Highlights
- Tracking time and attendance effectively is key to ensuring fast, transparent, error-free payroll.
- Companies should look for solutions that allow employees to clock in and out from different locations and devices and can accommodate flexible work arrangements.
- At SBS Payroll, we provide automated time and attendance software to help you collect employees’ labor data and integrate it into your payroll solution. Reach out to get started!
While it may be seen as a basic task, tracking time and attendance is a vital aspect of HR’s daily routine: It ensures that employees are paid accurately, helps businesses stay compliant, and provides insights for effective employee scheduling and decision-making.
However, as businesses shift toward remote and flexible work arrangements, with employees scattered across various locations, time tracking is becoming more challenging and complex.
This article delves into the ins and outs of labor tracking and the benefits of implementing automated time and attendance systems.
Let’s jump right in!
Overview of Time & Attendance Challenges
Labor tracking presents unique challenges for each company, based on their sector, size, and specific compliance requirements.
These are the main concerns that companies face when monitoring employee’s work hours and attendance:
- Finding a time and attendance solution that’s easy to use, adapts to their business needs, and accurately reflects employees’ work hours
- Adhering to ever-changing labor laws and regulations regarding overtime, breaks, and other workforce management requirements
- Seamlessly integrating time and attendance tracking systems with their existing HR and payroll systems
- Managing flexible work arrangements such as remote work, flextime, and compressed workweeks
- Preventing employees from clocking in or out for each other — a practice known as ‘buddy punching’ that leads to inaccurate records and potential payroll fraud
The Importance of Accurate Labor Data Tracking
Having an accurate system in place to track time and attendance is crucial for several reasons, such as:
- Ensuring payroll accuracy: Being precise when tracking employees’ work hours guarantees that they are compensated fairly for the time they have worked. This maintains trust, keeps your company transparent, and prevents frustrating experiences:
“49% of the American workforce will begin searching for a new job after experiencing just two issues with their paycheck”
— The Workforce Institute
- Staying compliant with labor laws: Many jurisdictions have specific regulations regarding working hours, overtime, breaks, and other labor-related matters. An accurate labor data tracking system ensures you always stay compliant, reducing the risk of legal issues and penalties.
- Planning and allocating resources effectively: By having accurate labor data, companies can determine staffing levels, schedule shifts, and identify areas where they might need additional resources.
- Keeping track of employee performance: Labor data tracking helps managers assess employee productivity, identify top performers, and address potential issues.
Benefits of Automated Time & Attendance Systems
In the past, paper timesheets and time clocks were the standard for tracking employees’ work hours. Then, Excel timesheets replaced paper but still required entering data manually, making the process highly prone to error.
Nowadays, cloud-based time and attendance systems enable companies to automate the process of recording employee clock-in and clock-out times, as well as other relevant information such as breaks, overtime, and absences.
Time and attendance software also integrates with payroll and HR software, making it easier for companies to calculate wages, manage benefits, and generate reports.
Let’s break down the main benefits of implementing automated time-tracking software:
- More accurate records of employee attendance and hours worked. Automated systems reduce the likelihood of human error. For companies, this means ensuring fair compensation, staying compliant with labor laws, and being able to allocate resources more effectively.
- HR teams can save time and be more productive. Without the need for manual entry or dealing with paper-based timesheets, HR teams can save time and be able to focus on more strategic tasks. This can improve productivity and performance across the organization.
- Cost savings. By reducing manual administrative tasks and errors associated with traditional time-tracking methods, automated systems can help companies prevent overpayments, underpayments, and compliance issues related to labor laws.
- Gain real-time visibility into employee attendance and hours worked. Managers and supervisors can access up-to-date information, enabling them to make timely decisions regarding staffing, scheduling, and resource allocation.
- Track work hours across different locations and devices. Automated time and attendance systems can accommodate various work arrangements, such as remote work. They also enable employees to clock in and out from different devices, from mobile apps to web-based portals.
SBS Payroll’s Solutions
Do you want to deliver a simple, flawless, and fully compliant payroll experience? Start by having an effective time and attendance solution in place.
At SBS Payroll, we provide a comprehensive suite of payroll and HR services that you can customize based on your specific business needs.
With our time and attendance software, you can collect time data remotely or on-site and integrate it into your payroll. That way, you can reduce the time your HR team spends on admin tasks, reduce overpayments or other payroll errors, and have peace of mind knowing that your business is always compliant.
Streamline Your Payroll Processing and Time & Attendance Tracking
Accurate and efficient time tracking is essential for keeping your business transparent, ensuring that your employees are being paid fairly, and streamlining administrative processes that would otherwise take much longer and lead to potential errors.
While there are many solutions out there, it’s important to choose one that adapts to your business and provides different alternatives to track employees’ work hours and attendance.
Ready to improve your payroll process with powerful time tracking? Contact us to learn how we can help your business.
