In today’s constantly changing technology environment, corporations are determined more than ever to implement solutions that are based on internal and external forces. Lack of established systems, processes and tools adds to a company’s workload and diminishes the ability to effectively manage the operation. Also, companies are faced with stricter rules and regulations mandated by federal, state and local governments. When companies manually track their employees’ time, they expose themselves to greater risk of not being compliant.

If you are finding it difficult to manage your labor these days, then read on to learn how automating your employee time collection process can reduce and even eliminate some of your difficulties. We all know that paying employees accurately and on time is the key to any successful business!

Manual Calculation of Time

When you automate your time collection process, you eliminate the need to calculate employee time, which affects your entire workforce in many ways.

• Reduce Time – By eliminating the manual calculation of employee time, managers and payroll administrators can reduce or eliminate the time they spend on calculating employee time. Managers can focus on employee exceptions, rather than looking at each employee’s time card for the errors. The America Payroll Association (APA) stated that it takes an average six minutes to review and edit each employee time card. This dramatically saves manager time every pay period.
• Reduce Errors – An automated time and attendance solution reduces the errors in calculating an employee’s paycheck. The employee’s time is calculated by the system eliminating typical calculation and rounding errors. APA studies estimate that manual time card computation errors can cost between 1 and 8 percent of annual gross payroll.
• Increase Productivity – When employees and managers spend less time on reporting, collecting and calculating time, productivity will naturally increase. The workforce is spending less time on administrative tasks and more time on their core job.
• Increase Government Compliance – The Fair Labor Standards Act has made significant changes to overtime eligibility requiring time and attendance solutions to handle complex pay rules. Time and attendance solutions allow companies to be compliant and pay their employees uniformly. This uniformity reduces the company liability and decreases employee grievances.

Labor Costs Out of Control

Companies are always looking for ways to control their labor costs. They want to stop unauthorized overtime, overpayment of benefits and they want to do a better job at forecasting labor. There are number of benefits in automating a company’s time and attendance process that reduce the cost of labor.

• Reduce Employee Lost Time - It is difficult to avoid employee lost time when a company manually processes payroll. The lost time can be due to rounding errors, employees reporting the incorrect start and stop times and incorrect reporting of lunches and breaks. According to a study by Robert Half Agency, a company loses on average an estimated 4 hours and 5 minutes a week per employee due to late arrivals, early departures and long lunches or breaks.
• Decrease Payroll Dollars – With a system calculating employee time, proper rounding and overtime rules are applied. This prevents employees from being overpaid, which affects the companies total payroll cost.
• Reduce Overpayment of Accrual Benefits – When all employee accruals are established in one uniform system, everyone’s time off is calculated fairly and accurately. Companies prevent overpayment of benefits by no longer needing to manually calculate accruals or keep track of employee days off.
• Eliminate Buddy Punching – With the use of biometric terminals, a company can see a significant savings in their payroll dollars. Employees are required to use their hand as verification when punching. No more cards, which can be swapped amongst employees, are used.