The 7/8 Rounding Rule: Why 2 Minutes on a Time Card Could Cost You 5 Hours!!

Ask any business what their biggest cost, apart from raw materials, consists of, and you will probably get the same response. In most cases, rental, mortgage, computers, electricity, and phones are all minor issues on the expense report. It is employees -- the cost of labor to complete required work -- that puts the biggest dent in the company budget. And strangely enough, the law actually allows people to be paid for time they haven’t worked, day after day and week after week! This is allowed under many state laws, and is hinted at under federal legislation regarding rounding. If you keep standard time records, you could be paying for up to 15 minutes a day of work not completed, for every employee. We look at why the 7/8 rounding rule allows this, and how to combat the situation with telephone time clocking.

The 7/8 rounding rule

This is so familiar to most of us that we probably didn’t even realize there was a name for it! This rule basically states that if your employees are paid in 15-minute increments, then for every start and finish time they can round up or down to the nearest fifteen minutes. If the actual time is seven minutes over one fifteen minute period, they must round down. If it is eight minutes over the start of a period, they must round up. For example:

• Your employee's official start time is 8:30. If they arrive one morning at 8:37, they can still fill out their time sheet to indicate starting at 8:30, with no applicable penalty. If they arrive at 8:38, they must state that they arrived at 8:45.
• The same is applicable at finishing time.

You can see that simply by intentionally staying for as little as one extra minute at finishing time, or by arranging it so they get to work 7 minutes late instead of 8 minutes, your employees can legally be paid for 15 minutes a day of work they don't perform! Over a week this adds up to an hour and fifteen minutes, per employee, and over a month's salary, your employees could have been paid for five hours of work they didn’t perform.

Assumptions of the rounding rule

In order to ensure fairness, the rounding rule assumes that employees will not deliberately try to manipulate their starting and finishing times to take advantage of this. Even with no deliberate malice, it assumes that the roundings-up and roundings-down will even out over time. Neithe of these assumptions is necessarily true; it is better to simply keep accurate, indisputable records of time started and finished, tally it up for the pay period, and THEN do your rounding! Telephone time clocking makes this easy, and can be implemented for both on-site and off-site employees.

Five Most Frequently Asked Questions About Telephone Time Clocks

Telephone time clocks are useful in almost all industries; the effects on the bottom line of time card padding and rounding on the company budget are oftentimes very surprising once analyzed. One simple and effective solution is to use telephone time clocking, where a toll-free number is dialled when the employee starts work, and again when they finish. The times are recorded and collated by an online system. As simple as the concept is, the process is quite foreign to many people and there are often a slew of initial questions! Today we endeavor to answer some of the more common questions about telephone time clock systems.

1. The system costs me money to use -- where are the savings over simply having people record their starting time?
   With a manual timesheet system, employees must record their times manually. There are always factors like time card padding, even by a few minutes, the difficulty of calculating very precise time increments, and there are calculation errors to be made at every turn. Telephone time clocking starts instantly saving you money by eliminating time card padding -- only the exact hours that are worked are clocked.
2. How do I know someone else won’t clock on and off for them?
   Some telephone time clocking systems have a Random Voice Verification feature, which will ask the employee to speak a phrase or their code in order to clock in. This does not need to be utilized for every call.
3. Why wouldn’t they just clock in and out from home, or leave it a while before calling?
   Patented caller-id technology is incorporated into many telephone time clocking systems to ensure that employees are clocking in and out from appropriate locations. If you consistently note that calls are made from the employee's home address, you can take whatever action is necessary.
4. Technology isn’t always accurate, though!
   In this system where time is of the essence, measures are taken to ensure the accuracy of time-clock records. The servers that support the process are synchronized to an internal clock daily.
5. How do I know if the system will suit me?
   Use the free trial of the software and platform to evaluate whether this is a good solution for your company, and to allay any process or operational concerns about telephone time clocking.

Phone Time Attendance Tracking Helps Store Managers Shine

Retail managers often report their stores' time attendance tracking data to a central location. Unfortunately, without the right tools for tracking their employees' hours, mistakes are easily made that throw a wrench into the works at the home office. Phone time attendance tracking helps store managers shine by eliminating many of the issues that can give their stores a black eye.

What are some of those reasons the home office payroll location might be calling? Let's look at common remote location payroll headaches caused by conventional time clocks:

* Timecards missing time stamps or manager approvals.
* Incorrectly calculated timecards.
* Missing, damaged or illegible timecards.
* Suspected timecard padding by store employees.

Needless to say, plenty of store manager time can be wasted correcting time cards, verifying time records and calculating employee time for their stores. If you're a retail manager who often spends too much time on timekeeping issues, perhaps it's time to suggest a better solution to the home office.

Here are some great reasons that making the switch to a phone time attendance tracking system makes sense for companies with many locations.

* A phone time clock system records the exact time an employee starts his shift, eliminating timecard padding.
* A telephone time clock eliminates the need for paper timecards that can be lost or damaged.
* Using a web-based phone time clock setup means each level of management has access to real-time employee attendance data via the Internet.
* Payroll calculation errors are a thing of the past as each employee's time is accumulated for each payroll period.
* Timecards can be printed and stored at a central location for every retail outlet in your company's chain.

Imagine just how much you'd shine as a store manager if you were the person who suggested switching to a telephone time clock for every store! Not only would management appreciate the savings in time, money and frustration, other store managers would also be relieved of one of their biggest headaches.

Just think, a phone time clock system might just be your route to promotion even as it's saving you frustration in your own store!

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.