Time keeping quickly turns into a costly aspect of running a small business like yours when you don't get the help you needed immediately. This problem probably holds true for companies with employees working through flexible or rotating shifts. Tracking their logged hours and calculating their pay based on their irregular work schedules becomes a hassle when done manually and repeatedly. Of course, you'll reach more accurate results faster when you hire more staff to double-check the different times that your employees logged on and off at work. However, this seems too much of a burden for startup companies and small businesses. Rather than see additional labor costs included in their monthly budget, these business owners would rather make a one-time payment for a cost-effective and multi-functional tool in payroll management.
No More Old Dog Tricks in Re-Calculating Logged Hours of Work
In the old days, employees used to insert their time cards into a special clock that stamps the exact date and time for logging on and off work. Unfortunately, manual insertions led to cheating tricks, which involved clocking into work by proxy. In this case, an individual would ask a co-worker to insert their cards one after the other into the time clock. Thus, it would look like the first employee also clocked in early, but in truth, it was almost ten o'clock when he sat down at his desk. However, the recent developments in computer technology have turned this "cheat" and others like it into a relic of the analog-dependent past.
Now, there's a more reliable method in managing the monthly payroll that's free from overt manipulation of actual hours worked. If you wanted to make sure the hours summed up correctly and included all work done during a holiday or the night shift, you could take the less expensive route by using custom business software that helps you manage your payroll easily. Instead of spending more by hiring new staff to make sure your employees get paid accordingly, why not get custom-made software that's specially designed for your payroll needs? It runs on top of MS Excel, which you and everyone else already know to use. And so, you and your staff won't need any additional training, which leads to its faster implementation in your company's accounting system.
Quickly Redistribute the Work Load during Sudden Absences and Emergencies
Managing different sets of work schedules for different groups of employees at the same time becomes even more difficult to handle when changes had to be made frequently. On top of re-scheduling employees with approved vacation and maternity leaves, shift managers and business owners also had to deal with unexpected absences because of a sudden illness or a personal emergency.
Generally, sick workers had to call in an hour or two before the morning shift began and inform the shift supervisor that they'd be absent for that day. This leaves the manager barely enough time to call and ask another employee who'd be willing to come in as a reliever. Of course, the employee got paid for all his or her trouble; this extra pay would have been equivalent to a full day's wage for the absent worker, or it's the total overtime pay for an additional 8 hours of work.
Sometimes, a shift supervisor must be ready to fill in for an employee who had to leave immediately because of an emergency. An emergency leave often applies to urgent situations that require medical assistance. An example would be an employee who had an accident at work and must be brought to the nearest hospital as soon as possible. Naturally, the employee's injury automatically qualified the employee for a sick leave with pay.
In addition, the employer immediately presumes the employee's lengthy absence (about a week or two) because of the time required for complete healing and recovery. Another situation where an employee had to end his shift early usually involves someone closely related to him or her either by blood or by friendship. The emergency leave's purpose was to give ample time for the employee to go home straight or to quickly travel to the hospital where she was urgently needed by her child, her spouse, or her dearest friend.
Extend the Security and Usability Features of Your Payroll Management System
Using a bio-scanner or an RF ID strengthens the security of your time-keeping and payroll management system. A scanner or RF chip embedded in an ID card makes logging on and off your work shift a breeze. This method also prevents employees from knowing and accessing the computer where all of the employees' logs were stored. However, the bio-scanning device or the RF ID chips may cost too much for you to implement them in your workplace.
In contrast, you don't have to create a time-keeping and payroll system that consists of elaborate or expensive components. Find reliable Open Source tools in time-keeping and other freeware apps in payroll management that won't likely infect your PC with Trojans. Alternatively, you can customize an Excel spreadsheet template into your own time-keeping sheet, which you can further configure to automatically update data in other sheets. For example, every time the employee logs in or out from the time-keeping sheet, the corresponding total number of hours worked by that employee was also updated in real-time within your current payroll sheet. Moreover, you can add security to your time-keeping data by installing and running macros that prevented unauthorized editing of the logged times and dates.
Claire Ponsaran has been working as a freelance writer since 2009 for various businesses online. Most of what she's written belongs to popular niches, which include customized desktop apps and Windows-based business tools that function on top of the MS Office Suite.
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