The Timesheet Blog

Throughout the year, we hear many stories of great businesses who are unnecessarily doubling or even tripling their time-entry processes. Such was the case at Contoural, a business consulting firm based in Mountain View, California, where employees were submitting their timesheets in two different formats: one for internal use and another for client billing. Additionally, that same billing data was then manually entered into Contoural’s accounting system. This slow, time-consuming process was neither efficient nor fun for any of Contoural’s 50+ staff.

To rectify this, Contoural swapped its outdated time-tracking methods for Web TimeSheet. The hassle-free solution has streamlined the company’s time keeping, simplified its billing process and eliminated the use of multiple spreadsheets.

Read this case study to see how Web TimeSheet has saved Contoural’s consultants 30% of their administrative time, resulting in more time for billable activities.

We occasionally get questions about rounding off employee time entries, primarily for use in calculating attendance or payroll. Most inquiries come from customers who use either the locked in-out method or punch card module in our Web TimeSheets.

In most real-time systems, when users enter their start and stop times, the system captures the exact times and easily calculates a daily/weekly/monthly total. Rounding is largely unnecessary in time tracking software because no manual additions are performed offline, unlike with old paper punch cards.

If rounding is required, it is best to round up to the nearest time increment, in the employee’s favor.

This is a common Best Practice for employee time tracking. It can help protect your company. Here is additional information:

Rounding can also create extra work, instill uncertainty and doubt regarding employee time totals, and open companies to litigation. Here are some pitfalls to avoid:

1)     Historical inertia:  “We’ve always done it this way.”

2)     Unfair practice of rounding to save money.

3)     Potential auditing concerns.

When companies use manual methods or proprietary formulas for rounding the amount of time worked, it opens them up to up to potential litigation. See this article about what the U.S. Department of Labor expects in calculating work time.

Litigation usually revolves around interpretations of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which states that nonexempt employees should be paid for every minute worked, as long as the rounding is non-biased in one direction or another. Here is an article about how this works.

And payroll processor ADP cites rounding as one of the three most common violations to avoid.

That being said, Replicon Software can support companies that have rounding policies.

We occasionally get thought-provoking feedback about the relative value of a “work comes first” attitude among employees. When some of our customers analyze employee time tracking on their projects, they sometimes find that certain people considered their hardest workers can negatively affect the bottom line. So, it may be a good idea to examine your time management strategies to ensure you’re creating the most productive and profitable environment. What are some of the factors you could consider?

The true productivity of  projects

• Without real-time monitoring, workers can devote too many hours too soon on projects. This can lead to cost overruns, and limit opportunities to course-correct if original estimates were inaccurate.
• It can be surprising to analyze who is actually the best fit for a task. Sometimes a supposedly less-hardworking team member can perform certain tasks more efficiently.
• The factors above can lead to the need to reassess project staffing and scheduling.

Healthcare (and human) costs

• Fatigue, poor health, and stress can all result from overwork, and lead to more doctor visits and hospitalization.
• While some hard workers may take fewer vacation days, often the tradeoff is that they take more sick days.
• Overwork can also foster poor morale if “workaholics” are rewarded more than “less-dedicated” workers.

Vacation/PTO liability

• You may have to pay workers twice for their time, if they don’t take vacations or other time off.
• Workers can leave unexpectedly, or create production problems if they choose to (or are forced to) use vacation all at once.

You can analyze many of these factors with our Web TimeSheets. Reports can show you how efficiently people actually perform tasks. You can identify who is taking more-than-expected sick days and, concomitantly, whose work/time-off balance may be unhealthy—and unprofitable—in the long run.

In a way, it’s a leap of faith to hand responsibility for your data to a third party. We recognized that when we began encouraging customers to use our Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) timesheets. We had to meet the most stringent requirements of some of the world’s largest companies. They wanted documented assurance that their time tracking information would be secure, available, and fully backed up. To satisfy them, we took pains to create a world-class infrastructure for data security.

When you become a Replicon customer we take full responsibility for protecting your data, and ensuring there’s a high degree of “uptime” access to it. How do we do that? There are several interconnected components.

Physical Security
We start with our data centers. Access to them is limited to authorized personnel, and is controlled by key card or biometric scanning. There’s digital surveillance to monitor and record activities, a 24/7 onsite security staff, and alarms connected to local police.

The data centers feature environmental controls to ensure that servers always operate within specifications. There are multiple heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) units to regulate temperature and humidity, and the servers themselves are maintained in racks raised above the floor to minimize impact of localized flooding. Redundant power supplies use a combination of uninterrupted power supply (UPS), generators, or battery backup.

Certification
We undergo an annual SAS 70 Type II audit, which is the industry standard—established by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants—for demonstrating that service organizations have adequate controls and processes in place to satisfy their stated objectives for securing data.

Application Security
All of the data sent between your computers and our host servers is encrypted via Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) technology, and there are industry-standard security provisions within our applications, including configurable password controls, session timeouts, role-based user access, and separate database schema for individual customers.

Network Protection
Intrusion detection and prevention services are deployed at multiple levels of our network, and there are firewalls that separate it from outside traffic.

Service Level Guarantee
All of the above combine to ensure that our uptime exceeds 99.5% per month. In a typical month, it is 100%.

Disaster Recovery
Your data is completely backed up offsite. That includes 100% redundant architecture for all networking and application components such as switches, load balancers, firewalls, routers, web servers, application servers, and database servers. There are backup and recovery procedures that feature database backups every four hours and full backups weekly, plus disaster recovery tests that are performed regularly to ensure recoverability.

The result?
You can relax, knowing your data is secure and available. As with everything else, we strive to make your experience hassle-free—and worry-free as well.

For organizations that contract with the Department of Defense (DoD), time tracking data that complies with Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA) guidelines is paramount. Many DoD contractors choose Replicon’s Web TimeSheet because of its built-in adherence to DCAA requirements, from detailed work descriptions to a verifiable audit trail.

When our customers choose Replicon Web TimeSheet to satisfy the DCAA’s requirements, they’re often pleasantly surprised by an added benefit: increased profitability. One such company is the Safety Research Corporation of America (SRCA), which creates interactive software databases for the DoD and other clients.

SRCA initially created its own time-tracking system, but growing demand for new features ate up programmers’ time and threatened the company’s previously airtight DCAA compliance mechanisms. After evaluating a variety of timesheet software, SRCA decided on Web TimeSheet for its time tracking.

Though the company chose Replicon’s software for its DCAA compatibility, it discovered a host of other benefits. A key one: It saves the company more than 25 non-billable hours per week, which increases profitability. And client billing takes just half an hour, instead of two days. “Our clients can call us up at any time, and we can immediately provide them with a status update,” says Susan Crump, Vice President of SRCA.

Project teams now spend more time on billable tasks, enter their time easily online, and get their time and expense approvals processed in minutes, not days. “Our employees keep saying, ‘Why didn’t we do this a long time ago?’” says Crump.

Learn more:
View the SRCA study.
See Replicon’s guide to DCAA guidelines.

Suppose you and your employees had to keep your core business running in the wake of a natural disaster. Your internal network drives may be backed up locally, or even to an offsite location, and probably that would cover your needs if your data loss were the result of hardware failure or human error. You’d restore your systems and return to business. But what if your office were destroyed or rendered unreachable? Could you perform your project cost tracking, client billing, and attendance tracking?

While many companies have disaster recovery plans that enable a return to operations, not all of these provide for lack of physical access to local systems. If your company’s internal network went down —and with it, access to project or attendance data—most employees could perform only limited functions from their homes or their temporary out-of-area locations.

But with your time tracking software and data “in the cloud,” access to the Internet is all they’d need to see project data, prepare data for invoicing, and log the hours they worked. That’s one of many reasons why we’ve become proponents of web-based applications. And why we’ve invested in infrastructure that ensures your employees can stay productive if a disaster keeps them away from their workplaces.

At Replicon, our cloud-based software and your data are hosted and stored in offsite data centers that include safeguards to keep your information secure and available. In addition to certified process controls, state-of-the-art application security, and network protection there are:

• Redundant power supplies using a combination of uninterrupted power supplies (UPS), generators, and battery backup
• Automated system backups performed daily and weekly
• Regularly-scheduled disaster recovery testing

Want more information about dealing with disasters? Learn more about strategies to protect your data.

Whether you call it “cloud computing,” Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) or merely web-based systems, you’re probably aware that this new way of running business applications is replacing the traditional way, in which you bought and maintained expensive, internal hardware and hosted software yourself. That model is losing ground because the advantages of web-based applications are too great to ignore. You get much more than gains in billable productivity. You also get predictable operating cost and lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). Your software becomes an operating cost rather than a capital expense.

When you do your time tracking “in the cloud” there’s no need for new hardware or other IT infrastructure costs. Web-based software typically takes just hours or days instead of weeks or months. There’s nothing to maintain or upgrade: You always have the most recent version of software, and all your data is available from anywhere with an Internet connection. You also offload responsibility for keeping your information secure and available. With Replicon, for example, your data is housed in SAS 70 Type II-certified data centers and uptime exceeds 99.5%.

With Replicon’s cloud-based time and expense tracking software you also gain by being able to:

• Pay-as-you go: No upfront fees and you can operate month-to-month if you wish
• Get more from your workers: Reallocate your IT resources for more productive pursuits
• Add users instantly: They can start tracking their time immediately

See it in action:
Get a Free Trial of Replicon’s cloud-based timesheets. You can use any combination of our products, include sample data, and get free support.

Are you already using an on-premise version of Replicon software?
Switch to the Cloud and get a discount plus free implementation!
Contact an Account Manager for a no-obligation assessment: accounts@replicon.com

How long does it take to get an answer to that question? And perhaps more to the point, should the answer have to come from a Human Resources person? What if all of your organization’s policies for accrued time off (vacation, sick days, flex time, etc.) were applied and calculated automatically for each employee? And what if managers and employees could instantly see up-to-the-moment time-off balances, without ever contacting a beleaguered HR person? Timesheet software can handle all these time tracking issues.  Requests and approvals are handled in minutes!

That’s just one of the many significant advantages of a web-based time tracking system. It‘s easy to configure accrual policies for every category of time off, and apply them as needed for every employee.

Watch our video, “Web TimeSheet Time Off Tracking Showcase” and see how timesheet software can make your life easy!

As your SaaS vendor, we take full responsibility for continuously upgrading all our products. We’ve just finished improving Web TimeSheet version 8.11.1 to make it even more user-friendly. Check out these new features!

Increased Employee Visibility into Time-Off Requests

As a manager, it’s no fun telling an employee he can’t take a vacation because someone else has already asked for that week off. Now, employees can collaborate in scheduling their time-off. In addition to viewing approved time-off for coworkers, Managers have the option to grant permission for team members to see requests that are still awaiting approval. That way, they have the opportunity to work out their conflicting requests and come up with a plan that satisfies everyone.

Keep Your Work Weeks Straight

Do you need to limit the number of hours employees work each week to stay in compliance with labor laws in your area? Set up a “weekly” Web Timesheet validation rule to automatically monitor hours worked. Base this on your organization’s definition of a work week for each individual’s profile. That way, if you use a monthly timesheet you don’t have to worry about employees surpassing their permitted hours.

In the past, this error might not be caught immediately. This could happen if the excess hours were worked during the final days of a partial week at the end of a month. Payroll would have to manually check timesheets to catch this problem. Now, you can set up Web TimeSheet to validate full work weeks even if they are split between two different months.

See Who Needs To Approve Timesheets Next

Several new fields are available in the Timesheet Status Details report. For example, you can now include the name of the next approver scheduled to review a timesheet. This person appears in the “Waiting Approver Name” column. You can see the previous approver(s) who have already done their job listed under the “Approver Name” column.

Check out the complete documentation on this latest version of Web TimeSheet for more.

Do you have suggestions for further improvements? We are always eager to hear your ideas. Talk to us in the comments. Track our latest developments on Twitter; network with us on LinkedIn; and sign up for a free trial.

At Replicon, our philosophy of constant innovation has paid off once again for our customers.  We are excited to introduce the newest addition to our Web TimeSheet family of products – Web Schedule.  This employee scheduling software module makes creating, updating, and communicating work schedules as painless as possible.

Why Employees Like Web Schedule

With Web Schedule, your employees have access to real-time updates to their individual schedules.  This eliminates confusion about last minute changes.  When you integrate this employee scheduling software with Web TimeSheet, employees can instantly populate their timesheet using the data from their published schedule.  Then, they can simply make changes to indicate any discrepancies (such as additional time or missed time) each day.

Why Managers Like Web Schedule

Managers tasked with managing schedules and approving timesheets can do this much more quickly now.  Any discrepancies are listed and described at the top of the timesheet approval page.  Errors can be corrected before the final timesheet is sent to payroll.  Actual failure to adhere to the schedule can be addressed while the incident is still fresh.  Managers can also pull historical reports to identify a pattern of time & attendance issues.

Why Companies Like Web Schedule

Besides the obvious benefits of saving time and optimizing labour cost through effective scheduling, you get access to a free trial.  Try Web Schedule with your existing access to Web Timesheet or sign up to sample both of these products together.

Watch this quick video to see our Web Schedule software in action.

Are you using this software on a trial basis right now?  We would love to hear your first impressions.  Talk to us in the comments.  Also, feel free to join us via LinkedIn and Twitter to stay fully connected.