSA, if time is clocked by a nonexempt employee, it must be paid, and if that time brings the total hours to over 40/week, it must be paid at time and a half. An accurate, automated timekeeping system that is customizable to match your policies and alerts managers to patterns of abuse is the best tool you can have to prevent the clocking of unauthorized hours.

Click below for useful information on potential cash “leaks”.

Coverage Under the Fair Labor Standards Act

Your HR Plumber's Helper