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Replacing Your Manual Time Collection Process with Automation Software
Do the benefits outweigh the costs of upgrading from a manual time collection process to an automated time collection solution for social services?
The answer is yes.
Budget cutting is the new normal for those organizations that serve people with disabilities so it would seem counterintuitive to talk about purchasing something to save money, but that is the choice many executive directors are contemplating from here on into the future. As their agencies need to do more with less, they are turning to technology purchases to help them survive. An automated participant time and piece rate collection system is part of the new technology overhaul taking place across the country in many organizations.
Most directors understand their time collection process for their clients with disabilities is more than just tracking the times entered on a time sheet or pieces entered on a piece count list. With transparency requirements and demands for accountability, with the need for reporting on client productivity and progress, with the strict Department of Labor rules on commensurate wages, with the business office needing to accurately pay clients and bill for services rendered there is so much more time, energy, and money being spent to get the time collection process right.
Still Collecting Time Manually?
Traditionally, the time collection method employed by most is a paper time sheet being filled out on the workshop floor or at the end of the day by a supervisor. It’s the standard in most human services organizations with a sheltered employment facility or support employment programs. It doesn’t cost much and it’s fairly easy to manage – on the surface.
When compared to technology that streamlines the time collection process, glaring issues immediately emerge with the manual method of paper timesheets.
First, to enter client time with paper and pen can require time and create the huge opportunity for errors. If the data is legible, it all must then be reentered into a computer system where your team most likely enters it into a spreadsheet, instantly burdening the process with redundancy and creating more chance for errors. If there are problems, the payroll department must spend time tracking down and solving those issues. There is time wasted in filing and storing (as well as retrieving) all the paper created by this process. Quality reporting and being able to have the best information on-hand, in real time, are impossible under this scenario. When it comes to job costing, based on how many hours or pieces should be applied to individual jobs and different contracts , the manual method is painfully slow and possibly inaccurate (or at best, out of date.)
Automated Time Collection
Implementing an automated system for client time collection will solve all the problems associated with continuing to manually enter and track time to pay your participants correctly.
With the right software, hardware and accessories, your time and piece counts need only be entered one time for each individual or group of clients that work with a supervisor. If you find the right software solution, it should require that the supervisor “cross the t’s and dot the i’s” before they are allowed to submit their time records. This puts the responsibility on your frontline teams to make sure everything is correct the first time before it can be submitted. The time records will be seamlessly integrated with the accounting system, allowing the payroll department to accurately pay your clients.
With reduced labor expenses due to the reduction of payroll department hours, your resources and staff can be re-allocated to other departments or tasks. And if a budget cut requires a staff reduction, you’ll be able to continue without interruption due to your new streamlined time collection and payroll method. Some time collection solutions allow for productivity reports and automatic warnings for exceptions (i.e. warnings that populate the system before submission showing a client’s productivity suddenly skyrockets or a piece rate client has a higher than normal average number of pieces completed.)
Many working in the social services industry shy away from for-profit business-related terms such as Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and Return on Investment (ROI) but these are factors that must be considered when it comes to a technology purchase and, specifically, a purchase of automated time collection software. If your agency is researching software vendors and viewing demos to determine the necessary benefits and features are included, you must also consider the total overall cost (hardware, servers, software, implementation and training, accessories, ongoing technical and upgrade support agreements, etc.) to ensure a purchase makes sense. And you must also evaluate what sort of return, if any, you will get for the money being spent on an automated system.
The expectation should be there will be a quantifiable return on your investment in an automated time collection system. And many software and hardware purchases could easily show a return in less than one year, depending on costs and conditions within your organization.
Switching from a manual process or a combination of manual and computer collection methods to a single automated process can dramatically reduce errors, save time and provide for an easy way for you to monitor service utilization. Whether your staff is working with consumers in the community, day activities center, a workshop or a residential setting, they will be able to easily and quickly record time in nearly anywhere using a PC, laptop, phone, time clock, and more sophisticated vendors offering access to software through iPads and iPods or other handhelds.
The time records produced from an automated system should only have to be electronically submitted once to satisfy the needs of consumer payroll, labor expense by cost center, service delivery, service documentation, service billing and electronic audits of service documentation. If your agency’s payroll and service delivery systems are typical, this could be the one change you could make that would have the greatest improvement on efficiency and morale.
The potential for improvement in your business office is huge.
Typical Savings from an Automated Time Collection Process
As stated, manually entering time and piece rates onto paper and requiring your payroll staff to re-enter time and data records for your participants increases your labor costs.
Let’s take a look at a generic example to illustrate what could happen if an automated system were introduced and how it would affect labor expenses on a single staff member:
Typical Labor Cost Reduction
Payroll Specialist: 1
Payroll Specialist Salary: $30,000
Hours per Day - Manual Time Collection Processing: 8
Hours per Day - Automated Time Collection Processing: 2
Total Hours Saved per Day: 6
Annual Hourly Savings: 1560
Annual Money Savings: $22,495.20
Granted, this is a simple illustration. It more than likely does not mean your Payroll Specialist would go from working 8 hours per day to 2 hours per day. However, this does point out that by changing the process from manual to automated can free up funds to pay for or help pay for a new automated system and the accessories within a year. That would certainly be considered a solid return on investment.
Adding an electronic time collection solution provides benefits beyond money being saved, which is a tangible feature accompanying the right software package. Keep in mind the intangibles are vitally important when it comes to determining the need for a time collection automation system.
Whether working offsite or onsite, in your facility or workshop, your current process takes up a lot of your staff’s time to manually record start times, stop times, times for breaks, time for lunches for their entire group. This time is valuable to your team because it keeps them away from the participants they work with. This could interfere with progress and outcomes. The introduction of an automated system means less time will be needed to enter time records, review and revise timesheets (or piece counts), as well as track down files to fix errors or deliver for audit documentation.
Errors, illegibility issues, and fraud are usually not detectable when there is a manual process. No alarms are raised and problems are not usually discovered until there is an audit or an investigation. The benefit of an automated system is that it creates checks and balances along the way that prevents bad information from getting pushed up to the next level. This can help ensure managers and directors are making better decisions based on current, up-to-date information. It can help prevent audit and compliance issues. It can also help prevent fines or other drastic measures to clean up a messy organization.
 With the right system, your automated time collection software could prove to be easy and fun for your staff to use. They’ll accept the change required in their old paper-bound process and their buy-in will guarantee you’ll see the results you need to justify the purchase. You’ll see more time spent on your programs and your mission, an improvement in morale, and retention of staff. Imagine a supervisor picking up an iPad, entering the time-in for her entire group, tapping the screen to send them off to lunch, and then using the touch feature to enter and submit their time-out details. Once she hits “submit”, the data moves on to the payroll department instantly and nothing more needs to be done on the supervisor’s part. It could be that convenient and easy with the right system.
With an investment in an automated payroll system, you will experience a greater transparency across your organization. If the correct data and time only needs to be entered and uploaded once, everyone that needs access to your time records will have it in real time and it will be correct information. You’ll have better reporting on which jobs are active, whether productivity is up or down, total attendance of your participants for any given day, job costing details and even costs per individual step on a job, and so much more (depending on your software features.)
In addition, you’ll stay compliant with the Department of Labor because your payroll software will be configured to match your state and federal requirements for sub-minimum wages, prevailing wage rates, alerts to update your prevailing wage information, rounding requirements, and any other local laws or requirements you must meet.
Impediments to Adopting an Automated Time Collection System
While the features and benefits of new technology when it comes to recording time for your clients are easily identifiable, there are still barriers to adopting a new solution.
The biggest hurdle would have to be financial. Only a few social services agencies across the country are able to easily write out a check, without blinking once, for any automated time collection system on the market today. After a massive economic collapse and the following Great Recession, as well as state and federal budget cuts, it can hard to justify any major purchase at all. And waiting lists and calls for more services and more programs have been growing stronger every year since the economic troubles began.
 With quantifiable benefits, as well as those all-important intangible ones, it’s not as tough of a sell as would be imagined. There are different price levels across different system vendors but it might be a matter of losing or gaining certain features based on costs. Many vendors provide either a hosted option (the software resided on your servers) or a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) option (where the vendor hosts the software) and both usually mean different financing options are available. Usually a hosted solution costs more up front but you pay less over the long haul and a Software-as-a-Service situation means more money over the length of use but very little to no money in upfront expenses.
Another major hurdle to overcome with nearly any technology project is the participation of your staff – everyone concerned who will be utilizing or who will be affected by the new system. If there isn’t accepted buy-in from your daily users, your IT staff, your payroll team, and your top management then there is no reason to make any payroll system purchase. People dislike change and asking them to change from a manual or outdated time collection process to a newly automated one can cause dissension in the ranks.
If one person or small group of people on your staff make the decision to search for and buy new time collection software without consulting with all interested parties, it could quite simply guarantee the project will fail. Those affected must be able to provide some input on their needs – they will rightly fear a system will be chosen that doesn’t work they way they work. They will also need proper training. They’ll want to help with the customization during implementation of a new system. They will need to have technical support and ongoing support services available to them. Without these crucial requirements being met, there is a good chance the automated time collection solution will not be used to its advantage (at best) or will be completely ignored and written off (at worst.)
How to Find the Best Time Collection Software Vendor
The first step is to understand what you need from a new time collection system is making sure you have the buy-in from everyone involved. When you’ve got direct users and management involved and excited about introducing the change, and when they see how the new system will make their jobs and lives easier, you will have advocates who are ready to dive right in. When your users are energized, they will actively participate in outlining their wants and needs from a new system. They will participate in the implementation process and will focus on training, they will encourage others to learn about the new time collection system and they will be more willing to help train new and existing employees.
Next, find a software vendor that knows or works exclusively with organizations in the social services industry. There are many, many companies that create payroll software and time collection systems for the for-profit business community. But finding a company that works specifically with human services agencies will help you correctly navigate through Department of Labor regulations, compliance issues, audit problems, and subminimum wage payroll requirements such as rounding and prevailing wage updates.
And make certain that your time collection software vendor can integrate your new system with your existing servers, hardware, operating systems, and current accounting or payroll software. Find a company with extensive experience with many different types of installations over a significant number of years. This will help your implementation be less disruptive to all the processes in your agency. Some time collection software does not integrate well with other hardware or software programs and may actually make you less productive than you’d be under a manual process. The solution provided by a software vendor should conform to how you work and not the other way around. The software company should be able to customize to your state requirements and laws as well as your agency’s programs.
Finally, make sure the automated software solution you choose can grow or shrink with you. Depending on how your agency plans to grow or deal with cutbacks or budget issues, you’ll want a system that can change and adapt with your mission and your staff. Scalability means you won’t need to drop your new process and system or have to make additional investments in new software and hardware to keep going.
A Vertex Systems Solution – Intuition and Client Payroll Manager
Vertex Systems offers a powerful and effective automated software solution for your time collection and participant payroll needs. Intuition is an application that allows you to collect client start/stop times, piece rates, documentation, attendance, and billing details from anywhere at any time using an iPad. Your supervisors can quickly enter time and documentation on this easy-to-use, easy-to-learn system just once and it automatically populates to your billing, payroll, and accounting hardware instantly.
Client Payroll Manager automates the process of paying people with disabilities who are paid commensurate hourly rates and piece rates.
Our time collection and processing software gives your staff the right tool they need to accurately and easily pay your participants.
Eliminate Paper Time Sheets:
- Works the way your supervisors do
- Record time and pieces when convenient
- Easily track client productivity and exceptions
- Submit only accurate time sheets for payroll
- Record only valid jobs
- Record group changes for a job
- Ensure DOL compliance
Client Payroll Manager with Intuition easily and accurately handles all aspects of piece and hourly rate sub-minimum payroll, including all productivity calculations, DOL reporting, job labor costing, benefit tracking, NISH reporting, and gross earnings calculations.
To learn more about our state-of-the-art time collection system, contact Vertex Systems now to see how much time, effort, and money you can save with automation software.
Accurate. Intuitive. Convenient.
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Download the Whitepaper in Adobe PDF Format.
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