The Timesheet Blog

When you’re in the business of optimizing ROI for companies like Hewlett Packard and the United States Postal Service, it only makes sense to have your own operations running at optimum efficiency.

Just ask Optimization Group, a marketing analytics firm that uses Web TimeSheet to track employee time, gain better visibility into projects costs, and generate more accurate project bids for its clients. It wasn’t always that easy. Before using Web TimeSheet, Optimization Group was using Excel-based timesheets and collecting them from employees by hand and e-mail.

Check out how they made the transition to Web TimeSheet, and how it’s helped the Michigan-based company.

All companies strive to manage their human resources effectively, especially in today’s economy when employee populations already feel a bit lean. It is often necessary to stretch resources – to utilize their skills wherever they can make an impact – even if it means sharing employees across departments.

For managers, sharing skilled workers can present challenges. They must cooperate to schedule employees efficiently, and in a way that applies valuable skills to the company’s greatest advantage. In cases where multiple managers are vying for the same resource, scheduling can become complicated; a single resource could easily end up double or triple booked.

Visible, Real Time Collaboration

Web Schedule addresses these challenges. Similar to Google Docs (TM), it allows multiple managers to collaborate on the same schedule – each from his/her own computer – and see others’ changes in real time. With visibility into each employee’s scheduled activities, managers can avoid scheduling conflicts.

Watch this video to see how easy it is to collaborate on employee schedules with Web Schedule.

Ready to tackle your employee scheduling nightmare?  Try a free trial.  No download required – sign up and get started today!

Have a story about your scheduling challenges? Please share your story in the comment section or ask us how we can be of assistance. Get our RSS feed , connect with us on LinkedIn, follow us @Replicon on Twitter.

Are you handling several projects with different milestones, deadlines and budgets?  Trying to manage all this information is confusing.   Sometimes, you may not even be completely sure how many projects are in the works concurrently (and who is supposed to be working on what).

You are probably frustrated with trying to keep track of all the details.  Without good visibility into your projects, you don’t know which ones are on schedule and which projects are woefully behind.  Even more troubling in today’s cash strapped economy, you can’t identify those projects that are creeping up on the dreaded “over budget” line.

You need a solution that dramatically increases the ease, efficiency, and accuracy of managing multiple projects.

Get Instant Relief with Project Status Reports

With the Project & Billing edition of Web TimeSheet, you have access to tools that help you manage every aspect of your company’s projects in real-time.  You are able to see at a glance where each project stands and how many estimated hours you have remaining.  You can identify and address projects and tasks that are lagging behind as well as those that need to be immediately re-evaluated to control costs.

Get everyone involved in Actuals and Estimates

Getting your team involved in acheiving on-time, on-budget project delivery is key to your success.  You can easily set-up multiple projects with estimates on timeline and cost.  As a project manager, you can assign projects and tasks to team members and start collecting actual time spent and time remaining.  Individual timesheet screens have a project progress bar to provide immediate feedback on where the project stands.  This helps team members see which projects need attention.

Everyone Benefits from Project Visibility

Keep project managers or your whole team up to speed with automated emailing of any report you select (or configure build) in Web TimeSheet.  Depending on how fast your projects are moving, you can set up this automatic distribution to occur once a month, once a week – or even every day.

Do you want to start managing your projects for success? Watch a video or take our project time tracking software for a test drive with a free trial (no downloads, immediate access).

Want to share your advice on managing projects for success? Do you have questions about how to use Web TimeSheet to keep your projects on track and under budget? Share your thoughts or ask us for advice in the comments section. And, don’t forget to stay in touch with us on Twitter and LinkedIn.

The 90-day period after you first introduce an application to your employees is critical when it comes to ensuring adoption.  Getting people to use a new time management system can be challenging.  Let’s face it – filling out timesheets is pretty boring.  Some employees get into the habit of putting off this tedious task.

When this happens, it hampers the organization’s ability to conduct business.  If you are managing a project, not having timesheets filled out promptly keeps you from effectively managing costs and forecasting accurate completion dates.  Inaccuracies in payroll due to missing time data can cause unintentional lapses in compliance and leave you open to possible litigation.  If you are billing your clients based on time data, it delays your ability to send out error-free invoices.  How do you ensure your employees get on board with using timesheet?  Here are 2 tools in Web TimeSheet that can help:

Automated Reminders

You can easily configure Web TimeSheet to send out reminders to all your employees encouraging them to complete their timesheets.  You choose the timing and frequency of these notifications.  A typical reminder email tells your employees which time period needs to be filled out and when it is due.  It also contains a clickable link to take employees directly to their timesheet.

That’s just one of the automated email notifications you can use to promote compliance.  Choose from our full range of templates and modify them specifically to meet your needs:

We also provide reporting functions which allow you to identify workers who consistently have difficulty completing their timesheets and turning them in.  That way, you can offer additional assistance to those who need it.  Use one-on-one counseling to help these employees understand how Web TimeSheet works and why adopting it will help keep your company running smoothly.

Software as a Service (SaaS) has been getting a lot of attention lately as the new and improved way for software vendors to serve their clients.  Is this just hype, or are you really losing out by not switching to this type of application?  Here’s what you need to know to make a smart decision.

Traditional Software Delivery

Before the advent of SaaS, companies had to:

1. Buy software from a vendor
2. Install it on their hardware
3. Maintain, upgrade, and support the software
4. Ensure the security, reliability and availability of each application

This traditional method results in a Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) many times the actual price of the initial purchase.

The SaaS Difference

SaaS is a new approach to delivering software.  As a customer, you get access to everything you need over the Internet – as a service.  Instead of installing and maintaining software, you simply log on to an application online whenever you like.  This eliminates the need for complex software and hardware management on your end.  If you have an internet connection, you can use this type of service.

Here are 6 benefits you receive when you switch to Software as a Service:

Minimal Up-Front Investment

SaaS applications are subscription based.  That means you don’t pay costly license fees.  You also avoid the large initial investment in IT infrastructure and the day-to-day maintenance hassles.  The provider takes care of all of this for you as part of their all-inclusive service.  This approach is cost effective and makes your expenses predictable.

You Aren’t Locked In

Most of today’s SaaS vendors offer pay-as-you-go pricing with no long term contract or commitment.  This includes Replicon’s full suite of time tracking products.  Since you are in control of how long you use the service, providers are more accountable for providing a high level of customer satisfaction.

Upgrade = Painless Process

The SaaS provider manages and administers all updates/upgrades seamlessly behind the scenes.  You don’t have to deal with the headache of deploying new patches and upgrades.  You will always be running the latest version of each application.

Adoption Rates Are High

Your Software as a Service accounts can be accessed from any computer terminal or device.  That means you can use the service anytime, anywhere, with just an internet browser.  Most people are already familiar with the Internet browser interface.  This means SaaS applications tend to have high adoption rates since users already understand the basics.

Your TCO Is Low

SaaS significantly lowers your Total Cost of Ownership.  There is only a predictable subscription fee – no upfront expense or ongoing, uncontrollable operating costs.  Your provider is responsible for managing availability, security, backup, and server maintenance.  There’s no need for you to add hardware, software, bandwidth, or IT staff as the user base grows.  You are only responsible for maintaining continuous access to the Internet.

Outdated Solutions Are Out of the Picture

These applications are evolving at a rapid rate.  Developers focus on what’s next rather than wasting time maintaining multiple versions of old code.  SaaS vendors use the same type of technology platforms as top web providers like eBay, Yahoo!, and Google.  This enables Software as a Service to achieve a similar level of continuous innovation.

With all these benefits to offer, it isn’t surprising that the SaaS model has flourished in recent years.
 

Do you have questions/comments about SaaS or a success story to share? Let us know in the comments. Connect with us on LinkedIn and keep up with the latest innovations via our Twitter feed.

Employee Scheduling Solution: Part 2 of a 2-part series

In our last post, we talked about a number of common scheduling problems that all have one practical solution – employee scheduling software. You understand the importance of creating an effective schedule, communicating changes clearly, and ensuring adherence. Now, let’s talk about a tool that will help you achieve all of these goals and more.

Introducing Web Schedule

At Replicon, we have created a powerful new scheduling module. You can use Web Schedule as a standalone feature or in combination with your existing access to Web TimeSheet. Like all our products, the Web Schedule application is Software as a Service (SaaS) that uses an online interface. This provides you quick access with a low risk, affordable pricing structure. Centralization and standardization are built into the design automatically. This makes it easy for each department to get on board with best practices for staff scheduling.

Fluid Functionality and Time Saving Templates

This employee scheduling software offers intuitive functionality. Managers can simply drag and drop time blocks anywhere on the screen to instantly create expected work periods for employees. You can also build a variety of templates that represent your company’s most commonly used schedules for different departments or positions. These static schedules can include 5 day workweeks, 4 on/3 off, or any other configuration that suits your needs.

Days can be broken up into multiple segments of scheduled work time with breaks in between for lunch or other off-the-clock activities. Blocks of time can be set aside for recurring events such as staff meetings. You can also clearly define the type of activity each employee is supposed to work on for a specific period. This helps ensure that workers use their on-the-clock hours to promote the greatest level of overall productivity for their department.

Internal Visibility

Everyone with administrative access to the employee scheduling software can see all the data entered into the system. Each administrator can be set up with an appropriate level of permission to create schedules and/or update them. Every change made in Web Schedule can be reviewed to see which user made the alteration (and when). New schedule entries are initially created in an unpublished version – they aren’t made public until you make a final decision.

Employee Communication

When a change in schedule is finalized, the affected employees’ scheduling calendars are automatically updated. Each employee has can view his/her current monthly schedule calendar with assigned activities and the status of any time off requests. If you are using the Web TimeSheet application along with Web Schedule, employees can also easily enter their hours worked. This encourages employee compliance with accurate and timely recordkeeping.

Time & Attendance Adherence

Approvers can sort timesheets to show all hours worked (or missed) that fall outside the preset parameters. These discrepancies can be addressed to either correct the error or confirm the employee’s failure to adhere to the schedule before the data is sent to Payroll. Management and HR can also readily pull historical data on any employee to see if a particular time & attendance violation is part of a larger pattern.

Detailed Reporting

In addition to tracking discrepancies, you can rapidly gather information for any time period to review past staff scheduling and time worked. Having access to accurate reports assists each department manager in ensuring fair, consistent application of company policies.

Try a free trial or sign up for service today for a low subscription fee. Want to see Web Schedule in action? Watch our mini-tutorial to see how easy it is to create and update schedules.

Which Web Schedule options will help you most in your business? Tell us in the comments. Feel free to ask any questions about this new product – we’re here to help. Stay in touch with us on LinkedIn and Twitter too.

Employee Scheduling Problem: Part 1 of a 2-part series

Accurate and efficient employee scheduling is an absolute necessity for companies in today’s highly competitive environment. As a leader in business, you know we don’t live in a world where:

• Your budget to cover labors costs is unlimited
• There are plenty of hours in the day to complete any task
• Workers are always available and never require supervision

Instead, we live in the real world where any scheduling error can negatively impact your organization’s bottom line.

Your goal in managing workflow is to ensure sufficient staffing levels so you can meet the needs of your customers. Accidental understaffing doesn’t just affect the service you give your clients. It also increases stress for your workers as they scramble to get things done. Morale, quality of work, productivity, and employee retention all suffer if you don’t schedule adequately.

Of course, this is a careful balancing act. Labor costs are one of the most significant recurring expenses your company has. Because of this, overstaffing can be just as detrimental as having too few workers on the job. Paying for superfluous labor (or unnecessary overtime) cuts into your organization’s profitability. It also leaves employees adrift without enough to do.

Top 5 Challenges Caused by Traditional Employee Scheduling

Manual Staff Scheduling has Low ROI

Creating an employee schedule by hand is a daunting task for managers and supervisors. Matching worker availability to staffing requirements and controlling labor costs at the same time is complicated. When managers produce a schedule manually, they often end up causing inflated payroll in some areas while leaving other departments chronically understaffed.

Worse yet, achieving this sub-optimal result usually takes over 8 hours per week just to create a schedule for 70-100 workers. A manager who takes employee scheduling seriously may spend much more time on this task – up to 14 hours per week. Still, the outcome can be disappointing simply because this method is inefficient.

Employees Aren’t Kept Up to Speed

In today’s dynamic production environments, last minute changes are common. This means you have probably noticed the following problem with manually created employee schedules: workers are frequently unaware of last minute changes. That’s because they have no visibility in their schedules. This causes unintended time & attendance violations that managers and HR staff members have to investigate and address.

When an employee doesn’t show up to cover his/her shift, other workers must stay longer. This increases your overtime costs. Or, you have to cope with the inevitable problems caused by running a shift with a skeleton crew.

In addition to being confused by the lack of a transparent staff scheduling process, employees may also become resentful. It isn’t unusual for workers to feel that covert decisions regarding time off requests and shift scheduling are being made out of favoritism.

Payroll Errors Eat Up Valuable Resources

When it comes to getting timesheets turned in to Payroll, the problems with manual employee scheduling become even more evident. Each timesheet has to be tediously compared with logged hours. Managers must review each sheet after the fact, correct it, and send the edits to Payroll. This is not a productive use of time for your department heads. Of course, if a busy manager makes an error in editing, payroll employees have to edit (by hand) again.

Unbudgeted Expenses Cause Conflict

A decentralized, manual scheduling process makes it tough to keep staffing expenses and unapproved overtime under control. This is a common cause of unbudgeted departmental expenditures. Without real-time access to staffing data, current schedules, and budgeting parameters, managers have difficulty finding the most suitable, cost efficient employee to fill a gap. They have no choice but to make an uninformed decision and cope afterward with the consequences of incurring unbudgeted expenses.

Labor Law Compliance Risks

Inconsistency and poor record keeping are the most common offenses that trigger fines for labor law and worker pay violations. Without visibility in employee scheduling (and complete, accurate records), HR may be unaware of a problem until it is too late. This not only puts your company at risk for being penalized by government agencies, it also opens you up to litigation from employees.

Are you ready to wake up from the nightmare of creating inefficient, time consuming employee schedules by hand? Stay tuned for our next post on a practical solution that will ease the hassles of creating, communicating and adhering to schedules.

What type of scheduling problems do you run into most often? Let us know in the comments. Keep in touch with us on Twitter and LinkedIn to stay up to speed with the latest product innovations.

It’s hard to keep up with techno speak in almost any area, and Software as a Service, or SaaS is certainly no exception. One can find all of these on the web, but what’s the difference between SaaS, IaaS  (Infrastructure), Cloud Computing, ASP (Application Service Provider), the great sounding oxymoron-HaaS (Hardware), CaaS (Communication), PaaS (Platform) and the ubiquitous EaaS (Everything). Here at Replicon we have tried to standardize on SaaS, which seems to be the most common name for how we deliver to our customers the functionality of our software. For example, we refer to our timesheet software delivered over SaaS as SaaS Timesheet.

More SaaS lingo-is it SAS 70 or SaaS 70? For the time being it’s SAS 70, which sounds the same as SaaS 70 and I’ve seen both written, but for the time being, there is only one accepted standard and it’s SAS 70. Statement on Auditing Standards (SAS) No. 70, Service Organizations, is a widely recognized auditing standard developed by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). SAS 70 is widely recognized because it represents that a service organization has been through an in-depth audit of its control objectives and control activities, which often include controls over information technology and related processes. The merits of SAS 70 for a SaaS provider are beyond the scope of this blog, but I can say with certainty that Replicon has regular SAS 70 Type II audits performed and passed.

Much has been written on the benefits of SaaS. One benefit, sticking with industry speak and which I believe in, is the reduction of “shelfware”. The shelfware I’m speaking about is unused software, either wholly unused due to installation challenges or purchasing mistakes, or possibly more insidiously shelfware through unused seats. Near and dear to a CFO’s heart, SaaS makes it conveniently possible for a customer to only be billed and pay for software actually used. This is done through invoicing taking place at the end of a billing period, based on actual usage during that period as determined by the SaaS providers’ software management system.

What is your take on techie terminology? Post your comments, connect with us at LinkedIn, or send them to @Replicon on Twitter.

Spend a day going through the previous year’s paid invoices.  You may just be surprised by what you find.

This is the essence of “The double-payment challenge”, an article posted at realbusiness.co.uk that draws attention to the fact that many businesses – when they examine their expenses closely – discover all sorts of errors in their accounting, duplicate payments included.

Is it worth spending an entire day sifting through old financial records?  Will you really find an invoice that was double paid?

Chances are, you probably will.

You may be wondering how such a thing could happen, but consider this:  While most automated accounting systems include invoice tracking to detect if an invoice has already been paid, not all of those systems require you to enter the invoice number when processing the payment.  And even when they do require an invoice number, it’s possible (likely, in fact) that the invoice number may be entered incorrectly.  We are all human, after all, and we do make the occasional mistake.

So how do you avoid duplicate payments?  Here are a few tips:

• Conspicuously mark invoices as paid (both hard copy and electronic versions)
• Eliminate extra copies of invoices
• Never process payments based on a supplier’s statement – use only the official invoice.

It’s worth double checking whether you’re paying your invoices twice.  Even if you find that everything is in order, you’ll achieve some peace of mind.

I’ve implemented timesheet systems for many different companies, and I thought I knew everything about timesheet implementation.  I was wrong.  With each and every company, I noticed that it took considerable time to convince several individuals about the benefits of adopting a new timesheet system.  Some companies succeeded, while others failed – and the only difference between them was how they managed the cultural change.

Here are some of the challenges I have faced, with some advice on how you can avoid the same problems.

Resistance from different types of users

Resistance from users at different levels in the project process can seriously hinder your implementation.   For example, project managers do not want to share information, higher-level managers do not want to become involved in project decisions, technology people want to build it in-house, and users see it as another useless activity added to their plate by senior management.

To overcome this problem, you need to involve the right people and show them how it will make their lives easier – a good tactic because it helps them see the benefit of what you’re doing.   On the flip side, you can’t involve everyone!  I’ve worked with too many people who insist on leadership by committee.  Pick a small, representative team, give them the title of “project board” and make them feel involved.  Your life will be so much easier.

No Clear Objectives are Communicated

If the team cannot visualize the benefits of using the new system, they will not be willing to invest the time and effort to learn it.  If team members are paid by the hour, for example, reducing the number of hours required to do a job is not an attractive option unless there are balancing considerations such as competitive pressures.  Goals have to be clearly communicated to everyone, such as:

• Predict the cost of large projects accurately
• Achieve consistent on-time project completion
• Comply with government regulations like Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA)

Senior management does not follow through after implementation

Management mandates the use of the new timesheet system, but fails to enforce the system once implemented.  Senior management’s support and commitment is essential throughout the process.  However, this does not mean they need to be involved in all the nitty-gritty details of the project.  For example, a senior manager could be involved in communicating the objectives to the team members, or the first timesheet reminder could come from them till everything starts to run smoothly.

Difficult-to-use interface

If the interface is hard to use, team members will become frustrated very quickly, and will start to use this as an excuse for not filling in the timesheet.  To rectify this problem, first, invest in a system with an easy-to-use interface.

Second, keep data collection simple.  In other words, KISS it:  Keep It Short and Simple.  When it comes to data collection, more is not better.  On the contrary, more is destructive.  Ask people to track too much data and they will rebel by recording useless data.  Instead, track the absolute minimum amount of information you need to make profitable decisions.  You need to install a timesheet system that delivers the goods without overwhelming your people.  It’s difficult … but not impossible.

Not enough time for Testing

This is the phase that gets ignored when, at the last minute, people jump into deploying the system to everyone in the company.  An e-mail with a link is sent to everyone asking them to start tracking time starting tomorrow.

Instead of rushing through the process, set a date to aim for launch and then work back from there.  Make plenty of allowance for the testing and training phases.

It’s essential to test with a small set of users in a tame environment, to ensure the system is set up correctly.  Make sure that users can navigate easily through the system without it  eating into their day.  Don’t be tempted to put something out to the masses if it isn’t quite right.  Your efforts will backfire.  You need to get people on board from day one – or you’ll always be fighting a losing battle!

Nobody wants to take time away from work to learn something that isn’t directly relevant to his or her job.  Focus training on how to perform job functions using the system.  Raise awareness within the organization through workshops, e-mails, bulletins, newsletters, training, help desk, and upper management commitments.

Conclusion

You can never please all the people all of the time.  Whatever you do, you will always have some dissenters.  Don’t let them derail you.  Make sure you know who they are going to be in advance – identify them early, and then treat them as special cases.

Above all, your organization should take an accurate inventory to assess its current alignment, willingness, and readiness for a new timesheet system before committing to change.  Good luck!