8 Reasons Why Payroll Departments Love Time and Attendance Time Clocks
8 Reasons Why Payroll Departments Love Time and Attendance Time Clocks
Whether your customers have an in-house payroll department or work with an external payroll company – automating time tracking with time clocks and attendance software makes everyone’s lives easier.
Payroll teams are responsible for paying employees accurately. The department enjoys multiple benefits when they’re working with an advanced time clock system. This can be good for both your customers and for your reputation, and just one of the reasons why reselling time and attendance clock systems is good business for you.
Here are eight reasons in-house payroll teams want their organizations to install time clocks that collect the employee data that feeds the payroll system.
8 Reasons Why Payroll Departments Love Time and Attendance Time Clocks – A Time Clock Provides the Most Accurate Employee Attendance Data
There are three key aspects to generating high quality data: speed, accuracy, and reliability. Look for a time clock system that supplies all three attributes to maximize the quality of data it delivers to payroll and your workforce management solution.
#1 Time Clock Software Integration Delivers Data Quickly
Collecting accurate work hours at the time clock is only the first step. The second step – getting that data to the other business systems that needs it is equally important. The time clock system should offer you and your customers options on how to integrate the time clock collection software with the back-end systems.
Companies with fewer in-house IT resources may prefer to deliver the time clock data via flat file. Those with more advanced IT resources might prefer to build a web service that can deliver the employee data more frequently. With either option, your customer should have the flexibility to set the delivery frequency it wants.
When payroll has the most recent employee attendance data, it won’t have to chase down information or wait for the data to get entered into the system. When a payroll employee wants to run a report, they can be confident that the report is complete and timely. Most critical – payroll always runs on time so the employees get paid on time.
#2 Time Clocks Ensure Employee Attendance Accuracy and Efficiency
Automated time collection through a time clock is the most accurate means to report employee hours. Manual reporting is slow and clunky. Paper punch cards are fragile and can only feed a rudimentary time and attendance collection system.
Your customers can further improve the accuracy of their payroll data by using a biometric reader at the time clock. Because biometric readers scan a physical trait of the employee to clock in and out, the employee can always use the time clock. Biometric time clocks also make it virtually impossible for employees to steal time from their employers through buddy punching, which costs employers millions of dollars annually.
Your customers can enjoy increased data accuracy by selecting a time clock system where they can configure business rules that ensure payroll gets the complete data they need to calculate payroll, benefits, and taxes correctly.
For example, many companies have employees who work for multiple departments. The employee may earn a different pay rate for another role, so payroll needs to know which hours were worked for each role. Even if the pay rate is the same, the company might want to account for each department’s labor costs separately. Employees should be able to select the department or role when they clock in or out.
Similarly, more employees are working at different locations. The locations may even be in different jurisdictions, each with its own tax and labor laws. The time clock software must be able to add specific location data to each employee attendance record so, payroll has all the data it needs to calculate paychecks accurately.
A refined time clock system will conduct data integrity checks to guarantee that payroll receives accurate data. The time clock transmits employee information to the middleware, which processes the data before forwarding it to payroll and the solution. This system will mark records that have already been transmitted to avoid duplications, and flag any punch records that lack a match, promptly addressing the issue (such as the employee forgetting to punch) and ensuring the complete attendance data is available in the system promptly.
#3 The Right Time Clock is Powerful and Durable
The time clock has to be reliable or it doesn’t do payroll, or anyone, any good. Reliability is achieved through power and durability. The time clock needs enough processing power and memory so it can process employees quickly. The right time clock has the power to handle more employee volume as the business grows, without any decline in operational quality. Nobody wants to have to buy time clocks every couple of years; a powerful time clock can work and deliver value for close to a decade.
The physical durability of a time clock is also important to its longevity, especially if the time clock will be placed in a challenging environment. Construction sites and manufacturing plants can experience extreme weather conditions, which the time clock must be built to withstand. Noise vibration from machinery, plus the dirt and debris it can kick up, also pose a risk to the time clock without a ruggedized casing to protect it. If the customer’s workplace isn’t an office setting, they aren’t going to get the reliability they need from a time clock designed to work in an office setting.
It is also benefit for the time clock system to have a portal that allows support teams, to see the real-time operational status of every time clock. With a time clock monitoring portal, you can help your customers quickly get a time clock back online so there’s no long disruption to its operation.
Time Clocks Help Improve Company Compliance Regulations
When payroll has complete and accurate employee data, its calculations produce accurate data that complies with internal business rules and legal requirements. Two more reasons why payroll teams love modern time clock systems.
#4 You Can Configure Time Clock Software with Company Business Rules
Your customers manage their labor costs through business rules, such as capping how much overtime is allowed. Time clock software can be configured to flag attendance records that push an employee’s hours into overtime. This flag allows managers to review and revise scheduling as needed to minimize any unauthorized overtime.
The time clock software can also be configured to deduct unpaid meal and break time automatically. There are different ways to achieve this. The time could prevent an employee from clocking in early or clocking out late for a break. Alternatively, it could allow the punch, but automatically adjust the time to reflect the full, unpaid break time when payroll is calculated. The time clock can also be configured to show a message on its screen, informing the employee clocking in early or late, that they won’t be paid for any break time.
#5 Reduced Risk of Legal Liability for Noncompliance with Labor Laws
Meal and break times aren’t regulated only by company rules, but also by state laws. The time clock software can be configured to enforce state meal and break laws too. Employers bear the burden of documenting their compliance with meal and break laws. Having the time clock enforce break rules, gather employee attestations when punching in early or late from a break, and collect all the necessary data for each break record all improves the employer’s compliance documentation. Wage and hour lawsuits are expensive, avoid this by gathering meal and break documentation in real time, rather than after an agency would come look for it. This saves the company compliance costs and improves the integrity of documentation.
The risk of significant liability in fines and damages for a company that underpays employees, or miscalculates benefits or taxes, is high. Many payment and benefits requirements are based on how many hours an employee works. Payroll must have an accurate account of employee hours and attendance data in a timely manner in order for its systems to apply the right legal rules to its payroll calculations. Otherwise, it risks not complying with any of the variety of tax, benefit, and labor protection laws in all the applicable jurisdictions.
Because so many local jurisdictions, also have their own labor protection laws, collecting the exact location where each hour was worked is vital for payroll to run accurate calculations and stay in compliance.
Time Clocks Free Up Payroll and Other Company Resources
Automating the collection of high quality attendance data lowers the cost to run payroll, which frees up payroll staff time. This time could be redistributed to payroll, HR, and higher value tasks. Here are three ways your customers can use the saved time to improve their business finances and productivity.
#6 Payroll Teams Become More Proactive in Compliance Management
The time clock and attendance collection software automates most of the compliance work. That gives payroll staff time to take their compliance management to the next level with pro-active report and analysis – both for internal and external compliance requirements.
They can run data reports that ensure that laws regarding overtime and required time-off between shifts laws are followed. They can identify risks of noncompliance with labor protection laws before employees get overworked. Managers and HR staff will also benefit from these reports or alerts from payroll staff after their analysis.
#7 Labor Management Becomes Streamlined
Companies aren’t just worried about compliance management; they’re also looking at cost management with labor. Managers need tools, like your workforce management solution, that help them manage scheduling and total hours while meeting internal labor budget requirements. Having data and reports based on actual hours worked will help them manage that budget.
When you select a time clock system that provides two-way data integration between the time clock and your software? Your customers’ managers can see hours already worked when scheduling employees, helping them avoid excessive overtime or overscheduling an employee. Analysis of previous hours worked can also help them more accurately predict how many people need to be scheduled at different times to meet company operational goals without overstaffing.
#8 Attendance Management and Productivity are Optimized
Attendance data reports generated using data from your solution and time clock data can give managers and HR insights into which employees have attendance issues. The reports can identify the employees with high no-show records, or who often clock in late or leave early. They can find the employees who never take any time off.
With time and access to this information, managers can get ahead of attendance issues and work with individual employees before they become a larger problem.
Make the Smart Choice: Offer Your Customers the Right Time Clock
Add a high quality time clock to your offerings for your customers. Reselling, deploying and managing time clocks is easier than you think with the right partner.
Payroll departments like time clocks because the automation and data quality lets them do their jobs better. The same principle holds true when your workforce management software also gets access to the time clock attendance data. You can raise the value of your solution and your customers ROI on your system by encouraging them to automate their employee attendance data collection with a high quality time clock.
Learn more about ATS time clocks on our website and read about how to find the right time clock for your solution on the ATS blog.