Farmer Reaps Profits with Telephone Time Clock

Here’s what Robert, a satisfied customer and California farmer, recently shared with me:

“As a farmer specializing in fruits and vegetables, I manage considerable acreage across several farms scattered throughout central California. At peak times during the year I have hundreds of people working under me, with the accompanying rise in administrative time for all tasks, including time attendance tracking for workers at various locations.

“Most of my employees are temporary, and at harvest time our work schedule becomes very intense, with variable hours of work per day. This creates a burden for my field supervisors, especially since they also have to travel between multiple distant locations while managing people, produce, transport, and some customer interactions. At that moment time really is money for me as it is for many growers who count on their harvests as their chief source of income. These are the weeks in which we need to maximize our direct money-making opportunities! Struggling with administrative tasks like time-keeping can be aggravating since of course the records must be totally accurate!

“We farmers who grow plants do not have the luxury that traditional plant managers have to create and enforce a regular schedule! Mother Nature dictates when strawberries or lettuce or other crops must be harvested—and often with little notice. There are days, for example, when we need to rush to harvest for one reason or another, perhaps changes in weather. At other times conditions force us to extend the hours and continue until dusk.

“Although my supervisors are very capable, we recently realized that the time had come to delegate the time-keeping task in order to make better use of their skills and time while actually improving the system—without adding another person to the payroll. In other words, we became more profitable almost overnight with a new kind of employee time clock!

"“We have found that the incorporation of Telephone Time Clock has solved our problem almost like magic. We simply installed or made available a phone on each farm, and upon starting and finishing work, each worker calls into the central number to identify himself or herself. That’s all there is to it. This generates a reliable, far more accurate record than manual records while eliminates misunderstandings as well. My foremen are especially grateful because it frees them to do the kind of tasks that they like best instead of pencil pushing.

“News travels, and several neighboring farmers starting to consider how incorporation of the system for next season. I wish them all the success that we have enjoyed!”

Thanks, Robert, and happy harvesting!

Home Business Solution

I have a small but profitable home business in which I employ three other people. I have never had a typical employee time clock for my employees to clock in with. I’ve just always written down their times on a piece of paper and then calculated their times at the end of the pay period. Recently, however, I decided I needed a better way to keep track of their time so that I always have a good reliable method to keep on record and to make pay day a lot less stressful.

I installed what is known as the telephone time clock that allows my employees to call a number to clock in and out of work. The data is stored for me off site and sent to me electronically when I am ready to do payroll. I no longer have to worry about if I wrote down their times or not; the phone in system is much easier and a more professional way to do my bookkeeping.

This system is an excellent time attendance tracking method that allows my employees to take it upon themselves to call into the system when they come on the clock and go off the clock. They can call from anywhere and since my home business encompasses the fifty acres of land I own, it’s nice that they can go straight to where they need to go without checking in with me first. They just call into the system and then go straight to the work site. It has saved a great deal of confusion and frustration for us all.

I think this is an excellent alternative to the normal time clock so many companies utilize. I can see how this system will become very popular among business owners who rely on their employees to be on work sites that are away from the office.

The Time Keeper

I am the head of payroll for a very large company. We employ over two hundred people whom don’t all work at the home office. We have several different branch offices but payroll comes from just one office; my office. If you have ever had to gather information from the employee time clock you know this is no easy task; especially when there are other offices around the county.

There are many times employees forget to clock in or they are out on the job site without ever checking in at the office. They have to write down their time and sometimes they just forget. This became a big hassle. Finally I got my boss to begin using the telephone time clock where all the employees call in to clock in and clock out. It’s simple and takes less time than actually clocking in the old fashioned way.

At the end of the pay period I can get all the data from all the employees in one click of the mouse. It lets me know exact times to the second and tallies up all the numbers for me. It has made my job so much easier and less stressful. I don’t know how we ever got along before we got the phone time clock system; I would spend the entire day doing payroll while all my other duties piled up.

The employees don’t mind making the call every day and it sure helps us to know who is working where and for how long. There are times when we absolutely need to know who was working on a certain job and all we have to do is check the time attendance tracking data to get the answer. There is no more guess work about it. I don’t stress about doing payroll anymore.

Controlling the Time

My husband and I own a rather large construction company. We have many different projects going on at the same time and many employees who are assigned to remote sites away from our office. Sometimes the jobs we do are out of town, which makes it impossible for our employees to actually clock in. Keeping up with payroll was a real hassle especially when many of our employees work a great deal of over-time. A year ago I took care of that big problem by using a telephone time clock system. This has eliminated 99% of the stress associated with payroll. Our employees simply call to clock in and out and their time is recorded and sent to me daily.

Running a business is difficult and when you have well over a hundred employees the difficulties multiply daily. Time attendance tracking lets us know exactly when and for how long each of our employees are working. We even added some additional information to each of our employee’s time clock profiles that tells us the rate of pay they make. This system has made our lives so much less stressful and has made payroll a much more pleasant task. It used to take me an entire day to figure out time sheets; now I just print off the information from the phone time clock and most of my work is done.

I highly recommend this time-saving product for any company, especially if you have employees that work off site from your main office. The telephone time clock system that we began using has been the difference between hours and hours of tedious work and just clicking a few buttons and having all that information in one report. We’ve also saved thousands of dollars in over paying our employees who were simply guessing how many hours they worked. Now we know exactly how many hours have been worked and all the guessing is behind us.

5 Important Time Management Strategies for Employees

If we were able to put a tiny, automated on/off switch inside every employee's head, and run checks on how many hours of the day they are focusing on work for, the results would probably astonish both employers and employees! Even if Facebook is blocked from work computers, there are high levels of supervision and employees must leave their phones somewhere away from their workstation, there is plenty of unproductive time at work … and most businesses don't have anything close to this strictly controlled atmosphere. Nor would they want to! Today we are looking at simple, proactive solutions to the productivity dilemma (including telephone time clocking), plugging some obvious holes so that brain breaks are no longer company-killers.

Activity logs

These are as close as we can get to having that magical automated on/off switch inside the brain. Logging the amount of time spent on each activity, not just for the entire day at work, helps identify slow spots and difficulties. When we have to write down how much time was spent on something, we are much more accountable for it. Manual systems can work well, but automated systems, like a micro-version of telephone time clocking, are the ideal solution.

Telephone Time Clocking

According to rounding rules at both federal and state levels, rounding might be permitting your employees to be paid for up to fifteen minutes a day when they aren’t even on the work premises. Implement systems like telephone time clocking to plug this obvious productivity hole.

Prioritization

Effective managers use this tool all the time -- get the most important thing done first. If your employees don't have all the information necessary to decide what tasks on their list are the most important, managers should be helping them decide. This can be done at weekly, daily or monthly meetings.

Managing Interruptions

Interruptions can be even more devastating to a company budget than manual time cards and their daily fifteen minute inaccuracies. We havetelephone time clocking as a set process to manage the signing in dilemma -- but no set rule for dealing with interruptions. It simply has to become a part of company culture that employees interrupt each other as little as possible. Questions can be left at a central spot rather than asked as they come up, for example.

United States Timecard Laws

In a highly developed society, you'll find that legislation and regulation in many areas is increased. Business is an area of society that is hard hit with regulation, and people can study business law for years and still not have a comprehensive understanding … and that is only the legal system for one country! You may not realize the extent of laws that relate to timecard provisioning and use in the United States. Today we are looking at the laws themselves, and how telephone time clocking can help employers comply with their obligations with a minimum of fuss, effort and financial investment.

Federal versus state laws

We are looking at federal laws with regard to timekeeping for employees today; however, many states have laws that are stricter than those imposed at the federal level. You must always go by the stricter principle, so check with a local employment law expert to ensure that you are complying the relevant standard.

Types of timekeeping

Almost any type of timekeeping is permitted under federal law, as long as it is an ACCURATE representation of the time worked by a particular employee. So, even the most low-tech methods, like pen and paper are allowed. Of course, you will have process and operational considerations when you choose a method of timekeeping -- low-tech isn’t necessarily best. Telephone time clocking is one of the most accurate, indisputable methods available. Methods may include:

• Pen and paper
• Timecard punch machine
• Electronic badge readers
• Scanners
• Telephone time clocking

Who are the laws directed at?

Employees that are entitled to overtime pay are the target of most timekeeping laws in the U.S. However, employees that are exempt from being owed overtime still need to keep accurate time records for sick pay and leave purposes.

Who is responsible for the accuracy of the records?

Given the fact that low-tech methods of timekeeping are perfectly lawful and it isn't reasonable to ask a manager to record every employee coming and going, it is the employee's responsibility to make sure timecards are accurate. Unfortunately, there are too many ways in which they can be inaccurate by just a little bit … costing corporations a lot of money!

Rounding

According to federal law rounding on time cards is allowed, as long as it doesn’t unduly benefit the employer and it balances out over time. The problem with this policy is that there is no way to know (without extensive monitoring) in a manual timecard system whether it actually does balance out. Telephone time clocks overcome this difficulty for employers.

The Technology Behind Phone Time Clocks

It's a wonderful thing when technology works in your favor, isn't it? One way managers can have that experience is with a phone time clock. Thanks to an old-school standard, the telephone, and modern-day Internet capability, telephone time clock systems are extremely simple and effective. Just in case you're wondering if phone-based time attendance tracking would work for your company, here's a quick review of the technology behind these innovative systems.

Telephone time clocks require, as we mentioned, only a telephone and access to the Internet. Here's where the telephone portion comes in:

* Employees at remote locations or seasonal employees call a toll-free number to start their shifts.
* They key in their employee and location codes to register their attendance.
* When their shift ends, they again call in and key in the same information and the hours worked are automatically calculated.

But how does the Internet come into play?

* Individual accounts are set up for every company implementing this type of time attendance tracking.
* The server which houses the phone time clock software also stores each employee's hours.
* Managers and payroll department staff for each company can log in twenty four hours a day, from any Internet-compatible computer, to check real-time employee attendance.
* Via the Internet, it's also possible to log in, print time cards and review historical data for all employees.
* In a top-quality phone time clock system, the central server synchronizes itself daily to ensure complete accuracy.

So, what does all that well-blended technology really mean for frustrated managers? For one thing, being web-based means being able to manage remote locations from a central office (or even from home!) It means not having to call in and verify with shift managers that a full crew has reported for duty.

It means saving your payroll department hours of time chasing time cards, recalculating inaccurate time records and waiting for manager signatures. It can also mean a gold star in some manager's file if she's the wise person who suggested this time-saving, budget-conscious innovation.

Thanks to the amazing flexibility of the Internet and almost universal access to telephones, phone time clocks work, period. Very large companies and small, single owner firms have benefited from the technology that makes this all possible. Do your homework and find the righttelephone time clock system for your firm. Technology just made your life a whole lot simpler.