How a Telephone Time Clock Eases Management Frustrations

Here's a scenario many business managers hope to never experience again: At the start of a shift, remote employees arrive late or don't report at all. Because the manager is still using paper-based time attendance tracking, she doesn't learn of the employee shortage until she receives the first frantic phone call. She spends the rest of the shift scrambling to call in other employees to cover the workload. Her carefully planned schedule and payroll budget just flew out the window!

What could have happened instead? By employing a telephone time clock system, this manager would have known immediately that her crew was half-staffed. Today's telephone-based time attendance tracking, tied to an online interface for management, allows managers to see right away which employees are absent.

Imagine the advantage of knowing at 9:01 p.m. that your cleaning crew in Biloxi has three employees missing. From your central office in Tupelo, you are able to start calling in reinforcements. Doesn't that sound like a much better way to do business, rather than waiting for the cleaning crew's panicked call at 9:30? This kind of control, via a phone time clock system, is a major advantage for companies with employees clocking in away from the home office.

Here's a quick overview of how that type of system works to ease the burden of management.

Step 1: Employees at remote locations call a phone number connected to your timekeeping service and report for duty.

Step 2: Managers can pull up real-time information online to learn who clocked in at each location.

Step 3: Necessary steps can be taken to shift workers to cover gaps in work crews.

Step 4: Timecards are easily retrieved and printed for use by the payroll department.

There's another major advantage to moving to a telephone time clock system. Because overtime is a huge issue for managers, being able to know immediately which employees are close to earning overtime allows those managers to adjust employee hours. There's no reason, with the easy availability of phone time clock systems, for any manager to live with the headache of unintended overtime. There's also no reason for you to get a late start trying to fill shifts when employees fail to report.

A well-planned online timekeeping strategy based on a phone time clock for employees can ease the pain of management without causing budget convulsions. The money you'll save in unintended overtime and lost revenue due to poor employee coverage will more than pay for your new telephone time and attendance tracking system.

Four Ways Conventional Timekeeping Costs Employers Money

Time attendance tracking -- it's at the very heart of managing off-site employees. Unfortunately, it can also be the reason money is walking out the door of your business. Here are four ways conventional time tracking can be costing you money, and also some solutions that may stop the bleeding.

Employee Time Padding: Traditional timecards still used by many companies for time attendance tracking are inexact, at best. Employee time padding is easily possible. Because you're not always able to monitor exactly when your off-site employees begin or end their shifts, you're taking it on faith that the time written on their time cards is truthful.

Solution: A telephone time clock, on the other hand, records the exact time the employee calls in to begin working. Time padding can be a thing of the past using this method.

Payroll errors: Timecards require manual calculation by your staff each payroll cycle. If an addition error is made, employees may be overpaid (or underpaid.)Illegible employee handwriting and damaged or lost timecards represent their own potential hazards to your bottom line.

Solution: Using the phone time clock method for recording employee time, reports are automatically generated. This mitigates the risk of calculation errors in employee pay and also in payroll taxes.

Storage Space: Paper-based time records come with a built-in need for storage. File cabinets cost your business money, both for the equipment and the space required to house them.

Solution: By requiring off-site employees to call in their start and stop times to a telephone time clock system, records are stored digitally, requiring much less space for storage.

Time Lapse in Collecting Data: You may have a need to collect employee time data in between payrolls. Unfortunately, this can be difficult when your workforce is primarily off-site.

Solution: By implementing a phone time clock system, you can create real-time reports whenever necessary.

The time and money being wasted by using traditional timekeeping methods with off-site employees may be a major drain on your business. Investigate the telephone time clock options available and see just how much they could be saving your firm.

No-Nonsense Management

Most businesses today have a time clock system in practice, whether it is a manual time clock, a computer time clock or a punch clock. Employers must have an accurate way for their employees to record their time periods worked. If an employee time card is reported inaccurately, the results can be costly to the employer. Have you, as an employer, ever considered a Telephone Time Clock?

There are many clear advantages when it comes to monitoring your employees and making sure the time they record on time cards is done properly. It saves you time and money to have an error-free system in place. This way there can be no question marks as to what hours are worked and whether your employee is being forthcoming. A Phone Time Clock takes the wonder and worry out of all of it, and with a simple phone call twice a day, everything is recorded neatly and at your access at any time. What could be better than that?

Every employer wants to believe their employees are being honest and truthful, but occasionally as unfortunate as it is, some employees may try to forge information to get more money. This can create real problems, especially when your employee may be working from an out-of-town location. If you want to be reassured your employee is recording and reporting in an accurate manner, then you need to invest in a Phone Time Clock system.

If your company needs to improve supervisor and employee communications, an Employee Time Clock will do just that. A supervisor can leave a message for any employee or a group of employees and rest assured that everyone receives the message, because the system requires the employees to listen to the messages at check in and checkout times.

No more miscommunications, no more missed calls, no more time card collections, no more payroll inaccuracies, no more having to track down employees, the Telephone Time Clock System does all of this for you, included in your service. The benefits far outweigh the risks and for employers who do not have the time or resources to track down employees, the system is a huge help. Saving time and money is extremely important to the success of any business and with a time-tracking system, all of your problems can be solved effortlessly and easily.