Set Up Your Phone Time Clock in Three Easy Steps

Making the change from a paper-based timecard system to a highly-efficient telephone time clock might seem overwhelming. If you're in charge of overseeing the change, there are three easy steps for a successful transition.

Before we detail those three steps, let's review the reasons why changing to a phone time clock is a good decision. First, a time attendance tracking system in which employees call in at the beginning and end at each shift cuts down on timecard padding. A phone system is exacting and efficient, eliminating unnecessary payroll costs.

The second reason smart companies with remote employees are turning to this type of system is the ease of calculating payroll. Using an online interface, the payroll administrator is able to create payroll reports and print individual time cards.

Once the decision has been made to move to a telephone time clock system, the sequence to implement it is very simple:

1. As the account administrator for your web-based system, you'll be given the ability to login to your system from any computer and check the status of any employee.
2. Using that account, you'll login and add employees, job locations and the destination for text message alerts that notify you of missed shifts and employees' clock in and out times.
3. Train employees to call the toll free number to clock in and out of your system.

After your system is up and running, you'll be able to log on to the web-based interface for your phone time clock and see live timecard data for every employee. You'll also be much more in control of overtime, because live data gives you the ability to make decisions on shift coverage when it matters.

If you have a robust telephone time clock system, you can also stay in touch and communicate with employees easily. Recording a message they must listen to before logging in insures up-to-date information is communicated to employees, even at the most remote locations.

Updating your time attendance tracking with a phone time clock is a wise decision for most companies with remote employees. As a manager, you'll gain more control over employees who work off-site, and unnecessary payroll expense.

A simple three-step process will help you make the transition with as little disruption as possible. Isn't it time you found out for yourself how easy it really is?

Benefits of a Telephone Time Clock

When looking for a new way for to keep track of my sales staff worked hours, a friend told me the benefits of having a Telephone Time Clock. This seemed like the perfect tool to use in order to keep track of all the hours worked by our employees that have to travel away from the office during the workday. But I wanted to know what all the advantages were when using this type of time clock system.

I found out that many industries use this service for in order to keep an accurate record of employees. It eliminates the need for passing out, collecting or the adding of traditional time cards. There is also no more “padding” of hours worked or uncontrolled overtime. This helps to keep labor costs down in many companies that use this type of service.

A Phone Time Clock makes doing payroll a lot easier too. Not only is it more accurate it saves time when a payroll department is adding up the hours worked for each employee. This method is easier to keep track of since every second an employee works is documented. This keeps errors down when paying employees.

Employees that have to work at home or perform their job outside of the office, such as those in sales, this service can help them to keep track of time worked every day. The system is easier for employees that work out of the office. All they have to do is call the service at Chronotek and they are clocked in or out for the workday.

Many employees like the fact that their hours worked are well documented and the telephone service is easy to use. This helps a company to accurately use the Time Attendance Tracking It also helps to eliminate using paper products like time cards, which is better for the environment, since many companies are now going green. This makes many employees and companies feel like they are doing their part to protect the environment. service.

Using a telephone time clock in a business has many benefits. This type of service helps to cut labor costs from overpaying employees. It keeps companies from using paper time cards, making a company greener. The use of a telephone time clock is a great tool for any business big or small. No matter what the size, this service pays for itself and many companies see their labor costs from over paying employees reduced drastically.

Time is Money

I own a large and very busy insurance company in Kentucky. I have 37 agents who work for me and service over 15 counties. I don’t require my agents to come into the office every day because most of the work they do is in home visits with clients. I pay my agents commission plus an hourly wage and keeping up with their time cards became a big headache. That’s when I began using telephone time clock; a service that allows my agents to clock in using their phones which gives me an accurate report of the time they spend working.

The agent will call in to the phone time clock when they get to a client’s home and then will call back to clock out. This service has saved me a lot of frustration and worry about whether my agents are being honest with the time they work and gives me an excellent report about how much time they spend with each client. This is important information as it helps to calculate how much time an agent will need with a client so that we can schedule appointments without over-lapping new appointments. This service has become one of the most useful tools I utilize in my business.

I get a daily time attendance tracking report that gives me a great deal of data that has helped me increase my business and productivity. Clients don’t have such a long window of wait time as they did before. And we can see immediately if an agent is going to be delayed with a client and not make the next appointment on time. We can then call that client and let them know the agent will be a little late.

Before I began using the telephone time clock I had no idea exactly where my agents were. Now I know when they get to their appointments and at what time they finish. As the owner of this business it’s my responsibility to make sure our business runs as smoothly as it possibly can. With telephone time clock work days are more organized and the agents as well as myself are working more efficiently and productively.

This service has changed the way I do business and has helped me take the guesswork out of the time card dilemma. It was always a guessing game before I began using the telephone time clock because agents would forget to write down their times and they were often guessing about the actual time they spent working with a client. Now there is no guessing; it’s all electronically time stamped and sent to me in reports. I recommend this service to anybody who has employees that work in the field.

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.

Managing Telecommuters Effectively

Managing telecommuters can be considered a challenge. It’s hard to determine what approach will work for everyone. For example, just because everything's OK with Mary it might not be working for John. What can you do? The first step is to set an organizational structure. Telecommuters need to be monitored in order to be kept accountable. That means, as a manager, you have to enlist a monitoring system… the telephone time card system is perfect for this job.

Properly monitoring your telecommuters may or may not be the aspect that makes your situation “work”…. Whatever "working" means to you (and you will know your personal definition of “working” long before you ever take on telecommuters), you will have to determine what you plan to you do if there comes a point when it isn't working any longer. How will you know? When will you know? What will you do? If you’re wondering where to turn, phone time cards may just be the ticket.

A strong manager looks for a trend. If you’re setting the standard, then you determine the job and delegate what the trend should b for that job. If letting your telecommuters work on the honor system for a week or a month starts a negative trend and you can determine that "it isn't working," you should take action immediately.

Enlist a monitoring system, ask questions and explore what might be going on with individual employees. If after a period of time, you have determined your needs, and communicated your expectations, it still isn't working, action needs to be taken. Action needs to be based on the guidelines of the job description, i.e., put them on a performance improvement plan and use the telephone monitoring system as an accountability tool.

Management is tough enough without having to worry about whether people are pulling their weight on the job. If you set into motion iron clad tools to make sure your employees are doing what they ought to be doing – you’ll save yourself time, trouble, and, over the long run, a truckload of money.