Payroll Tips For 2013—Automated Time & Attendance Tracking

Lean Times, Tough Measures

With most major economies still in the doldrums, many nations are trying hard to regain a semblance of stability after years of recession and retrenchment. Businesses too are looking for ways to increase their ROI and make every dollar of expenditure count towards the bottom line. With payroll costs consuming nearly half of most companies’ budgets, managers are confronted with difficult choices when it comes to keeping their companies profitable. Many have been forced to lay off employees to stay afloat, but this option can only go so far before its purpose is defeated.

Losses Do Add Up

Smart managers have been exploring avenues such as efficiency and productivity with their existing workforce, making the most out of every employee’s efforts, while cutting unnecessary expenditure on travel and other non-critical areas. They know that losses can add up from inherent inefficiencies in processes such as manual time and attendance tracking, as well as from tardiness, excessive breaks and other unproductive activities by employees.

Recommendations

This is where efficient workforce management plays a crucial role, and allows for labor-related costs to be rationalized. By moving away from manual tracking of time and attendance to automatic cloud-based tracking, the entire process can be streamlined, saving valuable time that used to be spent calculating hours worked and salary earned. Moreover, this eliminates buddy punching—employees fraudulently clocking in for their buddies—and introduces accountability, while greatly enhancing compliance and transparency. Managers can now get crucial information to make effective decisions and keep costs in check.

Prescription: REPLICON

A best of breed cloud based time tracking system not only helps minimize payroll errors, but should also be easily configurable to business rules, allowing for automatic overtime monitoring, as well as time off, meal breaks, and other workforce policies. In addition, employees’ attendance and payroll data should be securely stored and yet made easily accessible on demand. A leading solution such as TimeAttend also proves its worth by seamlessly integrating with commonly-used payroll and accounting systems, providing companies not only synergistic efficiencies, but also empowering management with vital insights to help plan employee allocations and accurately forecast resource requirements.