How Construction Companies Replace Paper Timesheets

At first, the signs of a failed software project are hard to see. But they're there. Intensity drops. Interest wanes. Each week new problems bog things down. User adoption is slow. Phased rollouts stall.  

That Sinking Feeling

This article is about how to avoid failed software implementations. You're nearing the end of the project. You evaluated why you should automate manual paper or Excel-based time and expense tracking system. You did all the right things. You did your business analysis. Worked hard to develop a consensus with your team on requirements. You searched for solutions. Narrowed vendors to a shortlist. Held demo meetings. Found a solution. Made the purchase.

You'd like to feel great about your choice. But in your bones, concerns remain:

1. Did you select the right solution?
2. Will your employees embrace it?
3. Do you have the right resources to implement it?
4. What if it fails?

Consulting billing and time and expense sheets

For any consulting firm, billing clients — that little-understood, underappreciated life blood of cash flow needed for any company to survive — is directly enhanced or badly harmed by how employee time and expenses are tracked and processed.

The reality is: good invoicing depends on the quality of time and expense sheet data flowing into an invoice. Improving your project time and expense sheets for billing is where you need to focus.

Pacific Time — when you're on the go

Pacific Time is a time and expense app for employees who need to track their time and expenses on the go.

Altogether, there are at least six ways Pacific Time can be used:

1. Project and task time tracking
2. Payroll time and attendance tracking
3. Leave management including leave requests
4. Expense reports
5. Asset tracking
6. Activity and log tracking

Pacific Timesheet has been used by hundreds of thousands of users for years on laptops and desktops. But Pacific Timesheet Mobile is becoming more important every day. According to Mobile Business Insights in 2016:

1. 80% of email users are forecasted to check email by their mobile devices in 2018 (emailmonday).
2. Average users check their mobile devices 46 times a day (App Annie).
3. Half of all people pick up their smartphones when they wake up (ExpressPigeon).

Our customer research tells us that their users, particularly those in the field or traveling, are using Pacific Timesheet Mobile a majority of the time. 

We thought it was high time for a definitive primer on Pacific Timesheet Mobile features:

Still Tracking Time Manually?

Believe it or not, hundreds of companies around the world still track employee time manually, relying on cumbersome paper and Excel records to track their time worked and assets. So if this is true of your enterprise, don’t be embarrassed. You’re not alone.

The fact of the matter is that using manual time tracking methods may be costing your enterprise more than you know. They make payroll and leave calculation unnecessarily complicated, place a massive administrative burden on your payroll and HR staff, and leave your enterprise open to inaccuracies and compliance issues. As if that’s not already enough, these manual timesheets are probably unpopular with your own employees!

So what should you do? Upgrade your time tracking system with automated timesheet software.

You've heard about the Heartbleed bug. It's made you question what you previously believed to be rock-solid and secure:  web traffic protected by https or SSL. So what is SSL and why does Heartbleed matter?

A Brief History of Internet Security

Federal legislation through the 1980s and 1990s created new information security requirements for  personal health and financial information of consumers. However, it wasn't until a series of online security standards began rolling out in the mid 1990's called a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), that online data exchanges became truly secure. SSL, and later Transport Layer Security (TLS), remain the main protection of online communications against increasingly pervasive malicious software and automated agents attempting to intercept or steal data, or through spoofing or masquerading attacks. 

SSL and TSL are widely-used cryptographic or encryption protocols that protect internet browsing, email, e-faxes, text and instant messages and voice over IP phone calls. In April of 2014, researchers found in the most common implementation of SSL "The Heartbleed Bug."

An employee forgets to properly log his sick time for when he was out on Monday. Because he’s in a rush on Friday he submits a timesheet that incorrectly says he worked on Monday. His supervisor is busy and signs the time card without checking. The time card information goes to payroll and gets processed. The employee gets a paycheck the next week showing a vacation balance that's 8 hours too high, and 8 hours of regular time he did not work. 

Companies Lose Money, Time and Productivity

Employee timesheet errors are rampant in some organizations. They can happen when employees take time off but code it as jury rather than vacation. They might receive a pay differential when they work in another cost center but fail to code their hours with the right cost center number. Employees can accidentally under report work hours, or when their supervisors are not paying attention, over-report work time. Once you process these errant hours and pay employees, you now must correct these mistakes and any additional errors they create.

How much does it cost to correct pay data errors? A lot.

First, all of these errors will create the need for FICA corrections, and in some cases you will need to file IRS Form F941x which requires detailed explanations of every correction. If your FICA underpayment is greater than or equal to 2% of your total FICA obligation, you will owe penalties and interest if you do not correct errors and make these adjustment payments with your next quarterly return. 

Another area where time card errors uncorrected will hurt is for hourly worker defined contribution amounts.  These are calculated based upon hours worked.  Any errors not fixed by year end will be even more expensive to correct. 

All of these errors cause even more damage to your business, not only rippling through an employee's entire paycheck, but infecting your accounting systems, accounting costs, billable hours and invoices. All of these errors need to fixed.

A new year has begun, and it's time to look at some of your business practices. Are you still using paper timesheets? If yes, then you are probably experiencing some of these problems:

Problem #1: Clerical errors

You spend a lot of time correcting errors.

Using paper timesheets means someone has to read everyone's handwriting, and has to enter numbers from a piece of paper to a computer, or hopefully not a paper ledger. Those errors can cost you time and money in reconciling with employees. Those errors can also cause you legal problems. There is a way to take care of all those errors.