Managing your Employee Time and Attendance over the Holidays with Call the Time

Have you ever wondered if your business could run more efficiently? As the holiday season approaches most business owners who are in charge and face the demands from running their own organization find it difficult to turn off, just because it’s the holiday season it doesn’t mean your business completely shuts down. Buildings still need janitorial companies to continue cleaning, workers are still needed to repair and install and pets still need to be walked if their owners are out of town visiting their family for the day. The hard part is that it’s tough to shut down a business owner’s active mind, if there isn’t that affirmation in knowing everything is running as it should, so that you may relax and enjoy your family during the holidays.

With a time and attendance software such as Call the Time, you can always stay in the loop. We provide a customized report function that will allow you to log in anywhere there is an internet connection and you can view your entire companies punch time by team, individual or complete roster. Another method, is our applications dashboard which will provide you the added benefit of being able to see how many employees are scheduled to work for the day, how many are actually clocked in and how long they have been clocked in for. This is a perfect solution for being away from the office because all you have to do is press refresh on your mobile phone throughout the day and you can keep an eye on your business, to ensure it is running efficiently. Finally, you will receive an email each time an employee clock’s in or out with a time and voice stamp or in a worst case scenario if an employee fails to clock in all together. Obviously these are worst case situation and typically they won’t be a problem after your organization begins to use Call the Time on a more regular basis. Employees clocking in late, clocking out early or failing to clock in all together becomes a thing of the past because our time and attendance software creates an organization of order and repetition so that you can relax and spend that important time with your family and friends.

Rest assured, Call the Time is a partner to you and your organization, an application that keeps you in charge, in control and 100 percent mobile when you are away from the office so that you can focus on what matters during this holiday season!

Please feel free to watch a video tour of our application to see how Call the Time can best serve you: http://www.youtube.com/callthetime
Happy Holiday and continued success from all of us at Call the Time!

Call the Time

I am happy to report that more articles then ever regarding online time and attendance software are popping up on the internet and it’s exciting to see that Call the Time is one of the featured applications. This is not surprising because Call the Time believes in education, awareness and customer service as priority number one! We have taken many unique approaches to how we present our time and attendance solution to organizations and because of this, industry insiders are starting to take note. We have taken many unique steps to develop a strong trusting relationship with our customers.
Here are a few examples:

• A You Tube video tour of how the application operates
• A customized demo by one of our friendly Account Managers
• A free 30 day trial with no commitment to sign up!

Call the Time is an easy to use application that is extremely cost effective, providing a fantastic return on investment for any organization that has hourly employees.

To read more about how Call the Time and our time and attendance software application is quickly becoming an industry leader, feel free to click the links below:

• http://kloog.net/punch-clock-software-time-tracking-system
• http://www.shinearticles.com/Article/Managing-Time-And-Attendance/166964

Preventing Employee Fraud

As an organization grows and becomes more successful, the reality that there will be some form of employee fraud grows. It is something that no organization can avoid but they can do their best to prevent it. Expensive steps can be taken to reduce the threat of employee fraud such as hiring additional managers to drive from one job site to another wasting gas and time. However, there is a more cost efficient and effective option, such as a time and attendance software application like Call the Time. Time and attendance applications like Call the Time, not only provide you with paperless reporting capabilities but will also provide you with a sense of comfort, knowing that when an employee checks in or out from a shift it is time stamped in an email and will also include a voice recording of that specific employees shift report. Each employee is provided a unique ID and password, this is another step to prevent buddy punching or having one of their friends punch the clock for them. If that’s not enough the phone number that the employee calls in from that are unapproved are highlighted within the application, in an easy to find individualized list so that you as an employer can keep track of where the employee is clocking in or out from. For those of you who want to take it one step further there is also a GPS downloadable mobile application that can be used on iPhone, Blackberry’s or an Android mobile phone with a data plan. The employee clocks in and if the manager has any suspicion about a specific employee, managers can simply log on to the application and with Google earth and Google map, the manager will be able to see the precise location of that employees clock in or out. The best part is the technology is simplistic and doesn’t take a lot of time to learn. This is probably the most cost efficient way to manage your staff when you don’t want to have to pay for a manger to drive around just to babysit and micro-manage employees.

Fraud is a fruitful business and it’s up to you as a business owner to minimize how it affects your organization. According to a recent article in the Sun Journal, American businesses lose $40 billion per year due to theft and fraud in the workplace. Do not become part of that statistic. Take the steps necessary to protect the business you worked so hard to build.

For more information on Call the Time’s – time and attendance software application please view our guided video tour on you tube at: http://www.youtube.com/user/callthetime

Call the Time

As modern business practices evolved over the last century, customer focus has come to the forefront of every successful company strategy. With more employees working remotely to serve the customer, labor management has become one of today’s greatest challenges for any organization.

Without supervision, time theft has escalated to unprecedented levels from small to large companies alike. This is not a surprise to any organization that is not using an online time and attendance solutions. When time sheets are flowing from the hands of workers, to supervisors, to managers, it is no surprise that companies have sited greater than ever human error incidents leading to both over and under payment to its workers.

At Call the Time our number one service is to simplify and manage your organizations time and attendance operations. Our state of the art application has been created to provide a management tool for employees who work remotely, on an hourly wage. We provide organizations with the ability to hold employee’s accountable while eliminating paperwork all together so that you can better service customers and focus on what is important: generating revenue.

We would like you to view our latest video on youtube.com to learn more about Call the Time and our time and attendance software solution.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqFjYa1qe5w

Five Simple Rules when using Call the Time - Time Attendance Software

Five Simple rules to keep your staff motivated with Call the Time - Time and Attendance software.
1. Our mobile application features a state of the art GPS location tool where an employer can easily trace the exact location of where an employee makes his or her clock in from. In the past traditional punch machines were the only option to know where and when an employee clocked in or out for their shift. Now, it couldn’t be any simpler with the luxury of having a Black Berry, Android Mobile Phones and iPhones. Employees simply download Call the Time’s free software and without having to make a single call, they will be able to clock in remotely from any location at any time and the best part is everything is paperless and completely accurate with you mobile data plan.

2. Speaking of paperless; our reporting component is customizable and plentiful. You can individualize your reporting system by date, job, zone, employee and much more! Thus simplifying your manager and administrators life greatly by cutting down their paperwork by not minutes but literally hours. In fact it essentially eliminates calculating and adding up punch in and punch-outs during your organizations payroll process. Errors are fixed and time is adjusted within seconds and it is all done online and paper free. When you are finished, you simply close the application and your reports are complete. If they need to be submitted, Call the Time has that covered too, you can covert and export the multiple reports into Excel, word, PDF and pretty much any format you can think of.

3. We also take monotony out of your administration having to add hundreds or thousands of employees in the system with Call the Time’s Importing feature. Let’s face it, as I mentioned above, NOBODY enjoys paperwork and there is nothing more tedious then when you purchase a new system that is supposed to simplify your organizations time, attendance and reporting initiatives and there are hours of set up time and a huge learning curve. Call the Time provides you with an excel spread sheet template that you simply cut and paste your roster or your rosters schedule, and within seconds it is reflected within the application. It really doesn’t get simpler then that! You’ll be up and running with Call the Time within the same day of singing up for the time attendance software.

4. Adding zone, jobs, scheduling and approved phone lists to identify where your employees are working and calling in from will provide management with the most accurate resource for organizing their work force. An employer will be able to know exactly where an employee is calling in from and whether it is an approved number or not? If an employee calls from an unrecognized number it will be flagged immediately and the manager receives a time stamped and voice recognized audio file into their email inbox. This is a huge benefit because it will allow the employer enough time to take action and send another employee to the location resolving any “no show” issues. Keeping customers satisfied, happy and assured that your organization is dependable and committed!

5. Finally and most importantly Call the Time, time attendance software is an easy tool, with a friendly committed staff that understands how important it is to not only keep your company organized and accountable, but also realizes how important it is that if you have a question we will answer it immediately. Gone are the days when it takes customer service an unacceptable amount of wasted time to answer your questions. We are committed to your success and the satisfaction of our application. We assure you we will do our very best to prove that although there may be other time attendance software solutions out there but should be your first choice when it comes to the success of your organization

How to Manage Employee Breaks with a Time Attendance Software Solution

This week there was an interesting discussion on a local radio station in Toronto about a new law being tested in England. For a six month trial; Government workers will no longer be paid for the time they spend away from work on a smoking break. The council said the move was aimed at making the issue of smoke breaks fair for individuals who did not smoke. Apparently earlier in the year staff members were asked in a questionnaire as to whether they smoked at work and if they currently clocked in and out when they went for a cigarette break?

The council discovered a fifth of the workers were taking time out of their day for a cigarette break and of those, just over a third never clocked out or put the break down on their manual attendance sheets.

So began the discussion about how often this was happening on a regular basis in any industry? How often were employees late, taking longer than assigned lunch breaks, disappearing to make personal phone calls while they are supposed to be on the clock and how can manual attendance sheets be eliminated and observed more efficiently?

If a fifth of the workers in the UK were taking unscheduled breaks that are not reported you can believe it is happening in North America and across any industry where hourly workers are keeping track of their time sheets manually. As an employer at the end of the day this begins to add up. How much revenue is lost per year as a result of this happening?

I managed to call in to the program to talk about Call the Time an online time attendance software solution and reporting application. Call the Time that provides employers the ability to have their employee punch in and out as many times as they would like throughout the day. Call the Time helps to keep reporting metrics simplistic and hassle free.

Call the Time has provided our customers with the ability to save thousands of dollars by not only being able to keep track of how many breaks a worker is having a day but also minimizing the money lost by buddy punching, time fraud, over extended lunch hours and breaks. Call the Time provides a simple state of the art telephone time clock system which allows a mobile work force to clock in and out from a remote location. In addition an employee with a GPS mobile phone can clock in or out and the employer can see the exact location of the employee via Google maps.

A web based telephone time clock system such as Call the Time, virtually eliminates any argument based on manual time sheets and this will keep both employees and employers happy, honest and productive.

Minimize Employee Absenteeism with a Time Attendance Software Solution

According to CCH Incorporated, absenteeism can cost up to an average of $602 per employee, per year.
This cost does not include indirect costs such as overtime pay for other employees, hiring temps, missed deadlines, lost sales, sinking morale and lower productivity. Indirect costs can add up to 25 percent to the direct costs, according to Employee Benefit News and HR News.

In a survey of eleven U.S.-based telecommunications organizations, 72 cents of every dollar of costs related to employee absence stems from lost productivity, rather than hard costs, such as health care and disability benefits (Business Insurance, July 2000).

These are staggering numbers! So often we are concerned about what an employee is doing through-out their day regarding their daily tasks that we often fail to think of the employees that are not even showing up to work, leaving early or failing to give an employer’s enough notice to sufficiently fill the job that they will be absent from. Often an employee may not even call to say they are going to be ill until their shift has already started leaving their employer scrambling to find someone else to take that shift.
That is why within our Call the Time time and attendance application we have provided the employer the added luxury of receiving an email anywhere from one minute up to one hour from when the employee was scheduled to clock in. The idea behind this is to not only provide the employer with the details of a specific employee who is not only typically late but it also prevents the employer from losing an important client. The email alert within Call the Time’s application is a fantastic tool, especially if it is linked to a phone with a data plan because the manger can immediately reach out to the absent employee to find out why they have not shown up for their shift and they can also immediately send over a replacement worker to the job site.

Call the Time provides this tool within our time attendance software application because too often employers are financially taken advantage of by employees who take sick days often. Within Call the Time’s application you will be able to keep track of when an employee is scheduled, if they don’t show up for a shift or if they are just plain late. Call the Time’s reporting software and scheduling and email alert tool make it next to impossible for an employee to cheat the system. Employee activities will always be available on your dashboard and 100 percent accessible at any point throughout the day to an employer or manager.

Reviewing studies of financial loss by so many organizations who do not keep track of their employees; it’s hard to argue that a time attendance software and reporting tool like Call the Time is not only a necessity for an organization but a fantastic investment that will eventually and quickly pay for itself with the money you will be saving.

Call the Time - Reporting Made Easy

Call the Time was created to simplify your managers and administrators lives; shouldn’t the people that are in charge of running your organization deserve a tool to make their lives easier if it exists? An online time, attendance and reporting tool is small investment that not only makes your managers not have to dread payroll reporting but in fact simplifies the job to the point that it basically does the work for them. For managers in any business time is something of the essence, there never seems to be enough hours in the day to complete all the tasks needed in a work week and never is that more relevant when it comes to payroll reporting.

Unfortunately, reporting can be one of the most frustrating and time consuming tasks that many mangers dread when it comes to their role. I was speaking to a customer today and they mentioned to me that many of their mangers can only find time to address their payroll reports on weekends, taking time away from their families and it was in fact making them very unhappy. Their process was extremely complex; going through pages and pages of time punches, deciphering punch errors, punch requests and then going through one employee after another until they have all the teams paper work calculated and accounted for. Once that part was complete they would then have to call in to their head office and the next day the office administrators would have to take their managers verbal reports and add them to their accounting software after listening to their voice mail. This all sounds like a gruelling and painful process for the individuals put in charge of running your organization. Hence, how he sought out and became a customer of Call the Time.

Call the Time provides a solution to reporting problems. We believed that a manager’s time should be respected and they should be rewarded with a tool that simplifies their job.

Within Call the Time’s application is an indexed and individualized reporting tool. Managers have the ability to view, export and print time cards by:
• Employee
• Team
• Payroll Period
• Zone
• Job
• Date
We built an extremely robust reporting tool because we believe in making life for managers and administrators as simple as possible. The fact of the matter is, if we rely on mangers to run our organizations a simple time, attendance and reporting tool like Call the Time provide them with a much more efficient work environment and as the saying goes “a happy employee is an efficient employee!”

Please visit our web site to find out more www.callthetime.com

The Mobile Time and Attendance Software Solution

More and more we are starting to see a shift in traditional employee, work hours. Gone are the days when keeping track of employees were as simple as having a punch clock machine in the lobby of your main office and having your entire team punch in before the start of their work day and punch out at the end. We live in a society where gas is more expensive than ever, where businesses are looking to grow and expand further then their home office’s ten-mile radius and while still looking at ways to be cost effective and saving money. Fortunately, we live in an ever expanding technological age, technology that provides organizations with the ability to have an employee clock in and out of a location and be considered accounted for. In fact, technology has come so far that there are applications out there that provide you with an even more comprehensive and in-depth tool to track an employee’s day-to-day activity and know within seconds from looking at your mobile device what an employee's time sheet and time clock punch is?

Tools such as Call the Time’s mobile application, which allows cell phone users that have GPS capability, to clock in and out from any location. The application will record the time and location of the employee using Google map technology. This is a superior application that will not only provide the employer with the ability to view the address of the building from where the employee is working but also the exact part of where they checked in or out from.

Time and attendance reporting has come a long way since the very first punch clock, which forced the employee to insert a heavy paper card, into a slot on the punch machine. When the time card hit a contact at the rear of the slot, the machine would print day and time information on the card. This allowed a timekeeper to have an official record of the hours an employee worked to calculate and pay an employee. This sounds like a lot of work and a system that is far too archaic considering all the advances we have made in technology. This method also seems as though it could all be accomplished within a much smaller time frame, using a lot less man power with an all encompassing time and attendance online system. This is the reason why so many companies are shifting their time, attendance and reporting methods to an online service. Online applications such as Call the Time provides companies with the ability of eliminating paperwork, cutting down employee travel time and providing organizations with a virtual data base of employee schedules, information and reports. This is happening because of the simplicity of these applications. Essentially a company’s entire time attendance and reporting information is all in one place and paper free. As fantastic of an idea as this is, why hasn’t every organization made this logical switch to an online application such as Call the Time? Studies show that the most obvious and glaring objection is employee compliance, as most company’s compliance range from 40-80%. At Call the Time that is a statistic that we felt could be improved on by developing a solution that is a virtual punch clock, mobile application. This is a very simple tool, which essentially eliminates many of the reasons why an employee could be non-compliant, “the phone was in use”, “the phone systems were down”, “the line was busy!” With a mobile application, employers can now simply have the employee down load the application software directly to their iPhone, Black Berry or Android mobile device, click the application, put in their individual Employee ID and Password, the GPS locator will stamp their time similar to a standard punch clock with the exception that when you submit your information an employer can go on line and view the employees precise clock in or out location, thus eliminating many of the excuses and the best part is it’s even easier than having to make a single phone call.

Think of the money an organization can save by minimizing the amount of gas and time spent by supervisors having to drive from client to client “babysitting” their staff to ensure compliance. With a mobile application your laptop or office computer can be a second set of eyes in the field, that will literally save your organization thousands of dollars, while ensuring and providing the most state of the art and yet simplistic time, attendance and reporting initiatives to date. The days of traditional employee work hours are quickly becoming a thing of the past. In order to ensure an organizations virtual punch clock numbers are consistent to a traditional time clock method, online applications need to be relevant and must stay on the cutting edge and evolve as organizations and technology do. We believe the next step in the evolution of time attendance software and reporting management is here and it’s a virtual punch clock, mobile application.

Time Theft? The Time and Attendance Software Solution

As an employer one of the most difficult components within your organization to control and manage is time and attendance. The intention of this week’s blog is to review how much revenue is lost through employee time theft and how a web-based,time and attendance software can resolve and minimize many of these issues.

An underlining role for any business owner or manager is the necessity of having to evaluate their company’s loss and profit of revenue. Even with this attention and micro managing of financial details, there is still a surprising amount of employees within any organization who are successfully cheating your current time, attendance and reporting system.

It’s an unfortunate result that this is happening in today’s workforce because as human beings we naturally want to gravitate towards seeing the “good” in everyone. When a company makes the decision to offer a new employee a role within their organization, there is optimism and excitement. Employers see a new addition to their team as an opportunity, an employee who is going to be a long term and valuable asset to their company while providing “world class service and integrity” regardless of the industry. Unfortunately the reality is this does not always happen.

According to recent studies, statistics prove that time theft is happening within every organization at an alarming and financially-crippling rate:

• The FBI calls employee theft “the fastest growing crime in America!”
• The U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimates that 75% of employees steal from the workplace and that most do so repeatedly.
• One third of all U.S. corporate bankruptcies are directly caused by employee theft.
• The Boston Globe and Denver Post newspapers recently reported that U.S. companies lose nearly $400 Billion per year in lost productivity due to “time theft” or loafing.
• The American Society of Employers estimates that 20% of every dollar earned by a U.S. company is lost to employee theft.

These statistics inspired us at Call the Time to come up with a time and attendance solution. In the early development stages of our application we provided a free trial to our potential clients. This was done to provide us with the direct understanding of what was essential to control time theft in various work environments. We custom developed a what we feell is a superior time and attendance software solution addressing the needs that would eliminate that of an archaic punch card or manual time clock system. An application built to minimize and prevent time theft and to be utilized as an extremely effective revenue saving tool. In the coming blogs we will discuss more regarding the tools with-in a time and attendance, reporting software application such as Call the Time, we will also focus on various other complimentary tools and tips to prevent time theft.

For now, let’s focus on the return on investment that a web-based time and attendance software application can provide to an organization:

• Let’s say you have 50 employees
• Each employee makes an average of $10 per hour
• Add in a regular work week of 40 hours

The next piece of the equation comes from the administration efforts.

This is an additional cost because many organizations are still using valuable employee time, to manually add up payroll and to create other paper based reports.

• This administrative employee is also making $10 per hour

After 24 pay periods a year, while adding in all the above factors and using a time and attendance reporting tool such as Call the Time, your annual savings would be: $43,120.00! That’s an astonishing amount of savings per year!

Let’s investigate how that number came to fruition by examining studies made by the American Payroll Association:

Time Theft Approximately 2% of your payroll (about 50 minutes per weekly time sheet)
Time Cards Approximately 0.25–0.5% of total payroll costs (about 3 minutes per weekly time sheet)
Human error Approximately 2% of your payroll costs
*According to the American Payroll Association

As mentioned earlier in this blog, unfortunately a percentage of employees will always attempt to outsmart your time clock system. However, there is a simplistic way to resolve many of the issues an organization is having when it comes to time theft and that’s to invest in the correct tools that will either increase revenue or decrease the amount of lost revenue month after month. The reality is: if you are saving even half of the money you are currently losing due to employee time theft, how can you afford to live without an application that is simple, preventative and extremely effective?

Call the Time - Launches Time and Attendance Software

Call the Time version 2.0 is redefining telephone time and attendance software as a service, with unprecedented features, improved content and enhanced performance. See what's new in Call the Time Version 2.0: http://www.callthetime.com

Call the Time is a powerful, easy-to-use, web-based telephone time clock software system that accurately records time and attendance for hourly employees who work off-site.

Imagine - no more time cards, attendance sheets, no more hours wasted calculating payroll information, and no more buddy punching, time card padding, and other tricks that can seriously impact your bottom line. Fast, simple and highly effective the Call the Time telephone time and attendance tracking system is the perfect way to minimize administrative costs and maximize profitability. And best of all the system literally pays for itself through dramatically increased efficiencies, so in the end there is really no additional cost to you!

With the Call the Time telephone time clock and time and attendance software you can view and print your time card data anytime you wish – no need to wait for a pay cycle. You can also eliminate the time traditionally spent collecting time cards, avoid calculation mistakes and effectively eliminate time card padding and buddy punching. That means more profits stay with you, instead of being frittered away on needless time and errors.

As well as tracking clock-in and clock-out times and generating reports, CALL THE TIME has many other features:
• Unlimited clock in and clock out: In addition to starting and ending the day, employees can clock in or out for lunch and breaks.

• Voice authentication: Verify the employee that is clocking in by identifying his or her voice.

• Location tracking: Unapproved clock-in or clock-out locations show up as an error.

• Unusual Time detection: Suspicious clock-in or clock-out shows up as a red flag.

• Alerts: An email report alerts the supervisor if an employee does not clock in or clock out so that an alternate staff member can be sent to the site.

• Remote Tracking: The ability to track where an employee is through a company supplied remote device such as an iPhone or Black Berry

• Auto Clock Out: Administrative settings that will allow you to decide when to automatically clock an employee out, if they fail or forget to clock out of the application.

• Running work time: View and track the time that an employee has worked since clocking in.

• Project clocking: Tracks how long a specific project takes.

• Voice reports: You can listen to a verbal report of what your employee accomplished during their shift.

• Edit requests: Employees can submit requests to make specific changes to the timesheet.

• Instant Approval: Managers can instantly approve timesheets after reviewing.

• Data exporting: The data is yours to keep. It can be exported or printed any time.

• Daily backups: You never need to worry about losing your information.

• Scheduling: Easily monitor overlaps, overtime, and days booked off, to avoid scheduling
conflicts.

For all this and more, see whats new at Call the Time http://www.callthetime.com