What would you do with an extra 2+ hours?
You’re potentially wasting more than two hours every pay cycle with manual time tracking
Managers are always looking for ways to make their employees more productive during the workday. But what about the managers’ own time? While managers will always need to, well, manage, the administrative processes of employee management shouldn’t take up the bulk of their time. But often that’s exactly what happens, with managers worn thin juggling their own responsibilities with the day-to-day administration of employees.
As companies everywhere are turning to automation for many high level business processes, many management processes tend to go overlooked when it comes to upgrading and modernizing operations. Tasks such as time tracking and payroll aren’t often seen as culprits of corporate loss in productivity or profit, so many businesses continue to use paper timesheets, Excel spreadsheets, or a combination of both to manually track and process employee hours.
Not only are these methods ineffective, but they typically rely on employees to self-report. This can lead to a number of expensive problems, such as time theft, buddy punching, and data entry mistakes, among others. That’s because this manual process typically looks something like this:
- Every pay cycle, employees submit their timesheets – and managers are expected to track down those that failed to or forgot to submit a timesheet.
- With paper timesheets, managers then have to spend time deciphering employee handwriting and looking for lost/misplaced timesheets.
- Managers enter the submitted timesheets manually into an Excel spreadsheet and then review the spreadsheet to check for data entry errors, such as incorrectly entered times, typos, or spelling mistakes, before the required deadline.
- Finally, managers submit the file for payroll.
This process is time-consuming and inefficient, and it often still ends up with managers spending even more time fixing incorrect paychecks. Worse, these errors don’t even account for time theft and buddy punching, which an estimated 75% of companies lose money from according to the American Payroll Association. A study by the American Society of Employers estimates that 20% of every dollar earned by US companies is lost to employee time theft.
That’s where automated time tracking systems, like stratus-io, come in. With stratus-io, the process now looks like this:
- Employees clock in and out with an RFID badge or ID card, including for breaks and meal times.
- The timestamp is recorded electronically at the time of the scan and sent to your database in real-time.
All of that work chasing employees and entering hours manually into Excel is done in a matter of seconds. Even better, it happens without interrupting employees’ workdays, since the scan is recorded automatically as they enter and leave the workplace.
In addition, with automated time tracking systems, employees are no longer self-reporting their work hours. Companies no longer end up paying for unworked time employees added to timesheets, undisclosed breaks, or other forms of time theft, and only pay for hours actually worked. With costs of time theft to US businesses estimated at over $20 billion, introducing an automated time tracking system like stratus-io could reduce, or remove altogether, the opportunity for this type of workplace theft, and have a noticeable effect on costs for small and large businesses alike.
While automated time tracking is proven to save businesses significantly in both time and money, many are still using outdated systems like paper timesheets and Excel spreadsheets to track and record employee hours for payroll. If you’re ready to take the stress, wasted time, and lost money out of your workforce management systems, contact us for a short demo and a free trial of stratus-io.
